Spider-Man has been all the rage since the beginning of this decade. With the release of each movie comes the expected fandemonium of which I have to admit, I am a guilty participant. But this isn’t about a Spider-Man movie. It’s Spider-Man: Web of Shadows for the PlayStation 3. Developed by Treyarch and published by Activision, you play the titular hero Spider-Man aka Peter Parker who, as always, is battling the nefarious evils that are threatening New York City. It may just be another chapter in the ongoing saga of Spider-Man, but it manages to leave its mark by combining good gameplay and an original storyline that’s outcome is affected by the decisions you make during the game.
The story begins with the world falling apart around Spider-Man. He flashes back to four days ago, when he’s in the middle of a battle with Venom. After it’s over, Mary Jane is in the hospital, and a piece of the symbiote has managed to bind itself to Spider-Man giving him the badass powers of the dark suit. His attention is subsequently focused on battling local gang members with Luke Cage, chasing after Black Cat and doing some investigative snooping with Moon Knight. As it turns out, the symbiotes are spreading and infecting regular citizens all over New York City, inching Spider-Man’s world gradually closer to the haven of chaos you see at the beginning of the game.
During gameplay, you can alternate between the regular red and blue suit and the dark symbiote suit by pressing L3. The classic, as you will, gives you more speed and agility, while the symbiote suit is a little slower but more powerful. At certain points in the game, you are faced with a decision on whether or not to take the red or the black path. Your choices during these moments result in seeing different cutscenes and will ultimately affect the ending of the game.
The game is built in an open world concept in which you’re free to swing around to your heart’s content. If you want to engage yourself in the storyline, you’ll have to complete mini-missions that mostly revolve around beating something up or saving civilians. Defeating enemies and completing missions earn you experience points, which you can put toward upgrading your attacks in either the classic or dark suit. While I did a lot of button-mashing working my way through some of the earlier missions, later missions require a little more skill as the enemies get tougher. Luckily, there are tutorials that show you how to pull off more effective attacks to defeat the harder bad guys. Since the missions are usually the same, getting through them after a while does get a bit tedious, but most are relatively short, and there’s always a little bit more storyline after each mission to give you something to look forward to.
To navigate around the city, you move using the left analog stick, you climb up walls by pushing L1, and to swing, you hold and release R2. L2 activates your Spidey Sense to identify enemies, R1 is used to block, X is to jump and the other three buttons are used for various forms of attack. The directional pad doesn’t have much use until you meet other comic book characters, which include Wolverine, Vulture and others. They are added to your ally list and can be called on at will, but there’s a catch. Heroes will only help you on the red path while villains will only help you on the black path. So if you’ve always wanted to team up with Wolverine but decided to be naughty and choose the dark path, don’t count on him to be there when you press Down to call on his services. Your ability to call an ally hinges on a red special meter that runs out as your ally fights by your side. Overall, controls are pretty simple, but it takes some time to get used to. Give yourself a few minutes to get acquainted. In what seems to be the trend in games these days, Spider-Man’s health self-regenerates over time, which is fine, but I’m starting to get nostalgic for the days you needed health packs to keep things going. When you swing around the city, you’ll notice Spider Tokens scattered everywhere. By collecting a certain amount of tokens, Spider-Man will level up, increasing his health meter, special meter and swing speed.
I was disappointed when I noticed that Spider-Man was only able to beat up infected civilians and not regular citizens. You should be able to beat up whomever you choose, innocent or otherwise in an open world. It’s a little strange to be free to destroy walls, store fronts and flip over cars that explode with people inside them but be unable to have mono-a-mono fisticuffs with a stranger. I guess every franchise has its rules.
Visually, Web of Shadows looks pretty good. Other than some minor lagging and some weird occasional glitch in which the visuals ran faster than the audio during cutscenes, the environments (i.e., New York City) look great. I’ve never been there, so I can’t tell you how accurate it is, but if anything, it looks like it does in the Spider-Man movies. Character models are well-designed, with everything looking sharp and detailed, but the characters with visible faces (no mask) suffer from stiff facial expressions that are compensated with exaggerated body movements. This results in character physicality looking awkward, especially during cutscenes. But since there aren’t that many cutscenes, it’s not that big a deal. There seems to be only a handful of different models for your average citizen so you’ll see those people repeat every so often. All in all, I enjoyed the visuals of Web of Shadows as they were able to put you right into the environment of New York City and create the feeling that you are Spider-Man swinging through the streets.
The audio side of Web of Shadows also is strong. Music seems to have been inspired by the movies as it has a cinematic action-style quality to it. Sound design is pretty good but not noteworthy. You’ll hear sounds of the city and of its citizens as you run around, but it is by no means as immersive as it could be. The voice acting is all over the place. Spider-Man’s youth is definitely captured in his voice, but I guess since I’m so used to hearing Tobey Maguire, it falls short in comparison and comes off a bit whiney. Wolverine’s standard growl is captured nicely, as is Kingpin’s deep commanding baritone. Mary Jane and some of the villains are a little over-the-top, but that could be due to the incongruity between the character animations and the voices.
If you’re a Spider-Man fan like me, you’ll definitely enjoy playing Web of Shadows if only to swing through the streets of New York City. Gameplay might not have the variety to sustain its length, but your ability to affect the storyline through your choices is a fun way to keep you interested in the game. He may not be amazing this time around, but he’s still your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.
