Review #436: The Amazing Spider-man(Playstation 3)

 The not so Amazing Spider-man

 With 2 Spider-man games under their belt, Beenox finally felt confident to develop what fans wanted: Another open world Spider-man game, and thus The Amazing Spider-man was released.

 While it's a movie tie-in, instead of retelling the movie's plot, this game acts as a pseudo-sequel of sorts. After Dr. Connors' fiasco, Alistair Smith takes over his research to 'fix' what Connors did... but it soon goes awry, with the entire Oscorp building turning into an infected zone, filled with contagious cross-species mutants. Spider-man breaks out Connors out of the mental instituted in order to help him create a cure and save Manhattan. It's an alright story for a movie tie-in game, and probably a better idea than tackling the movie's plot. This game also features very new takes on popular villains like Alistaire Smith, Rhyno and the Scorpion.

 There's two different elements to the game: Outdoors and indoors. Most of the game takes place in-doors, which is were missions take place. Basically, during these parts the game plays like a Batman: Arkham clone, with one-button, free flowing combat, and once signs appear over Spidey's head you must press a different button to dodge. It's fun and fast, but it lacks some of Batman's grace. But hand-to-hand combat isn't always the best road to take, y'see, even when fully upgraded Spider-man can't take much punishment, so it's in your best interest to crawl on walls and ceilings, finding vantage points to stealthily do away with enemies. It's very easy to exploit the stealth system, once found just web-rush from corner to corner until they forget about you, then take out a few more enemies, rinse and repeat.

 Web-Rush is the game's main gimmick, by holding R1 time will slow down to a crawl, shifting to a first person camera. From here you can pick a surface to web-zip to, an enemy to web-strike or an object to interact with. It works fine, and seeing how the automatic lock on for tapping R1 kinda sucks, this'll be the safest way to interact with an object in the midst of a battle. They finally had the bright idea to change how web-swinging works outdoors and indoors, in these indoor segments R2 will make Spider-man swing automatically from web to web, and holding L2 will make him increase his altitude as he swings.

 But when not undertaking missions you'll be exploring the sandbox city of Manhattan. While you can go towards your next mission at any time, there's a substantial, but needlessly repetitive, amount of side-missions to undertake. Secret Labs to take down, muggings to stop, car chases and a few others. While these are not random, unlike previous games, there's a large amount of each, so you'll be quite busy... if you do engage in them. I did a few, but quickly grew bored. You can also find hidden comic book pages that unlock entire high quality Spider-man comics. Pretty neat! There're also a fair amount of costumes to unlock, including my favorite Marvel character's costume: Kaine's Scarlet Spider.

 But as filled to the brim with excess fat as the overworld is, there's one big, fatal flaw: They messed up the swinging. Previous Spider-man games had a fantastic timing based system that felt rewarding and gratifying to swing around. In here you just hold R2 until Spider-man lets go of the web and then tap R2 again. No way to do it any faster. And you'll want to be faster, since the swinging is VERY slow. It takes away a lot from the overall game. Web-zip was removed, and while you can use quick taps of Web Rush for an extra boost, it doesn't feel any faster... or any useful for traversing the city. Among all open-world Spider-man games, this one's easily got the worst swinging mechanics of them all.

 The Underwhelming Spider-man would've been a better title. While there's nothing particularly bad about it, except maybe how uninspired the side-activities are, the game doesn't do anything that other games do better. The indoor missions? Batman's got them covered. The open world segments? Pick any other open world Spider-man game. So, yeah, it's not a bad game, but there's a lot of other options to exhaust before you'd feel compelled to give it a go.
 6.0 out of 10

Now Playing: Spider-man 2(PSP)

 At least it's better than Spider-man 1 on the PS2, right?

 Alright, so the PS1 formula of Spider-man games wasn't abandoned quite after Spider-man 1, you see, there was yet another version of Spider-man 2, the one on PSP, the one that didn't arrive on time so I had to skip for the Spider-manathon but since I'm out of handheld Spider-man games, it's right on time.

