The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is no Goldeneye, and mercifully not an ET either.
Taking the open-world approach from Spider-Man 2 – we have direct control over webslinging across the boroughs of New York and can tackle any mission or side-mission/activity. As you would expect of any sand-box style gameplay, there are a ton of things to accomplish from collectable collecting, races, to the usual side-missions which usually involve busting up a crime-in-progress. While I'm sure Spider-Man breaks up his fair share of repeat offenders in the stories, I would rather not beat-up the same four guys breaking into a building for the 87th time. Unfortunately, the designers took Uncle Ben's motto to heart – "with great power comes great responsibility" because failing to stop crimes will label you a menace. If you are considered a menace, you will be relentlessly attacked by the Enhanced Crime Task Force (who themselves are vigilantes… oh well, video game logic).
Anyways, when not busting up petty crime, you can complete the actual story missions which involve the cavalcade of Spidey's hit list: Shocker, Kingpin, Kraven the Hunter, Electro, Green Goblin, Black Cat, Carnage, and a few surprises that I won't ruin here.
Most missions will involve you either fighting through minions, using stealth to thin the ranks of enemies, or some variant of race/chase somebody. The boss fights are the real difficulty in the game, you'll die frequently trying to figure out their attack patterns but they all tend to distil down to the same basic pattern. Boss makes a flurry of attacks, some you can avoid, some you can counter-attack against; wear down the boss enough until a Quick-Time-Event occurs. Pass the QTE and you'll be back at Stage 1 but with some new twist making it slightly harder.
The story line of the game seems to be an alternate telling of the movie assuming that they started at the same place in time, minus any mention of Gwen Stacy – she is not in it, she is not eluded to. It's not necessarily a bad thing to not feel tied down by the movie but don't borrow character designs from the movie, set piece moments, and then leave out one of the most important characters of the movie because you don't want to deal with ramifications of the story line. That being said, the characters not included in the movies that the developers were free to work with on their own were designed quite well.
The combat system may be one of the few stand-up highlights in the game, although some will decry the similarities between this and the Batman: Arkham series with how the countering system works. It does make more sense for Spider-Man to have near pre-cognitive ability to read a fight with his spider-sense than for Batman (oh jeez, I can just feel the start of a flame war coming…). The fights demonstrate the flexibility of the wall-crawler paired with an offense that only he could use against numerous opponents. I would have liked a greater use of diverse combat skills to develop for Spidey, but it's not bad the way it is.
All in all, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is a little too short and is artificially lengthened by throwing unnecessary side missions into the path of the gamer. In a perfect world, it could have used a longer design and implementation phase to fully develop the game instead of rushing it out the door to match up with a movie it chose to not even follow that closely. Definitely a missed opportunity, just go replay Spider-Man 2 or Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions instead.
- Tazman
Follow @Tazman6666AE
The Good:
- Some interesting re-imaginings of the characters – excellent character designs in some places.
The Bad:
- Timeline continuity is a mess – is it riding along-side the movie?
- Forced intervention missions and you will learn to hate them with a passion.
