For the Gamer Good

Venom makes himself very much at home.

With great franchises, come great responsibility. No, I’m not quoting Uncle Ben, I’m quoting myself, damnit. The thing with Spiderman games is they can either be stunningly brilliant, Spiderman 2 for example, or horrifyingly bad, like the film-to-video game incarnation of the first Tobey Maguire film. It’s a nightmare getting it all right, but if you’ve got the right tools, a taste for sandbox game development, and a colossal passion for comics, it’ll be a success.

Spidey: Web of Shadows is most definitely a success. From the moment you hear Tobey Maguire’s voice vanish from underneath the ‘ole Red and Blue, you know things will be different, and Spiderman will be a lot less wimpy. I for one, actually prefer Tobey Maguire. He looks, sounds like and is Spiderman, to me; slightly annoying, funny when he wants to be, and intimidatingly furious whenever things go sour for our arachnid hero.

You’re essentially playing in Manhattan, though sadly it is just Manhattan, this time. Spiderman 2 was a lot more open-ended due to the added Roosevelt island and various other additional landmasses that made the gameplay area a lot bigger. However, with the amount of things to do in Spidey, there’s not much reason to expand the area past 20 by 100 blocks or so. The atmosphere is brilliant, people walking around, driving cars, sitting in parks, gang warfare, street crime; it’s New York as you know it, just with the added superhero element.

You could say you’re going to see this vision of New York through two very different pairs of eyes; those of Peter Parker, hero of the people, and the white, soulless eye-sockets of his Venom-skinned counterpart. At the click of the left analogue stick, you can switch between the old-school suit and the slick, black, evil costume that comes with a lot of physical power, though ends up as a magnet for police bullets, as if you’re not bothering to save anyone and constantly making evil choices, people aren’t going to be your biggest fans.

Honestly, the most frustrating choices come in the form of whether or not to be good and bad on a personal level. Spiderman’s history with Black Cat stretches back tens of years in comic book history, and she’s probably a pretty darn sore subject for Mary Jane. So, you can either side with the good girlfriend, made to look “tough” by dressing her like a deranged prostitute and adding a combat shotgun, or side with the even more whorish Felicia, who’s catsuit is questionable to begin with.

What the hell is wrong with game developers? Where’s the choice there? There’s no good person for Spiderman to be with, simply two complete nutcases who dress like they’ve just stumbled out of a club at four in the morning. I’m not a woman, but my God, even I find that extremely offensive. Predictably, Black Cat gets her suit slashed to ribbons at one point in the storyline, and lo and behold, my “frat boy” alarm starts to go into overdrive. Soul Calibur, Spiderman, X-Blades, Bikini Samurai Squad, Flirt Up Your Life… it’s all getting worse and worse. I’m all for freedom of expression, but borderline pornography is something I’ll never support. If you’ve got Xbox Live, and therefore an internet connection, go to seedier places to get this odd “fix” of yours, and stop polluting entertainment.

Ranting aside (you got off lightly, trust me), the actual game itself is very engaging. Swinging around feels as natural as it did in Spiderman 2, even though my girlfriend was clever enough to point out that half the time, the web isn’t actually attatching to anything. Seriously, pan the camera up 90 degrees and watch that sucker float in mid-air. It’s disturbing. That said, I think the camera needs a ton of work in general. When locked onto something, you’ve got two choices. Up, or down. The camera will either face your feet or the sky, and there’s no in-between to help you out, here.

It makes combat difficult, which is irritating because combat in Spidey is ridiculously complex to begin with. I’ve never seen so many hidden quick-time events in a title before, not to mention the obligatory four quick-time button pushes in order to defeat every single boss fight in the game. Look, guys, just because you’re telling the player to “press X just before you reach the bad guy” doesn’t mean I’m not going to translate that as “press X to not die”. I’m not stupid. I’m fine with open quicktime events. Bar the odd time-based button mashing, the regenerative health system is actually remarkably well balanced. Low on health, you’ll have to make sure you’re hiding for a fair while in order for it to return, but then again, swinging around on the same web so they can’t hit you for a minute and a half also does the same trick, disappointingly.

The graphics are, sadly, only what can be expected from a game that contains thousands of character models, and at least fifty to a hundred on screen at any one time. GTA IV was a brilliant game, but the graphics were questionable at times. Spidey suffers from a serious drop in frame rate when you’re swinging through the city at serious speed. I know my Elite makes a ton of damn noise as it is unless I install my games to the hard drive, but Jesus, I could really hear the thing chugging to make sure I didn’t swing into a fifty-story wireframe box instead of a skyscraper.

The missions are varied enough, with everything from evacuation supervision to flying about getting samples from the Venom-possessed locals, and they’re good for extra experience and passing the time. Experience is pretty important, as if you want the best moves, you’ll be paying through the nose for them at the Upgrades screen. Luckily, the game’s fairly generous with it, and you’re rewarded with more for mixing up your combos and the ways in which you despatch your foes on the New York battlefield.

A ton of old faces make an appearance, though my hands-down favourite has to be Wolverine. The moment he arrives, he attempts to kill you, on the assumption the Venom parasite has taken you over completely. He then, oddly, subjects you to several rounds of Marvel comic trivia questions before you can beat him. Erm. What? Now, I can understand questions like “what’re your parents names?” with trick answers like “Uncle Ben and Aunt May”, but “who refused to join the New Avengers?” Seriously guys, are you even looking at the target demographic? They’re not going to know that. I got a couple right, but most were trial and error. What’s worse is, you get Black Points (evil karma, evil points, you know the drill by now) for getting them wrong. Tell me if I’m whining too much, but isn’t that a bit unfair to someone trying to be a good character and being punished for not being Stan Lee?

All this aside, it’s an enjoyable experience, and with around 2260 collectible Spider-icons sitting around the city, not to mention side missions, unlockable moves and other content, this will last you quite a while. If you can get past the corrupted-by-men look of Mary Jane and CatWoman (which I did, just about, with a lot of groaning), it’s worth renting it at least. Which is, coincidentally, exactly what I did. In fact, I originally asked for SFIV and they sent me this as that was out of stock. Nice bit of luck there. It’s just a shame you can’t get Spidey to choose neither woman at the end of the game, really. He’d be a hero I’d look up to, then.