Review: The Amazing Spider-Man 2

With utter confidence, I can say that The Amazing Spider-Man 2 video game is better than its movie counterpart. Considering how awful that film was though, doesn’t mean the game is stellar.

Beenox is once again at the helm of the latest Spider-Man film tie-in, using the same (mostly) winning formula behind the original Amazing Spider-Man game. As Spider-Man, you web-swing through the open world of Manhattan, foiling criminals from loiterers all the way up to the likes of Electro, Black Cat and more. The game’s story starts before the events of the film —  though they’re in there too – and after too, for good measure.

Additions to the game include a much-improved web-swinging mechanic that lets you use each of your controllers’ triggers as separate web-shooters. If you want to fly through New York, it’s as easy as LT, RT, LT, and so on. The ability to hit RB and do a web rush, recently introduced into the Beenox games, still exists, and is even better to zip around with. While controls seem clunky at first, it’s not too long before you’ll become a web-swinging expert, and that’s where most of the joy of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 comes from.

Combat, though? Not so much.

Borrowing liberally from the Batman: Arkham series, combat usually takes place in a room or closed-off environment, and it’s usually far easier to go stealth and take out gun-wielding baddies rather than directly engage. In groups, you hit with one button, dodge with another and use yet another for a special web-shooting power. Bumpers are used for disarming and rushing enemies. While on the whole, the system sounds pretty decent – again, mostly cause it’s the same formula as in Arkham games – it’s rather clumsy.

The camera is not your friend in a fight, and frankly, there’s far too much going on. When Spidey’s spider-sense goes white, you’re supposed to evade or disarm a baddie… but usually, when it goes off, you’re going to be shot at be four different thugs at the same time. There’s a reason Arkham thugs circle you and try to take you out (mostly) one at a time, Beenox.

A new “Hero or Menace” system also exists in the game, basically showing you what the citizens of New York think of you. It literally took me ten minutes from booting the game up to be at maximum “Hero” level. You do this by rescuing citizens from car chases, blazing fires, or by beating up criminals who are “disturbing the peace” by loitering in the middle of an empty basketball court. There are only a couple unique events that Spidey can engage with, and within those, they’re all canned scenarios.

Let me make this clear: you’ll be rescuing the same four citizens from the same burning building most of the time. You’ll be rescuing the same citizen from a speeding car full of three thugs quite a lot. You’ll get utterly bored having to disarm the same group of twelve baddies as they harass police atop a highrise building. Worse yet, each time you action one of these events, you’ll have to sit around and watch as Beenox sets the scene, and then again as you complete the event. Literally, each time you complete the same canned scenario, Beenox throws up a mock TV news show, telling you that you’ve done well, and then shows you how your work affects your heroic meter. It’s a waste of time, and clearly a thinly-veiled attempt to hide the already-too-long loading screens present in the game.

Beenox has also decided gamers wanted to play as Peter Parker, and has facilitated this in the most bland way possible. As Peter – who looks far too much like a meathead jock, by the way — you basically walk around a closed environment and take a couple photos. Peter will then occasionally enter in conversations with different characters, with dialog trees offering a whopping three speech options. You can cycle through all three, and there’s no change in an encounter depending on what you choose first. Most likely, after the first couple of these, you’ll simply hit “B” to end the exchange and continue on. There’s no real point to them.

Plot-wise, the game does a decent job of showing you the events around those of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 film. Villains like The Kingpin, Black Cat and Shocker are used, and like the film itself, Beenox does a great job with tying the events of the first game in with this one. Comically, the events of the film itself take about twenty minutes in-game, though it took filmmakers nearly three hours to do the same.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 looks like Beenox had to rush to the get the game out the door in time for the film release, and that’s a bit of a shame. If there was time to tighten the game’s combat, add more variety to the “Hero or Menace” scenarios and polish sequences using Peter, the game would be much better than the average-quality title we’re left with. Spider-Man fans will easily find enough in the game to warrant a purchase, if for nothing else than to swing with grace and elegance through the streets of New York. The basics are done quite well, but everything else is a (web-)swing and a miss.

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