 Well, it's quite alright. Seems like a slightly, and only slightly more polished take on the Spider-man 1(PS2) game. I spent way more time than I'd like to admit trying to catch up to the helicopter on the first stage, and the second stage was a very mundane beat'em up thingie that was just, well, mediocre. So... we'll see, maybe, as a whole, the game ends up being good.

Review #435: The Amazing Spider-man 2(Nintendo 3DS)

 Swings into action... if time doesn't run out.

 I haven't covered Spider-man on the 3DS for this Spider-manathon because those games were pretty similar to the home console counterparts, but The Amazing Spider-man 2 is its own beast. This is a 2-D sidescroller action game, the same as most previous Nintendo Handheld Spider-man games, and it's a pretty decent game if you're willing to entertain the fact that the game does little to flex the 3DS' muscle.

 Do I really have to say the same thing for the umpteenth time? This game follows a truncated version of the already truncated version of the plot from the movie of the same name. While Spider-man will deal with Electro and Green Goblin, like in the movie, Gwen Stacy and the rest of the plot is gone, exchanged for new subplots with Uncle Ben's killer, Kraven and Carnage... at least no Venom, right?! It's a poor telling of a rather bland plot.

 Spider-man can do everything you should expect him to do by this point in time: Punch, shoot web, climb and crawl on walls and ceilings as well as swing on web, everything is accounted for. Most of the game is a simple 'go from one end of the stage to the other', hassle free. Along the way you'll run across a few different types of enemies, each must be taken down in different ways. Some will counterattack your every move, so you must bind them with web first and then perform two web-takedowns(Special attack), others won't go down with punches so you must knock'em down with web-takedowns, and most enemies must be webbed once they hit the ground unless you want them to get back up. The combat is pretty simple and bland, but it's alright.

 You'll earn experience points, either peppered throughout every stage or by defeating enemies, and by leveling up you'll be allowed to learn new special moves or enhancements to Spidey's strength or stamina. This made exploring levels feel rather rewarding, plus every level has three costume pieces, collect all three and earn a new costume, which means that there're as many costumes as there're levels, which is a lot. It makes for a fun game to simply just search for stuff, because it's worth it.

 There's a few rather annoying design choices that keep the game from being as decent as it could've, for instance, before every single stage you have to partake in a poorly explained and poorly designed timed swinging section in which you must avoid obstacles and grab clock-items in order to receive more time, run out of time and it's back to the start. Midway through these you'll be forced to play a generic and recycled 'Save the 6 hostages', 'find the 13 bombs', 'defeat the 13 enemies'. They all play out the same way, with things in pretty much the same exact location as before and only exist to waste your time. And secondly, while the touchscreen mini-games aren't pervasive, some boss battles incorporate the touchscreen into the affair, which is rather annoying. Kraven's boss battle is particularly bad, since you must avoid bullets on the top-screen as you watch the lower screen to learn where you have to touch for a few seconds on the touchscreen. Bad boss design.

 The Amazing Spider-man 2 on the 3DS is a very mediocre game. It has a simple premise that works decently enough on its own, making everything so rewarding was a very smart move, but the horrible swinging pre-stages really take a toll on the overall experience.
 5.5 out of 10

Now Playing: The Amazing Spider-man 2(3DS)

 Welcome to the 3DS' only original Spider-man game.

 While this is not the first Spider-man game on the 3DS, it was the only one that made it to the Spider-manathon for the simple fact that it's the only original game it got. Shattered Dimensions and Edge of Time are identical ports of the home console games and Amazing Spider-man 1 was the same game as the PS3 but without free roaming.

 But Amazing Spider-man 2 is an entirely different beast, a game that not many talked about and what little was said about it wasn't very good. But I just played a few levels and it's pretty alright. It's a 2-D sidescroller, not unlike Amazing Spider-man on the DS, but much more polished. I love that you can unlock costumes and if there's one costume per stage, man, it's gonna be a doozy. The combat is serviceable, and so is the level design.

 What isn't very good however are the swinging stages. I hope to god that there's not one per stage, because these are bad, very, very bad. The game did a poor job of explaining how it worked, and even then, it's hard to get a grasp of it. Don't like them.

