PushingPlay

Hour Play is a review format that looks at the introduction of a game rather than the game in it’s entirety. In Hour Play we judge the game based strictly on an hour of gameplay, not including cut-scenes, menus, or character customization.

If I had to pick a favorite superhero, it would hands down be Spider-man. Unfortunately, this admiration has led to some very disappointing experiences when Spidey has transitioned from the familiar pages of Comic books or cartoons, to video games and three unfortunate movies. This time, however, the trailer and news of Spider-man’s “Web of Shadows” (which came out in October for 360, PS3, PC, Wii, DS, and PSP) had been promising. I do realize looks can be, and often are deceiving, so I decided to give this one an Hour Play to see if the game was as web-slingtastic as I had hoped it would be.

JUMP!

In Web of Shadows, the storyline is focused around Spider-man’s struggle with the dark power he possesses while wearing a Symbiote suit. It has been said that this is a game of choices - with the player’s choices determining Spider-man, and New York’s fate. Much like The Force, Spiderman has to decide whether to succumb to the power of the Symbiote, or to reject it’s dark influence. The game opens with New York City covered in Symbiote slime, with Spider-man to blame. Flashback levels fill you in on previous events before you’re allowed to move forward.

While the primary storyline is supposed to be Spider-mans internal struggle of power vs. will, there isn’t much depth to it. Maybe it was the bad, whiny voice acting – or the absence of Spider-mans notorious one liner jokes, that turned me away from the story – but I found myself not caring about the plot very much. Since comic books are supposed to be books, and are traditionally plot driven, it was a let down to see such potential go to waste.

Right from the beginning I was impressed with how accurately modeled Spider-man’s New York City was. A few recognizable places, such as Times Square and Central Park were fairly accurate depictions of what I saw only two months ago during my visit there. The graphics are amazing. Clearly a lot of research went into showing us the New York City we know and love, from a birds-eye (spideys-eye?) view.

As the Marvel universe tends to do, there are a few references to other Marvel characters throughout the streets of New York. These include a billboard with Iron Man advertising for Stark Industries. Keep an eye out as you’re web-slinging around New York, other tidbits may catch your attention. This attention to detail adds some depth to the game world.

Web-slinging has been a great deal of fun ever since the Spider-man games have given the player the option to explore any part of New York City they desire – called Free-Roaming, or Open world gaming. Fulfilling random missions took a back seat for me, I had some web slinging to do! Previous games have had clunky web swinging, but this time it’s not only fun, but it looks great. As you’re speeding through the city on your trusty webs Spider-man will perform twists, spins, mid-air dives, and much more. It made me wonder what a Spider-man/Tony Hawk Collaboration would feel like… Activision are you listening?

The game is based around the Symbiote invasion, so of course there has to be a “Symbiote suit”. The Black suit, while making Spider-man abrasive and rude, adds quite a bit of bite to his attack. Single button costume change is an amazing advancement in the Spider-man games. Spider-man 3 did give you the ability to break out black suit Spidey, but you had to bring up the menu to change into him, which really hindered the flow of combat. You can now switch between two entirely different fighting styles mid-combat without interruption, simply by clicking in the left thumb stick.

The primary antagonist of this game appears to be Venom, the big, bad, embodiment of symbiote slime. He also tends to infect his minions with the symbiote slime, turning them into powerful slaves that all seem to dislike Spider-man and social harmony in equal amounts. Against this vile enemy, Spider-man has a few friends to help him out along the way; including Wolverine, Luke Cage, and Black Cat. Each of these allies has their own set of missions, but the one I became most acquainted with in my Hour Play was Luke Cage. Luke Cage was my motivational trainer and provided me with my initial missions fighting street gangs. There are seven Ally character slots available – who knows who else is going to show up!

One of the primary selling points used to advertise Web of Shadows,was the new combat system. In previous Spider-man games, the combat felt like a bulky afterthought that was very boring, and took effort to switch between movement and fighting. This time, however, the combat system is more fluid than I expected. Spider-man can bust out attacks at any point, whether jumping, swinging, or on the ground. As Spider-man, you can switch between air combat and ground combat seamlessly and you can even engage in wall combat, for those sticky situations when your up against a wall-crawling symbiote. The only problem I had with this combat was switching from ground-to-wall, or air-to-wall. Spider-man seemed to have a slight problem with grabbing a wall and holding on, without standing still in front of said wall, and simply crawling to his destination. This wasn’t always the case, but it did get irritating when trying to defeat enemies crawling around on walls. Other than that the

Though the combat system is beautiful and a lot of fun, it tends to be a bit mundane after you’ve bashed an hours’ worth of enemies into submission. The only break I had was the few cut scenes, where I had to listen to Spider-man whine incessantly. Some more focus on the storytelling may have fixed this issue, but as it stands it was a bit dry.

The game lived up to my expectations, but just barely, and perhaps only because my expectations have been crippled by previous installments in the Spider-man franchise. If they had paid as much attention to the storyline as they did to the combat, then it would have been a bit more palatable, but a plot shouldn’t make or break a game (even if it is a comic book game). The combat is greatly improved from the previous installments, but after an hour of repetitive brawling it started to wear a little thin. Overall the game didn’t knock it out the park, but it didn’t strike out either.

Will I play it again? I believe I will. But, for the level of depth offered by the story, and the somewhat repetitive fighting took away from my desire to do so immediately. I sorely missed the charisma that I have grown to expect from Spidey, but the games rendition of New York City is spectacular. When I return this rental, I will probably wait until the price drops to something more acceptable before buying a copy. Take from that what you will.