PS3 Review: The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)

Remember all those hideous Spider-Man sidescrollers for the NES, SNES and Genesis? Except for Maximum Carnage, maybe (it was a decent beat-'em-up, though it was also helluva tough), it's clear that Spider-Man was a superhero property perfectly suited for polygonal gaming. Spider-Man for PS1 was the first one to truly get it, and as I've argued elsewhere, Spider-Man 2 for PS2 was the end-all be-all. The Amazing Spider-Man for PS3 is the first game in a while to return the series to the free roaming format that made Spider-Man 2 so delightful, and it more or less works here too. It's not perfect, nor is it as dynamic as its predecessor, but it's still a fine rental/used purchase for both casual and hardcore webheads.

Despite being based on the subpar film of the same name, Amazing wisely opens up a few days after the film's climatic battle. This time Spider-Man has to break the Curt Conners/the Lizard out of his jail cell in order to find an antidote to a rapidly spreading disease caused by Conners' experiments. In doing so, Spider-Man crosses paths with Alistair Smythe, sans mullet because the 90s are over*, and bitter because one version of Conners' antidote accidentally cripples him. Spider-Man has to run about the city, completing various tasks and fetching certain items so that Conners can concoct his antidote. Between missions, you are relatively free to dart about the city, web-swinging, fighting petty crimes, taking photos, and so on (alas, there's no rescuing balloons for children nor can you bounce at the disco anymore as you could in Spider-Man 2). For the most part, the story told here is engaging and pretty to look at, and for me this game is a much more entertaining product overall than its film counterpart. However, there is a major issue with the opening: things start out with an extended cinematic, from the first-person view of Peter Parker, but it goes on forever. I had time to do the dishes while it was going on. This is not much of an issue later on in the game, but it's a dreary opening if you're looking to pop the game for a reasonably timely thrill. I did, however, enjoy the in-game use of Spidey's blackberry to tell the story, a device which keeps you informed of the story while you dash around town punking out muggers and carjackers. Similarly, a version of Twitter pops up onscreen whenever loading the next mission, and the fake tweets of your fellow NYC denizens follow the main story. It's a cute device that adds another layer to the narrative.

* and not just any mullet, a green mullet, my goodness

The key to Spider-Man 2's success was not the free roam structure itself, but the ways in which you could move within that open city via webswinging. Whereas before swinging between buildings only required the push of a button, SM2 required a strategic understanding of the environment: in other words, your webs had to be attached to something in order to work. As a result, swinging through the city felt dynamic and required a certain degree of mastery. Unfortunately, Amazing does not emulate this and instead returns to a somewhat detached method of moving Spider-Man through the city. Though there is some concern placed on your surroundings (for instance, generally speaking you cannot immediately webswing without a building nearby, but this is only the case when falling from significant heights), webswinging nevertheless loses some of its novelty and can become tedious after a while. Still, though, the webswinging and combat animations are fantastic, much better than those in SM2, and the same goes for the voice-over work, which is actually quite excellent. Speaking of combat, Amazing manages to almost completely imitate Arkham Asylum/City when forcing you into rooms rife with thugs and mutants: right down to the abundance of ventilation ducks and stealth takedowns. This works fine except for the fact that the AI is clueless and unchallenging, even though taking them down with Spider-Man's arsenal of web-and-wrestling based slams is pretty fun.

Amazing suffers from the same problem that kept SM2 from true greatness: once the main conflict is wrapped-up, there's not a whole lot of interesting things to do. Well, there's a whole lot to do, but so little of it is actually worth doing. You can collect comic books from rooftops, which has the added bonus of unlocking full-length digital comics, and you can snap photographs for a local news reporter (but not for the vaunted Daily Bugle?), and you can always go back to busting lowly thieves on the beat, but so what? After you get done tangling with skyscraper robots, catching purse-snatchers makes for some really boring legwork. Nonetheless, I'm willing to endorse this game for a week rental or purchase at your local used games emporium. If you're looking for a free-roaming Spider-Man fix, Amazing should be enough.