Review #434: The Amazing Spider-man(Nintendo DS)

 Spider-man's final meh on the DS.

 Spider-man's last game on the DS was anything but amazing, so why Activision decided to go with the same developer, Other Ocean, is beyond me. But a second chance they got, and this time around it's not the same bugfest that Edge of Time was... but is that enough to save it from being mediocre? It's not.

 You know the drill, the game follows a truncated version of the plot from the console game, but this time around, these games work as a pseudo sequel to the movie, rather than an adaptation. Regardless, it's yet another Lizard story, someone, Alystair Smythe, wants to continue Dr. Connors' work and it goes awry, so Spider-man busts out Dr. Connors AKA the Lizard in order to help him find a cure. The presentation in the game is rather poor, I appreciate the hand-drawn stills, but they are pretty amateurish, some of the character cut-outs, for conversations, are downright ugly.

 The game is a level-based 2-D action-platform game, guess Other Ocean gave up on Metroidvanias... and on coding a map, since all you're given is a basic overview of the amount of areas and connections, but lacking any kind of detail, on the top-screen. Interestingly, all 18 missions are randomly generated, if you die, or go back to an older mission, chances are the layout will be entire different(Although the amount of areas and connections will be the same), which explains why the map may sometimes be inaccurate, like showing a connection to the next area on the top, while in the game itself the door lies at the bottom. This new mechanic also means that you'll be seeing repeated obstacles pretty often, there's one in particular that the game loves to reuse, that involves Spider-man climbing up, with walls on the left and right, and you must web-zip left-and-right to avoid alternating obstacles, which usually end with a platform on the right wall. Interesting idea on paper, but poor execution in practice. At the end of the day, stages are unmemorable, and you'll most likely remember stuff you had to do more than once due to repetition and not fun.

  Spider-man can punch, jump and throw web against only the medium-sized enemies. Jumping, swinging and crawling on walls are to be expected, so he can do those too. There's a new 'special' meter that allows you to use special moves, but these make Spider-man glide through the floor if you hold left and right(Which you kinda need to do when initiating them), so it's a bit hard to land them, but fret not, normal attacks work well enough. Sometimes the game will have you fighting foes in order to find keycards to open the next door, which is alright, but the combat system is relatively weak, you just repeat your A button attacks, sometimes ending with Up+A to knock-up medium sized enemies and hit them some more on the air. There're very few enemy types, and there's not a lot whole you can do to them, since only medium sized enemies are affected by knock-ups or webbing, which is kinda lame.

 While stages are simple to get through, make sure you explore a little, since each stage has at least one permanent power up, either more health, damage or new special moves. Some stages will also have you play under a time limit, but it's still pretty easy to go through, even if there're many 'find the keycard' segments throughout.

 The Amazing Spider-man is what Edge of Time could've been had it not been plagued by a glitches: A mediocre, lame game that doesn't do anything particularly bad, but there's nothing noteworthy about it, and has so little nuance to itself that ends up being boring. Honestly, you could do so much worse on the console, but there's also been better... and that's where Spider-mans final game on the DS lies, in the middle. It's far from being the worst... but it's also far from being the best.
 4.5 out of 10

Now Playing: The Amazing Spider-man(Playstation 3)

 Well, they tried!

 I'm sure that at the time Beenox was bombardd with criticism for removing free-roaming, so they complied and we got... The Amazing Spider-man. It seems to harken back to how Spider-man 2(PS2) played, but with a Batman Arkham flair. Which is only fair considering how Batman Arkham series stole the Spider-vision.

 As far as combat goes, it's fun. I mean, it IS aping the Arkham series, so it's gotta be, but I kinda miss how crunchy hits used to feel in Web of Shadows. As for the swinging... it's too slow. I tried getting up the third chapter to see if it would improve, since that happened with Web of Shadows, I was hating how slow it was, until I upgraded it and it turned into a dream. Web-zipping is gone, which kinda sucks, and the new Web-Rush mechanics is useful in-doors but it's no web-zip outdoors.

