Games / Game Reviews

Review: Spider-Man: Web of Shadows

By Jeff Renaud
February 8, 2009 - 11:34

It's been said that with great power comes great responsibility. Now, with the processing power the current lineup of consoles out there possess, comes a great responsibility from developers to produce games that not only make use of that power, but offer enjoyable gameplay as well. Spider-Man: Web of Shadows is the latest in a long line of games featuring our favorite wall crawler, and for this review we're going to be looking at the Xbox 360 version. Published by gaming giant Activision (now Activision Blizzard) and developed by subsidiary companies Treyarch ( Call of Duty) and Shaba Games ( Tony Hawk's Pro Skater),  Web of Shadows once again thrusts Spider-Man into a third person, 3D beat-em-up adventure.

If you don't know who Spider-Man is, well, welcome to planet earth. Teenager... radioactive spider... I assume that I don't have to get into all that, and nor do the developers. They throw you right into the thick of things and trust that you already have some basic knowledge of the web-slinger's history. You play as Peter Parker/Spider-Man, and with the game's opening scene you find yourself on a rooftop in New York with dozens of S.H.I.E.L.D agents engaging in a battle royale with various unnamed creatures. The city is in a state of chaos and, after a brief tutorial on the basics of beating up baddies, the game takes you back to a few days preceding the opening events.



The gameplay is quite similar to earlier Spider-Man titles, with some major tweaks and improvements, as well as a few minor ones. You have free reign to explore and traverse New York City as you please, picking up quests here and there and generally trying to protect the city's good citizens from various dangers. The battle system is easy enough for your typical button mashing madness, but really does reward the player for taking the time to learn some of the more subtle moves. Activision has also included a much more versatile battleground, allowing the player to fight enemies not just on the ground, but also on walls, and in the air. Even though this is a good idea in theory, I found the camera angles to be rather unforgiving when fighting multiple bad guys. Particularly in the air. A point system to purchase new moves has also been added, which gives the player a certain degree of character customization. While this is not a new idea for many games, and although I think the developers could have integrated it a little better, it does offer a little something to break up the monotony of beating up the same hordes of enemies, with the same move over and over again.



By far, the best new addition to the Spider-Man video game series is the option to choose between the path of good and evil. At any point in the game, you have the option of wearing either Spider-Man's standard red suit, or the symbiotic black suit. Each suit not only has it's own set of moves, but you'll find that the longer you use one or the other, the more your character will shift between "good" or "evil". This affects certain cut scenes, along with Spider-Man's interactions with NPC's (non-player characters). It also has an effect on which of Spider-Man's friends or foes are available to help you in times of need. Play with the red suit long enough and perhaps characters such as Wolverine and Luke Cage will join you in battle. Play with the black, and it may be the Vulture or Electro.

Your choice in suit, along with a few key choices made at points along the way, will eventually lead you to one of the games multiple endings. Treyarch has taken many of the mindless side quests of the previous Spider-Man games (i.e. delivering pizza to hungry customers) and replaced them with a very similar idea (i.e. delivering injured citizens to the hospital).

When Spider-Man isn't out working as a glorified delivery boy, you'll have the choice to take missions given to you by various characters from the marvel universe, such as Black Widow and the Kingpin himself, Wilson Fisk. These missions are generally filler until you've earned enough credit to warrant a boss fight. The boss fights are, for the most part, quite entertaining and really help offset the monotonous pace of the missions it took to get you there. Lots of Spidey's old foes are here and, as a nice bonus to the new good/bad style of play, most of them will become allies, once beaten, that you can call upon when you so choose. That is provided that you choose the darker path.



Visually, the game is a step up from past Spider-Man games, but the sloppy camera and occasional glitches make it difficult to really enjoy the gameplay during the fights. Activision has managed to, once again, do an incredible job on the web swinging control and animation. It's that joy of swinging around New York in a free roam environment that made the previous titles so enjoyable. While the animation isn't mind blowing by any means, it suits the game well enough and the vivid colors make it easy enough to spot targets against the cityscape.

The score seems to be standard fair for the genre, with nothing really standing out in any way. You'll notice the sounds of pummeling baddies and comments spoken by your allies before you'll really notice the music. The voice acting seems to differ in quality from character to character. Battlestar Galactica's Trisha Helfer does a fine job of voicing everybody's favorite, ferocious feline, the Black Cat, while I found that Spider-Man's usual witty banter was a little on the lacking side this go round.



As a whole, Spider-Man:Web of Shadows makes use of a few neat ideas that were lacking in the previous titles, but it still suffers from poor camera angles, repetitive quests (oh you just killed 50 thugs? go kill another 50), and some poor voice acting. However, for some reason, as repetitive as beating down thugs is, you don't seem to mind so much when you're swinging around as Spider-Man. While the multiple endings might have been included as a way to add some replay value, I think after you complete this game once, you won't really feel like playing it again, even if it's just to see how things might have turned out.

Even with all it's flaws, Activision still managed to one-up the previous games with Web of Shadows. The storyline is solid, it's got a great cast of characters, and the boss battles are as good as Spidey's ever fought. Game of the Year it most definitely is not, but if you've ever read a Spider-Man comic book and wished that you too were bitten by a radioactive spider, well this is about as close as you're going to get for now.

7.5/10

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12