Review: Spider-Man: Web of Shadows (360)

That being one of many complaints that can be levelled at the latest wall crawling adventure. Based around a symbiote invasion it’s no surprise to find Venom at the root of the problem, it’s the favourite character of many (hence his inclusion), but few would argue that he isn’t grossly overused. At least like previous Spider-Man games the webswinging does come a long way to save it, barely. Swinging through the streets of New York is a joyous experience and controlling Spider-Man is great at first, then you enter combat and it all goes horribly wrong.

Basing a lot of it’s fighting on combos is fair enough and it does work well, but throughout the entire game only a few of them are of any worth. And the camera goes a long way to try and get you killed. We haven’t experienced a camera this bad since the early days of 3D. During wall crawling sections the camera goes into an epileptic fit, swinging from side to side, going into different views, it almost makes the wall fighting impossible. Another thing trying to stop your enjoyment is the targeting which highlights everyone you don’t want to target. Pressing the trigger to enter your spider sense targeting is fine, it’s not fine though when you need to change who you’re targeting. This is done with the right stick, which is used for controlling your unwieldy camera. So when you’re trying to move your camera into a workable position you’re instead targeting everything on the map.

So far then it’s not looking good and for us Web of Shadows breaks the main open world faux pas. Having a world this large you need to fill it with something. Interesting characters, people who feel like they’re going about their everyday lives, cars that don’t just drive in a circle. This game has nothing like that. It’s empty, soulless and bitterly disappointing. Treyarch seem to have just taken the old city from Spider-Man 2 and made it graphically a little better. It makes the symbiote invasion seem pointless because even though later the city is completely devastated you feel no sympathy or loss. It’s made even more apparent with the insane civilians who become taken over, they’re normal humans but Spider-Man has no remorse when he pummels them into the ground and throws them off buildings. These are still humans aren’t they?

We shouldn’t really expect any different from Web of Shadows version of the wall crawler, this by far being the worst in any superhero game ever. Whatever happened to decent voice actors? The guy voicing Spidey being the most sarcastic and downright annoying person to ever provide vocals. Not once did we crack a smile because of his wisecracks and not once did we sit and listen to any of the optional exposition with the other characters. It makes Tobey Maguire’s acting seem like Robert De Niro.

We don’t want to heap that much hate on the game, there are still some decent moments. Missions are well varied at the start (though the lack of ideas show later on), these can include the likes of beating up thugs to protecting civilians. It also comes with optional side missions that can be completed if you want extra experience, the experience going towards new moves. There’s also collectable glowing spiders that litter the rooftops. There’s literally hundreds of them and this is one of the things that kept bringing us back to the game. At least with this there’s no need to enter the combat, just swing around for as long as you wish.

Ultimately though it comes back to crushing disappointment. Nothing here wasn’t possible on the last generation of consoles and after playing other open worlds the city of New York seems bland in comparison. There are plenty of crimes being performed, but eventually when they start resorting to the same; stop bad guys, take injured person to hospital, repeat formula it starts to become tiresome. Why is it so hard to get a superhero game right?

Rating: 4 / 10

Words by Adam Gulliver