 Basically, it's what I feared would've happened if Beenox decided to start with a free roaming Spider-man game instead of a beat'em up. It's good, it really is, but it pales in comparison to Web of Shadows and Ultimate. At least it doesn't force you to do side activities in order to progress with the story, which is a huge step up from most open-world Spider-man games.

Review #433: Spider-man - Edge of Time(Playstation 3)

 And then there were two, but on a home console.

 Spider-man - Shattered Dimensions was a pretty good action/beat'em up that while not expanding on what made Spider-man games good, set out to be a different game that what we were used to. And it worked. So it only made sense to expand upon it, right? So why did we get less?

 Val Kilmer, or his character, goes back into the past to change it and make things even cozier for him in his present, the year 2099. He changes everything, now Peter Parker works for him in Alchemax Industries as well! But all is not lost, Miguel O'Hara, Spider-man 2099 is on to him, and he manages to set a link with Peter Parker. Now both Spider-men team up to save the past and the future. It's easily the best story in a Spider-man game yet, Spider-man being voiced by Spectacular Spider-man's voice actor and Spider-man 2099 by Spider-man: The Animated Series' voice actor, and they do a spectacular job of bringing both characters to life. And even while it's their interaction that drives the game, the plot itself is pretty darn interesting!

 The game takes place throughout 16 short-ish chapters, alternating between Peter and Miguel. Both Spider-men have the same basic actions: Square is a weak attack, Triangle a strong attack, Circle shoots web, R1 grabs the enemy(Spider-man throws a web against it, while Spider-man 2099 sends a clone to kick the enemy towards the real Miguel), both can crawl on walls and ceilings and both can swing from their webs. Don't get too excited, the entire game takes place inside Alchemax, a present and a future iteration of said building, so there's no free roam. And while the premise is about changing the past to affect the future, it plays out in a very linear fashion, for instance, Miguel might be struggling against robots, so as Spider-man you'll have, then and there, to destroy the blueprints. It's an interesting plot device, but it's just a plot device and not a game mechanic.

 Plenty has changed since the last game. Dodging works quite differently, and even between both characters. Both Spider-men have a Stamina gauge that's used for dodging, by pressing L2 Spider-man enters a dodging state that lasts for as long as you have stamina and he'll automatically dodge anything that comes his way. Meanwhile, Spider-man 2099 creates a clone that diverts enemy attention towards it, and, you guessed it, the clone lasts for as long as you've stamina left. Personally, I preferred how dodging worked in the previous game. It's not bad by any means, but it feels a bit... lame and kinda restrictive, if you ask me.

 There're new attacks, but a lot of attacks from the previous game are missing. Strong attacks can only be strung up to two times, so we miss out on the four triangle string and the four-attack strings that started with triangle. There're new Special moves that consume stamina, which were an OK idea, I guess? Look, it's bad enough that we lost two Spider-men and their unique movesets, so why take away even more moves? It's a weird decision. What we did gain was a ton of different unlockable costumes for each character, so props for that! But as much Spider-variety as we got, the Alchemax building, both present and future iterations, are kinda dull, and there's not much variety inside either. Contrast that with the huge amount of different stages and settings from the previous game!

 The Web of Challenges, the things behind which unlockable costumes are hidden, works a bit different than before. Each stage has between 4 and 6 challenges, but they are more involved than simply 'defeat X amount of enemies', most of them consisting in races or racking up a certain amount of combo hits. The problem is that challenges are now relegated to specific areas, so if you lose... you have to restart the challenge. I thought it was a bit lamer, but at least now you can retry challenges at any time, so there's that.

 Edge of Time is a disappointing follow-up to what was a very promising take on Spider-man. It's by no means bad, but it falls short of the bar set by its predecessor. I love how good the story and the writing is, but at the end of the day this is a videogame and that comes second to gameplay, which is something that Shattered Dimensions did better. You had more variety with the four different Spider-men, you had more attacks and moves and even more variety when it came to stages. And that's its worst sin: Coming after Shattered Dimensions.
 6.0 out of 10