Written by Jeff Buckland, 10/2/2008
It's time for Spider-Man video games to catch up with where they should be. Developer Treyarch and publisher Activision are finally putting this good but rarely great series back on track with Spider-Man: Web of Shadows for all the major consoles. Now, you'll fight like you'd expect Spidey to actually fight, and you'll get a much more comic book-style story with tons of other villains and heroes mixing it up together. The movies have certainly shown their influence on this game, but there's no direct license to any Hollywood property here.
In Web of Shadows, Spider-Man is at the forefront of fighting off an invasion of the Symbiotes, a force that is corrupting New York City's residents and even his fellow heroes and the arch-villains he is used to tangling with. Much like the past games, he'll be swinging around NYC with the tried-and-true system of quickly moving around, but now he'll get to mix in the combat more fluidly into his repertoire. Along with the ability to use his customary red suit where he uses more finesse and mixing up ranged and melee attacks, Spidey can also switch to a black suit at any point, right in mid-fight, and use its attacks which are more oriented towards brute force.
It's the ability to seamlessly transition from ground fighting to air combos to fighting on the sides of buildings that makes this new Spider-Man worthy of your interest. Past games felt awesome when you were swinging around the city, but talking with idiotic NPCs and fighting almost purely on the ground (with the odd air juggle or something) really dragged them down. It was frustrating seeing such an aerial character constantly have to fight as if we were playing the arcade beat-em-ups of 15 years ago. But Web of Shadows changes that, as you'll be able to juggle enemies in the air and juggle yourself as you swap between aerial attacks on multiple targets in sequence, firing out what eventually builds up to an extremely impressive array of fun moves. You'll even get better rewards for mixing up your attacks to chain ground-based, side-of-building, and aerial assaults all together.
You won't get access to the full array of fighting abilities at the start and will only unlock them as you become more powerful, but the game tries to make this unlock system more fun and less guesswork than most games do. To start, you'll be able to add new attacks to each suit separately, allowing yourself to balance between the suits for quick switches or just focus on one suit. This way, you won't have moves automatically unlocked that you will rarely use. The other nice part is that Web of Shadows shows you a video of how the move works before you unlock it, which I found to be a really nice touch. I've no idea how many times I've saved up a bunch of points in some action game so I could unlock some move that sounds really scary and nasty, only to be disappointed when it turns out to be almost entirely useless. Now, I'm not saying that every one of Spidey's moves has proven to be awesome, as I didn't get to try out each one separately, but at least you'll see what you're buying before you hit the button.
Web of Shadows will apparently have a lot of surprises in store for players as massive amounts of Marvel characters move in and out of the story and friends become enemies (and vice versa), but one of the more interesting things shown was that the black-suit Spidey often destroys much more of his environment and the player's use of the suit overall will affect how the rest of the city and the other superheroes and villains see him. He can also make choices as to which path he takes during important story scenes, so for example you can join Black Cat as black Spidey and fight the Symbiotes the bad guy way, or reject her and work with Moon Knight to do the same work but without destroying a bunch of stuff in your path. Your eventual goal is still the same - fight off the Symbiotes, who threaten the existence of both good and evil - but the way you get there will be very different as you go when you choose between the two paths or fight in one suit or the other.
I got to play the 360 and PS3 versions which both look great in their rendition of New York City and in their large, dynamic fights, but what surprised me the most was the Wii version. The graphics were of course not nearly as good as the big-console counterparts, but the simple fact that the whole city was still represented and just as wide open was great. The developers at Treyarch are committed to keeping as much of the game intact on the Wii as possible, so all of the missions, choices, and fighting moves are there. Sure, the arsenal of attacks is just a little more awkward on the Wiimote and Nunchuk as a few of the button-based moves from the other versions had to be converted into different kinds of waggles and flicks, but all of the controls are here in one way or another. There are no Wii-specific controls that take special use of the Wiimote motion-sensing capabilities; whether that's a plus or a minus to any given gamer seems to be a matter of taste.
While I'm not a huge comic book fan and am really only interested in a Spider-Man game if it's actually fun to play - whether it's true to the comics or not isn't exactly high on my list - I have to say that I'm really looking forward to Web of Shadows so far. It's finally got the kind of fighting one would expect out of our favorite web-slinger, and the ability to zip around, juggle enemies in the air, and stay off the ground for whole fights is a lot of fun. It's also tough to get into at first as one learns how to switch targets and quickly zip from one enemy to another, but before long it becomes second nature and makes for some really fun times. It will take a little longer to get used to the new gravity-defying combat, but it looks like it's worth it. Spider-Man Web of Shadows will be in stores starting on October 21st for the Wii, PSP, PC, DS, 360, and PS3.
