Spider-Man: Web of Shadows Review

By Kevin "Berserker" Hall

Player(s): 1
Memory: 142 KB (game save); 2GB (Hard disk install)

Web of Shadows is a much-needed return to the free-roaming sandbox style gameplay of the Spider-man universe. Although last year's Friend or Foe was not an extremely bad game, but the chosen beat'em up style didn't match Spider-man at all. Web of Shadows greatly enhances the combat from past sandbox Spider-man titles and goes back to the open-city style gameplay that gives us more of a feeling of what it is like to play with our favorite web slinger once again.

It's pretty evident that the combat was the main focus of this installment and I'm proud to say that Web of Shadows has the best overall combat system that I have seen in a Spider-man game. Spider-man's moves have a lot of flare and are easy to perform. He can switch between his normal red and blue outfit and his black symbiote outfit at any time during the game by tapping L3 once the symbiote outfit is received early in the game. Each outfit gives him access to a variety of different attacks. The red and blue outfit allows him to perform a combination of speedy focused attacks while his black symbiote outfit gives him access to more powerful attacks that can cover a wide area.

Both outfits share a web-strike attack, which is done by tapping the triangle button. This is one of the main attacks that keeps the combat flowing smoothly no matter where Spider-man is on the screen since he will immediately shoot his webbing toward the nearest foe and lunge toward the enemy. You can follow this up with a variety of other attacks ranging from a simple jab into a punch combination or actually toss the enemy to the ground and jump on top of him in order to use his body as skateboard to grind along the ground. It's amazing how this one single web-strike move can make air battles so much more interesting than usual with the way Spider-man can jump from enemy to enemy with this attack. Even while crawling along the side of a building, Spider-man can now attack with a full arsenal of moves. Battles are sometimes fought along the side of the building or you can simply jump off the side of a building during a fight and take to the air then return to the building later.

The red suit allows Spider-man to shoot web balls to stun his enemies and gives him access to many quick combination attacks. The black suit allows him to use its symbiotic extending arms to bring his enemies toward him or slap his arms around him all at once for some instant crowd control. The gameplay will sometimes slow down during certain moves that Spider-man can perform to emphasize certain hits of Spider-man's attacks and give you a pleasant view of each hit as it is delivered. This slow motion is used very well throughout Spider-man's arsenal and it really helps to make the moves look that much flashier.

Spider-man's moves can be upgraded throughout the main portion of the game by collecting experience orbs from fallen enemies or from completing missions. His combination attacks can be extended and new moves can be unlocked by using experience points to unlock them. From the start, only a few are available but as the main story progresses many other moves become available for each costume.

Super attacks can be performed once the super meter is charged from defeating enemies. Spider-man can also call on allies to assist him in combat once the super meter is charged all the way. The ally will enter the area and help Spider-man by defeating enemies with that ally's own exclusive move set. The ally can be controlled slightly by tapping a direction to order the ally to attack the currently targeted enemy. Spider-man gains more allies as the story progresses and the allies that help him depend on how many red or black points he has gained. Red points are gained from performing heroic tasks such as saving a civilian and black points are gained from allowing civilians to die among other selfish acts. Citizens will start to act more hostile (i.e. policemen shoot at him) or more accepting (i.e. policemen help him during fights) toward Spider-man based on his current red or black point total.

The combat makes the boss battles much more pleasing in Web of Shadows than they were in any other Spider-man games. Boss battles are usually quite long since almost all bosses have multiple stages of attacks depending on how much of their health that they maintain. The Vulture fight starts out on a building then eventually Spider-man has to take to the air and skip off the Vulture's henchmen with web-strikes in order to work his way to the Vulture while in mid-air. All bosses fight back aggressively enough to where you have to block. Thankfully, Spider-man can counter moves if the square button is tapped right as enemy attack is guarded.

The only thing that ever gets in the way of the otherwise great combat is the camera. It sometimes gets stuck in between a building or gets locked into place while looking up or down. Camera problems happen a bunch whenever Spider-man runs up the side of a building, which make me have to readjust the camera often when my Spider-man reached a rooftop. The targeting system in the game works rather well with the game's combat. Spider-man can use his spider sense by holding down on the L2 button; this will make a glowing image of a nearby enemy that can be seen through buildings appear. While an enemy is targeted by tapping L2, you can easily switch between multiple foes by tapping in the direction of the desired foe with the right analog. This really helps out for speedy air battles since you can quickly switch to another foe if the currently locked target is too far away. Auto-targeting usually seemed to work well with Spider-man's attacks as well. The only problem that I ever had with the targeting system was how it would sometimes target an extremely far enemy while I was trying to lock-on to a nearby foe.

I could spend this entire review talking more about all aspects surrounding Web of Shadow's combat but let's get to the rest of the game, shall we? In order to advance the story, Spider-man must meet up with several allies throughout the game to receive a new mission from them. They usually only offer one main mission along with a few other minor optional bonus missions. This game has a lack of variety for most of its mission setups when compared to other Spider-man game. Many of the missions are simple "Beat up X amount of [certain enemy type]" kind of missions, which tend to get repetitive rather quickly. The game does have a few different missions, such as saving civilians and one bomb disposal, but the "Beat up X amount of enemies" type missions show up quite often.

The whole beginning portion of the game where Spider-man accepts missions from Luke Cage can get very boring with the constant need to train. While I do believe that training is important with the new moves that Spider-man gains, the way these training sessions are handled got quite annoying. Spider-man simply spars with Luke Cage until you perform a new move a few times in a row then Cage sends you off on a mission where baddies line up so you can practice the move on them as Cage walks you through the actions. These training missions wouldn't be so noticeably boring if they weren't forced upon the player while attempting to complete the main story.

Even though I greatly enjoy the symbiotic aspect in this installment, the overall story is not very interesting at all even though it is much darker than the past games. Basically, Venom has spread symbiotic hives throughout the city and the hives have started to infect the surrounding citizens with symbiotic powers; cue Spider-man to the rescue. Characters rarely have any form of interaction outside of the situation at hand, which made them all feel shallow and boring. I don't really play Spider-man games for a well-delivered story, but it was very noticeable how the characters lacked depth this time. The overall cutscenes in the game from an action point of view are well done however. There are quite a few action cutscenes involving button taps that are very intense.

At key points, the overall direction of a cutscene can be changed by choosing between light and dark paths as represented by a black and red Spider-man face when an important decision is to be made during a cutscene. The player can choose to give into the temptation of symbiotic outfit or take Spider-man's normal heroic approach during certain key cutscenes and this will change the way the cutscene is showcased. For instance, instead of saving a certain character, when the black suit option is chosen, Spider-man chooses to rip that character in half. This adds some slight replay value, but really multiple saves before certain cutscenes did me just fine.