MadCap's Game Reviews - "The Amazing Spider-Man"

Xbox 360 Box Art

 A general rule of thumb with video games is that if they’re movie tie-ins, they tend to suck.  And I don’t mean in the sense of “Oh, it’s just a bad game”, oh, no, no, no, no. I mean more in the “Thor: God of Thunder” suck. Yeah, remember that? Remember having to focus on one point on the frigging screen to be able to fly?

 Every so often, however, there proves to be an exception to the rule.  A prime example that shows up in a lot of critic’s favorite games lists is Spider-Man 2, based off of the Sam Raimi film of the same name.  It gets praised quite often for the free roaming of being able to just spend hours web swinging around New York, finding collectables and ignoring the cries of help from the people on the street below, and it’s deserving of the praise. It was just a fun game all in all.  Spider-Man 3 had kind of the same thing going for it, but had the problems of being too similar to 2 and, of course, the movie it was a tie-in for being a gigantic piece of crap.

Fast forward to the present and we see the release of The Amazing Spider-Man, which I’ve seen an enjoyed (and talk about here). And, so - perhaps wishing to recapture the feeling of playing Spider-Man 2 – I picked up the game at my local gameshop, slapped it in my Xbox 360, and waited to see if it was just as good. And after finishing through the main quest, I have to say it did it well.

Pretty much any free-roaming Spider-Man game that you’ve actually played is this, though with some differences.  Particularly the “Web Rush” feature, which allows the player to actually stop time and get a view from behind the eyes of Spidey.  A golden, glowing image of the Webslinger will appear at various places around, dictating where Spider-Man will jettison himself towards when Web Rush is activated. This mode can also be backed out of, allowing the player to resume manual control.

Other than that, it’s pretty much every Spider-Man game you’ve played that has free roaming.  Some after game subplots involve hunting down escaped mental patients and bringing them back to the police, getting diseased peoples off the street and to treatment facilities, and special challenge modes involving Bruce Campbell and helicopters.

…it all makes sense in context, I swear.

All in all, the game is very enjoyable. I really hope it comes out with some DLC to length the game, however. While there are many things to do within the game world, I’ll eventually get bored as I did in Spider-Man 2 with roaming around fighting the five or six kinds of random crimes that the game will generate on a random basis.  Still, all in all, it’s a very enjoyable game. I’m not going to call it the Arkham City of Spider-Man, but it is a pretty fun ride.  See ya next time!

The Amazing Spider-Man is available from Activision, Beenox, and Marvel.

This review is based on the Xbox 360 version.