For Spider-Man obsessives, there’s a meaty experience on offer, which takes in Peter Parker’s favourite haunts, includes plenty of collectibles and, naturally, includes the presence of Stan Lee. And there are a number of different suits to find, which also alter Spidey’s abilities. On the plus side, there are plenty of side-missions, Manhattan has been nicely recreated and a decent Experience Points system lets you upgrade Spider-Man’s attributes and add abilities to suit your play-style. The storyline regularly veers off in different directions, making it feel a tad disjointed, although it often does that to generate some tangential references to the movie.
Story-wise, it takes a different tack to the film, with our arachnophile hero initially seeking his uncle’s killer, before turning his attentions to the Carnage Killer, a vigilante brutally targeting criminals. But it is fatally let down by some amateurish elements, most notably the story-advancing cut-scenes, which are poorly scripted and wracked by terrible character animation. Admittedly, it contains some good ideas, as well as the best web-swinging mechanic yet (Spidey can launch web-swings from either hand, and needs to be below the skyline in order to swing this time). Neither, though, could it be described as a great game – it’s adequate at best, which isn’t really good enough for a franchise with the stature of The Amazing Spider-Man.
Spidey fans need not despair, though: it isn’t, at least, a write-off. Games-of-films still have a reputation which is every bit as dire, and the way in which Activision’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2 game arrived in the shops without any perceptible fanfare did not bode well. The recent, high-profile exhumation of ET cartridges for the Atari 2600 shows how, since the dawn of the games industry, tent-pole celluloid blockbusters have been hurriedly turned into rubbish games, more or less as an extension of the movie industry’s mania for merchandising.
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