The Amazing Spider Man 2 is another one of those games that have become common place, releasing in time to not only promote the movie tie-in, but also maximise the profits that can be squeezed from the fans of the franchise. The game starts off using the plot of the movie, but soon falls into the trap of being dull, uninspiring and quite frankly a down right terrible experience. Over the years we have seen many of these super heroes appear in games, and the only one to actually pull it off has been the Batman franchise. That being said The Amazing Spiderman 2 game is fun while you are web slinging your way around the city, but has no place on the new generation of consoles, as I have seen far superior graphics and gameplay on the Xbox 360. In short this is a classic case of dollar signs in the eyes of the corporate bigwigs, delivering a substandard product that has been rushed to release with the movie. Taking a closer look into the game and it’s mechanics will show you exactly what I am talking about.
The Amazing Spider Man 2 handles it’s combat in Batman style, but badly executed with confusing and awkward camera angles. Simple button mashing will deal with 90% of the enemies that are so dumb you can have a coffee in one hand while you constantly press X to deal with the group. Sneaking up behind enemies has been improved since the last game, with the range being more satisfactory, but you will have to guess when exactly you are in range. Simply web rushing a few feet away from an enemy will see him looking around like a lost puppy, that doesn’t know his way home. The plot and any form of decent storyline has been thrown out the window in favour of rolling out a host of meaningless bosses and characters. Each boss has his unique ability, but are easily vanquished with little effort.
Making your way around the city via web sling is pleasing for the most part, but the city seems lifeless and dull, not to mention extremely badly rendered and lit. As you would expect you have various side missions throughout the city to accomplish, and give you the Hero status. These missions become repetitive quickly, for instance if you take on one of the fights, that usually see you fighting four enemies in order to stop some crime in progress, you always end up with the same three guys tied up at the end. So what happened to the forth villain, and why am I always fighting the same guys that I beat and tied up half way across the city not two minutes ago? Upgrading Spiderman and his suits it simple and uninspiring, and it’s obvious that little or no though has gone into this. Simply put, it’s a buy and play upgrade system that delivers no depth or imagination to the game. One thing that has improved for the most part, is the use of the web sling. Spiderman will no longer sling a web where there is no buildings, this is something that Beenox were quick to emphasise. This is not entirely true as he will sometimes web sling without buildings in certain sections.
Stan Lee makes an appearance in the game after you save him from a burning building, and you can visit him in comic book stores in the city.
These sequences along with all of the other cut-scenes are poorly animated and rendered by a school kid doing a project. The Amazing Spiderman 2 has a lot of these little cut-scenes, that become a testament to how poor this game actually is, with glitchy animation and terrible texture maps. In fact I got so fed up of waiting for this to load in every 5 minutes it bored the shit out of me.
All of this comes down to a rushed and unfinished game that should have no place on new generation consoles, and definitely should not be robbing gamers at full price. The positives for any fans of Spider Man, is simply he is in the game. The Amazing Spider Man 2 is no improvement on the franchise, and for me only goes towards reaffirming that they should give up developing these games, or start doing them with some kind of care and passion. We as gamers are constantly bombarded by inferior products, just because we want something new to play, but have you stopped to count the cash spent on these games that are now gathering dust in the cupboard. Do yourself a favour and save your money this time, wait for something that deserves the price tag, something that will give you pleasure. The Amazing Spider Man 2 is not a game that has given me much pleasure or enjoyment. The fun of zipping around town lasted until my coffee was cold, bad mechanics + bad animations + bad combat + bad texture maps + no imagination = Bad Game. You do the math!
