web of shadows |

Publisher: Activision

Developer: Treyarch

Release Date: 10/28/2008

Available On

The Spider-Man games have always been generally good, but with the success that Treyarch made with Spider-Man 2, it’s a wonder why this game is not as good. With the success of that game, you wonder why this could have been messed up so badly. While the core game is pretty good, there’s just so much wrong with it, such as a terrible camera, a useless upgrade system, a poor story, bad voice acting, bad graphics, repetitive missions, and the list goes on. The game is about Venom fusing with a bit of Spider-Man and creating bastard symbiotes that are trying to destroy the town. They take over a few Marvel characters (Wolverine, Black Cat, and Vulture, just to name a few), and it’s an interesting twist, but not interesting enough.

The gameplay is what the game is supposed to be best at, but it falters on this. You have a pretty robust fighting system here with heavy and light attacks, web shots, and new wall and aerial combat, but it just doesn’t work very well. The aerial combat isn’t as broken as the wall combat and can be pretty fun at times. You can shoot a web at someone in the air and just keep juggling them. Upgrading this allows for more juggles and more powerful follow-ups. You can also just attack normally, and you will kind of home in on the enemies, and it’s pretty solid.

Ground combat works too but feels pretty boring due to the fact that there are only a few combos that you can upgrade, and there really isn’t anything Spider-Man about it at all, like tying enemies up to light posts or anything like that. Wall combat is the most broken, thanks to the crappy camera. You can climb a wall, but instead of the camera zooming out at a fixed angle, it follows you, and if you’re locked onto an enemy, it’ll follow it, and the camera will do backflips and somersaults, and it’s nauseating. Not only that, but you can’t look very far up a building thanks to the camera being right behind Spidey. The camera also poses an issue when swinging around the city because if you get stuck on a building, the camera jitters and freaks out, and it can get mildly annoying.

Of course, you have a black suit that you can do, but it’s not much different from the red. Instead of being extra powerful or using a completely different fighting style, it just borrows from the red suit and changes the combos slightly. This also leads into the story of being able to be a good or bad spy, and the results are mildly amusing. It’s interesting to see Spidey turn bad, and you can choose the path at different points in the story. I would normally mention epic parts of the game that could have saved it, but there aren’t any.

The missions are also highly repetitive and irritating. There will be a mission that has you waiting and guarding citizens, and then the next mission will be the exact same thing, but just shorter! Forget about the side missions because they are even more repetitive, and even doing things like saving citizens, rescuing them, and fighting bad guys is just boring and not fun at all since it never ends.

Lastly, the game doesn’t look too good. It doesn’t look next-gen at all, but it’s a highly polished Xbox One game. The game just doesn’t look good at all and doesn’t even sound good. Spider-Man has a whiny voice and sounds like he belongs in an emo band. Plus, everyone else sounds pretty bad and just, well, isn’t up to Marvel standards. Web of Shadows isn’t the best game in the world, but it’s good enough for a mediocre rental if you’re craving Spider-Man action.