Swing and a Miss – The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (The Video Game) Review

I cannot think of a super-hero who has a bigger game library then Marvel’s Spider-Man. Something about the wallcrawler has made gamers take up the blue and red jumpsuit and swing their way around New York, taking on Rhyno and Shocker for the 13 time, stopping petty crimes, and finally saving the day. Since Spider-Man 2 on the 6th generation of gaming opened Spider-Man up to an open-world experience, the games have become split down the middle, the game is either heavily focused on combat and action or it is focused on mobility and travelling the open world Manhattan.

This is Beenox’s 4th try with Spider-Man, after two successful tries with a linear style game; Shattered Dimensions and Edge of Time, The Amazing Spider-Man reboot brought the company to an open world gameplay. The results of The first Amazing Spider-Man game spoiled the movie’s ending and continued the story with Cross-breed creatures. Despite the first game being non-canon with the movie. The team at Beenox had decided to continue with the story they created in the first game, which happens to be a saving grace for the game.

Following the events of the first game, Peter Parker is determined to find Uncle Ben’s killer. Getting ever closer, he uncovers a vicious street war that has been escalating between New York’s street thugs and the Russians with Uncle Ben’s killer supplying weapons to both sides. This brings a crime spree of various villains to try to take New York for their own reasons.  Due to the escalating crime spree, Harry Osborne and Wilson Fisk team up to form a new police force, designed to take down the gangs and Spider-Man as well. In the mean time, a killer has been brutally murdering other criminals under the guise of “The Carnage Killer.” It seems like Spider-man has a lot more on his plate if he wants to save everyone.

And that is where the problem is.

The latest feature of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is a morality meter. This puts Spider-Man as either a Hero or Menace, affecting his stats positively or negatively, it also determines how the city reacts to Spidey and if you’ll be hunted by the (easily escapable) Task Force. Normally this could be a cool feature, like in 2008’s Spider-Man: Web of Shadows, however it is executed poorly. The meter is affected by the Street Crimes in progress around the city, clearing an event will boost you to Hero status, however fail an event or ignore it altogether will bring you to a Menace rating. At first the missions are few and consists of beating a small amount of thugs, as the game progresses, bomb threats, fire, car chases and police raids add to the events. By the end of the second mission, New York is infested with crime and it only gets worst.

Combat in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 leaves a lot to desire. Taking ques from Rocksteady’s Batman: Arkham series, Spider-man is a one trick pony with a single attack button, counter button with too high of a reaction time, and web-shooters that do nothing. Unlike Arkham, there is no pacing that allows the system to work well, and feels virtually impossible to lose a fight on the default difficulty. Even the different enemies have the basics of attack patterns which just involve either a seismic blast or webshot followed up with attack. This also makes the boss battles feel underwhelmed and almost no different from the other bad guys.

The game also features some stealth missions, this is where the game gets more challenging. Also borrowing from Arkham, Spider-Man can web his opponents for a stealth takedown. While it is easy to lose in these levels, it is not because you died but rather because you raised an alarm that made everyone run away.

Spider-man also gains access to multiple suits from his varied history, each suit has the ability to be leveled up and comes with it’s own stats. Once again, this sounds great on paper, but in execution the stats are unnoticeable and each suit needs to be leveled up on it’s own. Requiring players to grind the City Crimes if they wish to increase a suit’s power.

If there is an absolute saving grace of the Amazing Spider-Man 2, it is in the new Web-Swinging ability. Bringing back Web-rush mode from the first game, the game also adds the ability to control Spider-Man’s web with the triggers. Right trigger for Right hand, Left trigger for Left Hand. While it would sound complicated on paper, it works extremely well for swinging through New York and is easily the most fun I’ve had in the game.

Well that, and the inclusion of Stan Lee.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is not a Great Game, it has an amazing amount of flaws and very little to save itself from being down right boring. Luckily, you only have to grind through the 14 main story missions to get the full story. At least travelling to your objective will be fun.