Written November 2008 for http://www.xboxgamezone.co.uk/

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The life of a games reviewer is often not as fun as you may think. When it comes to story based games you have to suffer absolutely atrocious examples that not even a five year old would enjoy, and when you come across a truly epic game you have to rush through it to make sure you see everything possible before your deadline, so it’s not often that I can wholeheartedly say a story based game is simple, good old-fashioned fun.

As you may be able to guess, Spiderman: Web of Shadows is exactly this, at least for the first half of this ‘nearly good’ experience. It’s not overly complex nor oozing originality, but what it does offer is great fun that you can dip in or out of to your heart’s content. No commitment is required; you won’t have to commit to an hour run through before you get anywhere. Just call it pure unadulterated fluff, just like the films in fact. Nothing thought provoking, but still leaving you with that nice warm feeling afterwards safe in the knowledge that the past two hours were not wasted at all. Doesn’t that sound brilliant? Pity that was only a description of the first half of the game, if the entire game was like this, I’d be writing a review of one of the enjoyable games I’ve played of the year. Unfortunately the second half is like playing an entirely different game and that’s where everything gets a lot more infuriating.

Web of Shadows starts fairly promising, which is where the initial fun factor kicks in. Having a huge city to roam is nothing new, but finally the web slinging antics of Spiderman is implemented pretty well for once. When playing Spiderman 3, I found the web slinging just a bit too clunky and awkward but 9 times out of 10 Web of Shadows does it right, meaning it is actually fun to swing across the city. This is especially handy considering there are literally thousands of collectibles to pick up. Aaaargh collectibles I hear you cry. Don’t worry, they’re not essential but it is extremely handy to pick up a fair few as each collectible helps you level up Spidey, meaning you swing faster and hit harder. I actually collected a lot of these and really enjoyed looking around, considering I usually hate searching for collectibles, this is a big plus point for me. As well as this method of upgrading, you also gain experience points for completing missions and killing bad guys. This then helps you upgrade specific abilities, mostly fighting related. It can also help unlock new moves. Rather than just having the good Spiderman moves to unlock, there is also the option of Spiderman’s other costume, the black symbiote suit to upgrade. It also plays a vital role in later missions so it’s not just there for aesthetic sake. The fighting system is a little basic, as essentially it works around two main attacks: punch/kick and web attacks. One move you will be using a lot is the web sling which once fired propels you towards the enemy and gives them a good kick basically. Further on in the game it becomes essential for some battles as well as increasingly powerful. In one memorable boss fight against Vulture, it was the only attack I ever used as I was up in the air the entire time. It’s quite fun bouncing around though. The fighting system on the whole works pretty well despite its simplicity, but as the game progresses it can get a bit tedious. This is more due to the length of fights than anything else though. Besides fighting in the air and on the ground, there’s also a fair bit of fighting on walls which is where the usually reasonable camera angles fall down a bit. It just gets a bit too confusing at times if you’re trying to rush round on a wall and it can get a little confusing knowing which way to turn.

To progress through the game, Spidey has to receive mission details from a designated character which changes at regular intervals. Each character is a famous comicbook hero, starting with Luke Cage who helps you get to grips with the controls, but changes later on to heroes such as Wolverine and Moonknight. Missions tend to consist of one primary mission strand centred on the storyline and then a few optional missions mainly involving saving civilians or killing a certain number of enemies. The missions are a little samey in places, generally a matter of killing something but sometimes there’s a few glimmers of originality. One level in particular trains you to use the web sling attack by getting you to attack 25 snipers scattered across a number of high buildings with a tight time limit. It might sound hard but it’s far from it when using the web sling attack and it’s quite fun bouncing around too. The storyline missions are admittedly fairly predictable but they do open up some more options. Some missions require you to choose a ‘path’, whether to do the honourable Spiderman thing or whether to turn to the dark side of Venom. This doesn’t seem to affect a huge deal besides unlocking unique achievements depending on what you do, but it’s still a nice touch.

It all sounds great fun doesn’t it? Spiderman crossed with Grand Theft Auto 4 and Crackdown, the comicbook fan’s idea of heaven. If only the whole game was like this. The first 40% or so of the game is just how I described above, good, harmless fun. Then it all goes very sadly wrong. The sheer fact that the first half or so of the game is so much fun makes the rest of it so utterly depressing, there’s just no excuse why this second half is so poor other than laziness from what I can see. At first, although the warning signs are there, they’re forgivable. There’s a mission where Spiderman has to chase Blackcat across the city and then fight her, it gets a bit long and infuriating in places as the camera angles go a bit all over the place. But you can forgive it in that one mission as it also looks pretty cool and does make you feel like you’re playing a ‘proper’ Spiderman game. The problem is it just continues with other boss fights. The battle with Electro suffers from the exact same problems and I had to restart it a number of times simply because the camera got me confused and sent me the wrong way. Sure, it could be argued it’s partially my fault, but it feels unforgiving and unfair. The game for the first half feels like a game a child would enjoy but the second half is so different and harsher that it would drive a child insane! Fights with Wolverine and Venom are just as annoying with the difficulty feeling like it’s been briefly increased from simple to infuriatingly awkward. Plus all these boss fights feel never ending. They introduce decent concepts such as a chase around the city then repeat it a number of times in a monotonous manner so you forget what was good about the fight in the first place and simply get bored of it. A huge amount of the latter part of the game is like this as it just gets far too dull and contrived. It’s really not a good sign when you realise you just don’t really care about the game anymore; you just want it to be over. It’s a great shame to see.

Treyarch are seemingly masters at making ‘nearly good’ games, games that really should be brilliant but somehow just about miss the mark, almost as if they lack that soul that make games special. Just look at Call of Duty 3 and Quantum of Solace, all technically fine games, yet they just don’t quite cut it as quality games, so close and yet so far seems to be Treyarch’s motto. Yet again they have somehow done it with this. Spiderman: Web of Shadows should have been brilliant, nearly everything was there to make it great, yet right at the last hurdle, it is let down by a mediocre, sloppy second half. Spiderman and his fans deserve better, we can but hope this will happen the next time round Treyarch try making a good Spiderman game.