5 out of 10
Playing Spider-man: Web of Shadows was about as enjoyable as reading a comic book from the 1990's... Ugh! This is one of the most frustrating Spider-Man games ever... (No, I have not played Spider-man 3)
The Good:
1. Spider-man in this game looks good.
Looks more like the Spidey from the
comic book (done in an 1970's John Romita style)
2. The graphics in the city.
The city and backgrounds have look decent ''last gen'' sort of look. Not quite next generation graphics, but a good job with details on buildings and other objects around the city.
3. Web swinging is fun.
The web slinging is done quite well in this game. Spidey is now able to climb up his web line and turning while swinging is very fluid. Also there are nice character animations while web swinging.
4. The ability to change costumes.
You can change from the classic red and blue costume to the black ''Secret Wars'' costume. Kind of neat idea for the game, but the wearing each costume doesn't make too much of a difference.
5. The opening credits.
Are presented in a really interesting way that
I haven't seen in a video game before. The game credits appear on
billboards in Times Square as the camera follows Spider-man as he
swings by leading you around to each credit.
The Bad:
Where do I begin?
1. Spider-man cannot die if he falls off any buildings.
You can climb up the Empire State building jump off and land on the pavement below, on your feet without even taking any damage. WTF???
2. This game has the worst voice acting in the history of Spider-man video
games.
Spider-man sounds like a teenage version of the nerdy professor
guy from the Simpsons. Really, really annoying.....
The other characters in the game sound terrible as well, Luke Cage
sounds like he is talking with a turd in his mouth. It's incredibly painful
to have to listen to these annoying characters in this game, especially when the voice
acting was done so much better in past Spider-man and Marvel games.
Venom has the best sounding voice in this game out of all the
characters, but that isn't saying much!
3. The wall crawling mechanics are so awful in this game.
Nothing is very fluid and the controls feel so jerky. The camera feels
all over the place. Wall crawling feels very clumsy and awkward. I
honestly don't know what happened here.... the Spider-man 1 & 2
movie games or even Spider-man (for the Dreamcast & N64) had way
better wall crawling mechanics! Here's the kicker....
The same company made those games, and then made this one. Go figure.
4.The combat just sucks in this game.
It's punch, punch, kick,
kick, web ball, web ball over and over again. The. A.I. is so dumb in
this game, it's just endless gang-banger or robots on goblin gliders, shooting at
you, shooting at the cops, shooting at each other, over and over again. There are upgrades you can buy for special moves, but upgrading your
moves doesn't add any fun when the combat
mechanics suck. There are combat air attacks which are new to the game play for a Spider-man game, but they get very repetitive quickly.
5.Bad character graphics.
Although, Spider-man (the character) graphically looks good. The rest
of the characters look very blocky and just look very WRONG!!!!
Venom for example, has a weird ''egg shaped'' head, Luke Cage looks
like he walked out of an N64's asshole, and Mary Jane looks like a red
headed troll that would make Peter Parker grab a
shovel, web swing down to the local graveyard and dig up what's left of Gwen
Stacy! The women characters in this game (Mary Jane and the Black Cat) look like they belong in a casting call line up for ''Rock of Love''. Just terrible character graphics in this game. The thing that kills me
is, all the character graphics look like an early Xbox or PS2 game, and
this is an 2008 release for the PS3 and Xbox 360!!!!
6.Not enough content in the game.
You can explore the city and web sling around but it gets old really fast. Soon, you realize although the city looks great, it really is void of life and doesn't feel like a living breathing New York. You can collect ''spider icons'' spread round the city to upgrade your powers, but they are way too easy to find and you are able to pick them up with little to no effort. The missions in the game are so repetitive and so easy, and it becomes a drag even to even bother to choose to go on one.
Overall, this game fails. Although it grew on me a little cause of the web swinging, it really is such an half ass effort on so many levels. It feels like this game had some good ideas to add to a Spider-man game, but overall it just feels poorly developed. It's sad when my most favorite part of a Spider-man game is the opening game credits. Nuff' said!
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