The Amazing Spider-man

First thing to note - The Amazing Spider-Man is set after the events in the movie of the same name, and it happily assumes you have seen the movie by spoiling the heck out of it moments into the first cutscene. Spoiling is of course a relative term, because it's a superhero movie and Spider-Man wins in the end. Still, you've been warned.

Like Shattered Dimensions and Edge of Time before it, The Amazing Spider-Man was developed by Beenox - as Activision have declared them the Spider-Man game developers. And whether you like their games or not, it's easy to see why - they love Spider-Man. Every Spider-Man game they make is like a love letter to the red and blue idiot, packed full of little tidbits and extras for his fans. And The Amazing Spider-Man is no different - hell, it includes 10 historically significant comics for you to unlock and read. Beenox just forgot to put a worthwhile game on the disc too.

The Amazing Spider-Man suffers from what in this instance you might call 'license-based video game syndrome' - or in any other case, half-assery. It begins with the story - not because I'm particularly focused on the story, but because the game is particularly focused on the story. The Amazing Spider-Man kicks off with five minutes of the worst video game cut-scene this side of Resident Evil 2.

Everything is told through Peter Parker's eyes in First Person Perspective, walking through Oscorp with Gwen Stacy following the events of the movie. Gwen Stacy is afraid that the new head developer at Oscorp - Dr Smythe - is still working on Dr Connors' (The Lizard) cross-species experiments and so she sneaks you in to check it out. You meet Dr Smythe, who is incredibly cavalier about two teenagers breaking into his laboratory, explaining that he is currently attempting to get rid of all of Connors' research. Naturally, he gives the two trespassers a tour of his high tech facility until - of course - things start to go wrong, cross-species break out and everyone acts completely idiotically. I challenge you to make it through the opening minutes of this game without wishing Gwen Stacy was already dead. (Spoiler: Gwen Stacy dies in the comic series.)

After what seems an insurmountably long time, it's finally down to business - Petey puts on his Spidey costume and prepares to rescue Gwen Stacy from the dreaded ravages of the cross-species virus. The first thing you'll notice is that nothing about this is open-world - Spidey zips about Oscorp headquarters in a linear path, handling the obstacles along the way. The good news is, once you escape from Oscorp you have access to the entire island of Manhattan - the bad news is, there isn't much point to it.

It's almost as if Beenox had already pretty much finished The Amazing Spider-Man as a level based game similar to their previous entries in the franchise, when somebody told them that the only thing anyone has ever wanted out of a Spider-Man game was the ability to zip about New York. New York is gorgeous and swinging about it is a lot of fun, but it seems so incidental to the game. The open-world portion of the game serves as little more than filler for the level based sections - Spider-Man needs to travel to a chemical plant for his next mission, so as Spidey you swing across from your apartment to the chemical treatment plant.

That isn't to say there isn't anything to do in the open-world portion of the game. You can help the police, help sick people, take photos for the news and perform in challenges set up by Bruce Campbell. But they are always the same - you find a mental patient or infected person, pick them up and swing them to the location marked on your map. Along the way, they say the same 4 things over and over and Spider-Man randomly replies with one of the four lines he can say. You see someone getting mugged, you drop down and beat up the 6 guys doing the mugging, the victim says one of four things and Spidey randomly replies again. Police are chasing a car, you jump onto the car and hammer B until it tells you to hit Y, you hit Y and hammer B until the car crashes. At least with the Police based challenges you might get a slightly bigger test from tougher muggers or more speeding vehicles, but it hardly changes anything.



Which isn't even counting the comic book pages. Used to unlock the comic books I mentioned earlier, there are 700 comic book pages scattered throughout Manhattan. Seven freaking hundred. They aren't all available from the beginning however, unlocking as the game progresses - meaning there is little point in going out of your way for them until you finish the game. Considering the last 200 only count towards your 100% completion rate and an achievement, they are utterly pointless for anyone with anything better to do.

So the open-world segments aren't great, but how about the level-based sections? Well they are better, that's for certain - though not by much. You see, Spider-Man is a little kid in a bright red and blue spandex body suit - so it makes sense that The Amazing Spider-Man would play up the stealth aspects of the game. Spider-Man has stealth attacks he can launch into any time he is behind or above any unaware enemy - and as he can crawl across the roof, this means he can easily find a good position. Elements of Batman: Arkham City/Asylum are easy to see in the stealth gameplay, but it has some significant flaws.

One of the problems is that while Batman is Batman, Spider-Man is Spider-Man. So while Batman hides in the shadows, quickly zipping down and grabbing his enemies, creating fear, Spider-Man skips on down his web thing and taps an enemy on the head to alert him to his presence, then has a chuckle, then zips him into the air. Meanwhile, every enemy in the house just had a year and a half to change where they were looking, inevitably meaning they are all now looking at you.

Tapping Left Button quickly zips Spider-Man off somewhere different - and while your opponents have an exceptional talent for looking directly at whichever of their comrades is about to get nabbed, they are mind bogglingly stupid. So in any room with enemies you can't beat into submission (anyone with a projectile weapon) the action plays out the same way - walk on the roof until you are above anyone, zip down and do your dumb little comedy routine and drag them back up, tap LB so the inept idiots you are up against lose you and then wait until you can do it all again. They'll look about a bit with flashlights for about twenty seconds, then they reset back to staring straight ahead.

If you are so inclined you can drop down for a fight for more of a challenge - and fighting, like stealth, bears similarities to Batman: Arkham City/Asylum. You can punch enemies by tapping X, until your spidey senses alert you to another enemy's attack, at which point you hit Y to counter. Occasionally you'll need to mix it up by pressing B to fling web at an enemy, or jumping over them to attack them from behind. Once your hit counter reaches a certain level you will start attacking harder and faster and you can tap B to use a finishing move on a dazed enemy. Like Batman, combat can be fun for those looking to get their combo chains as high as possible.

But really, why bother? Using my foolproof method you'll finish the game with more than enough XP to fill out all of your upgrades - and if you really want to get some upgrades quickly, you can go back and redo a level once you've finished it.

The Amazing Spider-Man isn't a bad game outside of its ridiculous story - it's just pointless. It's very nice looking and it is very cathartic to swing about the streets of Manhattan, but without a good reason to do it, you might as well not bother. If you desperately want to play a new Spider-Man game, wait until it goes on sale - and even then only if you've run out of other games to play.