Aura of Heroism
156,987
TA Score for this game: 1,518
Posted on 30 June 12 at 02:46, Edited on 30 June 12 at 06:22 |
This review has 21 positive votes and 6 negative votes. Please log in to vote. |
The Amazing Spider-man continues the storyline of the movie into a great game in its own right.
Developed by Beenox, this Spider-man game show potential that we have rarely seen from movie tie-in games in the past. This may have to do with the fact that this was not Beenox first attempt at a Spider-man game, but their third. Their previous titles (Spider-man: Shattered Dimensions and Spider-man: Edge of Time) were both fairly well recieved and thought to be a nice change of pace from the older titles. The largest complaint that they faced was that these games were not open world. All that is about to change with The Amazing Spider-man.
Story
There are minor spoilers for the game and major spoilers for the movie. You have been warned
They story element of this game is drawn from the movie of the same name, but it is possible to follow if you have not seen the movie. Without giving away many spoilers, Spider-man is witness to a breakout of several Oscorp experiments called cross species. These cross species are a result of mixing human and animal DNA. This outbreak puts Oscorp scientists, innocent citizens, and most importantly, Peter Parkers current love interest Gwen Stacey in danger of being turned into monsters. After witnessing the outbreak, Spider-man enlists the aid of Curt Connors aka The Lizard (the villian from the movie) in order to stop the cross species virus and the creatures that it has created. Since Connors has already left a bad impression on the city due to his rampage as the Lizard, you can imagine that asking for help is an action that is not well recieved. The story builds from there bringing in classic Spider-man villians (admittedly mostly animal based) for you to fight against during the infection that runs rampant throughout the city. I wont give anymore of the story away, but you will notice a lean towards a serious and grim tone as the game progresses.
Gameplay
Travel, combat, upgrades, missions/side missions
The gameplay of The Amazing Spider-man follows a simple yet effective formula. The web swinging is a simple single button control which both swings you around the city and will allow you to run up the side of buildings while roaming around Manhattan. You can elevate your swing level by holding another button and that does become useful at times during the game. There is also a new function in this game called web rush. Web rush is an in-game mode that you can enter into that slows down time so you can pick your next move. It is very handy for doing a quick scout of a fight to figure out whats going on and/or attack, moving at a very fast pace during the game, or keeping yourself out of the enemies view. You will find yourself using web rush throughout the game for much more than just combat, so it is a feature that you want to familiarize yourself with. Something that must be mentioned is that just like almost any Spider-man game, the camera does leave a little to be desired, but it is not so bad that it draws a great deal of negative attention to it.
Using a freeflow combat system similar to that of Batman Arkham Asylum and Arkham City, this game shows that a simple combat system can still make a great gameplay experience. There is no combo system so to speak of, but rather a simple set of offensive and defensive moves that allow you to use all of Spider-Mans abilities.
There are a few additions to the combat that deserve mention. As always there are the basic attack, dodge, counter, and web attacks for you to play with, but now there are also signature moves (which function as a finisher) that you can use to quickly bring a fight to an end. You can also use your new attack method called web rush to pull yourself to an enemy and attack him from long distances. There is also an element of stealth in this Spider-man game. If you are able to sneak up on enemies, you can quietly take them down without a fight (similar to that of the Noir Spider-man in Spider-man: Shattered Dimensions.)
This game uses a two part upgrade system to improve Spider-mans abilities as you progress. The first part is the simple xp level gain system that grants you a single skill point to put into skills that directly tie into combat and takedowns. The other system is a tech upgrade that has you gain tech from both collectibles and defeating certain enemies to upgrade Spider-mans webs and suits resistances to different types of damage. It is nice that since it is split up into two different categories that you do not have to choose just one ability whenever you level up, but can increase your skill both when you level up and whenever you find sufficient tech.
While The Amazing Spider-man is a free roaming game in that you have free reign of Manhattan, each storyline or side mission is it's own experience that you can go back and replay after you have completed it. So while the story does progress, if you find yourself overwhelmed by the strength of your enemies or missed some of the collectibles, you can always go back and revist certain missions after the fact to improve yourself. There are no locked off parts of the city that you cannot go back to after you have done a certain action, you simply have to go back to Spider-mans "home base" and choose to replay a certain part of the story. Spider-mans home base an apartment that Peter is watching over owned by Stan. Stan is a family friend that is away for the duration of the game.... and yes, it is that Stan.
Some of the side missions cannot be redone, but are simple (also fairly repetative) missions that can be done to gain experience and achievements. There are several types of city side missions such as races, shows, car chases, police blockades, muggings, photo ops, and civillian rescue. These are the easy to play side missions where you have to do things like fight a few thugs, take a citizen to a medical center, end a police car chase or police showdown, collect flares during races, take photos, or keep Spider-man in frame during an acrobatic show.
Graphics/Audio
The graphics in The Amazing Spider-man are roughly where you would expect them to be in a game that is released in recent times. While I haven't noticed any serious issues with it like frame dropping or glitches there is nothing revolutionary or fantastic about the graphics themselves. You will notice that the game is fairly vibrant in color, even at night or dusk (and yes, the time does change throughout the game.)
The sound of the game is nothing very special. The voice acting is ok, but not something that you will think is spectacular. The largest aspect of the audio in the game that you will probably pay attention to is Spider-man and his amazing wit. Sometimes it's funny and sometimes it's a flop. Personally, I find this aspect of any Spider-man game funny at first, but it tends to wear thin after playing for awhile.
Achievements
Since this site is called True ACHIEVEMENTS, I figured it's time to discuss those. The achievements for The Amazing Spider-man are fairly straightforward. There are of course the story based achievements, but there are also a nice mix of others to keep us hunters going. The game has three difficulty levels and an achievement for completing each (they are stackable) so you will probably do more than one playthrough. (Thats what I would reccommend anyway for some of the misc. gameplay achievements as playing it on Superhero right from the start would make these a pain.) There are NO missable achievements that require you to start a new playthrough since you can go back to revisit any mission you have played. It is worth it to mention that some of the achievements are based on upgrades you have to purchase so don't expect to get everything right away.
Now on to everyones favorite achievement type: collectibles! (Can you sense the sarcasm?) There are a lot of different types of collectibles, but lucky you, there are some great guides right here on TA that will help you with most of them and getting them will not just help you with your gamerscore, but each offers some type of benefit in the game. Ususally this benefit is experience or tech for upgrades. The one collectible that is kind of a pain are the 700 comic pages scattered around Manhattan, but if you roam around enough, you can get them easy (and the minimap locator you get after collecting 500 helps too.) This game shouldn't take you too long to max out, but it's not going to be the quickest you've ever done.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, this is a great game for die hard fans or people just now hearing about Spider-man (although lets be honest, we're up to the fourth movie and how many games, so how likely is that?) It's fun, it's simple, and satisfies that urge to web swing through the city. If you're not sure about this game, I would at least give it a shot by renting it as it is possible that you may be done with it a little quick to merit buying it at 60 bucks.
I give The Amazing Spider-man a 4/5.
Thanks for reading.
 |