Spider-Man: Web of Shadows - Review

Spider-Man: Web of Shadows, Xbox 360 - £37.99 delivered
Spider-Man: Web of Shadows, PS3 - £37.99 delivered
Spider-Man: Web of Shadows, PC - £24.73 delivered

Review by Amitai Winehouse



If Spider-Man: Web of Shadows was a singer, it'd be Britney Spears. Filled with hope and joy at the beginning, and backing it up with stimulus. But then, as you spend more time focusing on it, you realise the small faults. Eventually, it vomits and passes out every once in a while and despite trying to ignore it, it keeps embarrassing itself more and more.

From the very off, the game is presented in a bad way. Personally, graphical aesthetic can be a massive deal for myself. I'm looking forward to the NXE, purely due to the updated graphical look which is slightly more modern. I quite like PES 2009, in part due to the menus and user interface. However, in Web of Shadows we are presented with a grey menu. The image of Spider-Man fills maybe an eighth of the screen. Are we playing a game set in the colourful Spider-world, or Grey homogeneous blob's adventures in Greyscale? From the menu, I can barely tell.

That's only a small niggle in an otherwise fairly good looking game. Yes, the graphics are not stunning but certain little things are. The way the Spider-suit goes from red to black and back again is beautiful. The characters are designed in a larger than life Comic fashion set in a slightly more realistic world. The water effects are great, but that's quite useless as if you go to near the water you're probably playing the game slightly wrong.

The graphics are slightly last generation however. Maybe it was to assist better downscaling to the Wii and Ps2 ports but really the graphics are sub-par. The buildings are very under-detailed. Going back to the Britney Spears idea, the new ideas brought in graphically are in essence alright. Too much pop however. Yes, the pop does cause a massive problem when you are swinging through the city fancy free and notice an empty street. Letting go, you fall directly into the path of 40 symbiotes and their depraved orifices, ready to kill you and send you right back to Stark Tower.

Yes, sorry for the spoiler but Stark Tower is in the game! The man who built it isn't however. The only superhero who really could not be effected by the symbiotes because of his suit is nowhere to be seen, having cavorted off and deciding to leave it to the superhero with the Spider-vulnerable regular cloth suit. Captain America, you know, the one with the power to destroy all of these symbiotes and sing "America The Beautiful" all before a sharp bedtime of 9pm, before the Hitler Yo...Peace Rally in the morning, is nowhere to be seen. In fact, Spider-Man has a laugh at the lack of these people, and his predicament, chortling at the idea of having Moon Knight as a partner whilst the rest of the Marvel Heroes have a we hate Spider-Man and Wolverine party.

Wolverine is also in the game, dropped off in Manhattan out of a fast plane by The X-Men presumably. But, as the only real other A-Lister, you'd assume he'd be introduced at the beginning or near enough. Nope, you get to hang out with LUKE CAGE for a while. Then once Wolverine is introduced, he buggers off quickly enough, more than likely to get it on with Black Cat. The poor use of characters can really become astounding. Why is Wolverine, arguably the best acted character, ignored for most of the game?

The acting itself is quite bad for most of the people. Spider-Man is horrible, with you wanting to garrotte his Spider-Voice Actor with a Spider-Fiber Wire. It doesn't help that most of the lines could have been written by 5 year olds who have seen one episode of Spider-Man - The New Animated Series on JETIX. The Spider-One Liners are none existent and this is without a doubt a huge disappointment.

The story is spotty at best, and this poor writing doesn't really help matters. The story is as generic as an autobiography written by Frank Lampard. Nothing huge and shocking happens and the story never gets truly out of first gear. It's solid however and is never below average. It is not game breaking and does not damage the experience too much. Doesn't improve it however. Venom is a formidable opponent and the reasoning behind most of the actions in the game are Spider-explainable.

However, the Spider-Plot Device of the symbiote being used to lengthen the game, allowing the makers to repeat boss battles is fairly obvious. The boss battles are not even that difficult the first time around, and on repeat they are easy as Spider-cake. This is a problem the whole game faces. The mission designs are fairly basic and mostly uninspired. They are not repeated, but this has the dual disadvantage of when you figure out what to do it is never repeated and also the game is itself shortened. In fact, even with the repeated boss battles, the game clocks in at around 8 to 10 hours, probably a bit too little for an average game at today's prices.

It is for this Spider-reason that I cannot Spider-recommend this Spider. Personally, I believe you should give this game a Spider-rent unless you are a huge Spider-fan, in which case you will have already Spider-bought, Spider-played and Spider-beat this Spider-game. Spider.