Can someone post th review, cuz the link doesn't work for me, plus when I looked in the site it said there weren't any reviews yet.
Not your usual friendly neighborhood superhero game.
by Mike Smith
When making a Spider-Man game, there's one thing you absolutely, positively, have to get right: the swing. If that's wrong, you might as well have not bothered. It's pivotal to the character, the gameplay, and the controls, and if it's wrong, the game will plummet just as fast as Peter Parker did that time when he left his web-slingers at Aunt May's.
Fortunately, ten minutes running around the streets of New York in the newest Spider-Man game is all it takes to realize that the all-important swing is bang on the money. There's a real joy in mastering Spidey's moves, hustling around the streets and rooftops like a sort of well-dressed flying cheetah. And it's nowhere near as difficult as it looks, either. If you're looking for a game that makes you feel like a web-head, this one gets closer than any so far.
But of course there's more to the game than just swinging around town. In contrast to Spidey's high-flying acrobatics, the plot is a tad pedestrian, but it does the job just fine. It opens as Spidey regains his symbiote alter-ego, a character that'll be familiar to comic book fans as an alien presence that moves into Parker's skull, giving him a funky black suit, a suite of new powers, and a taste for wrecking stuff. From there, it's a regular orgy of destruction. Symbiotes take over the streets, forcing the authorities to quarantine the city and rely on a hastily-assembled cabal of costumed freaks to save the day. Fun the whole family, no doubt.
As Spidey winds his way through the game, he's rewarded with experience points that can be spent on new abilities, extending both his red and black-suited versions into combo-packed combat maestros. You can flip between suits mid-fight as often as you like, and each has its strengths. Overall, it's a slick system that keeps the fights fresh, and a suite of achievements (assuming you're playing on the 360, of course) encourages you to explore its limits.
Button-mashing is a perfectly serviceable way to play, thanks to handy combos triggered by simply hitting the main attack button repeatedly. But those with a little more dexterity will be able to construct elaborate combinations of their own, transforming Spider-Man into a red-suited pinball as he bounces from one enemy to the next. Who needs floors?
The boss fights deserve kudos, too. Taking on another superhero or villain should be a memorable affair, and Web of Shadows delivers more than its fair share of such moments. One standout battle takes place just after you encounter Wolverine (of X-Men fame), in which you'll have to excel at both fighting and, bizarrely, comic-book trivia in order to succeed. Although it sounds trite, it's pulled off immaculately in-character (and, fortunately, with no time limits, so you can look up the answers if you're a graphic-novel novice). Some Spider-Man fan had a lot of fun designing this game, and it shows.
On the whole, it looks the part, too. New York is impressive from a Spidey's-eye-view, and the fights are packed with what's almost too much visual pizzazz. There's a bit of pop-in here and there; you sometimes have to guess at the location of foes as you plummet from the skies into battle because they're not actually drawn on the screen until you get close. And the character models don't compare to its contemporaries. But when the overall package is this polished and striking-looking, that's easily forgivable.
There might be no Spider-Man movie this year, but who needs one? Even without a big-screen blockbuster backing it up, Web of Shadows is one of the best comic-book games on the market, and Spider-fans shouldn't hesitate to pick it up. Even if you're only casually acquainted with Peter Parker's antics, it's still a good-humored, eminently likable action romp. It's a lot like its hero: packed with character, impressively capable, and never puts a foot wrong. What higher praise for a licensed game is there than that?
