Dan's Video Game Reviews: The Amazing Spider-Man 2 Game Review

Amazing Spider-Man 2 Game Review (PS4)

*POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD* The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is a game that could have been “amazing” but fell very short due to movie licenses, time constraints, and quite frankly what seems like complete laziness.

Once again, this Amazing Spider-Man game is a spin-off of the new movie. I will be discussing the 7 main parts of the game; story, characters, combat, side missions, hero/menace system, graphics, and web-swinging. In this game, Beenox shows a flashback to Uncle Ben's death. The game starts off by sending you after Uncle Ben’s killer. Once you find Uncle Ben’s killer, you go after him, but he is killed by “The Carnage Killer.” This then sends Peter looking for “The Carnage Killer.” It’s weird because what Beenox does in this game, some of it feels like it should have been done in the last game. Once you get into the story more, the game just starts throwing things at you. You meet Kraven the Hunter as Peter Parker and he decides to mentor you as his protégé. Once you meet Kraven, that’s where the story really kicks off. By the end of the game, it’s just boss fight after boss fight. Once you beat Electro, you are immediately thrust into a battle with The Green Goblin with no explanation whatsoever. There are dialogue prompt scenes in the game allowing Peter to converse with other characters and learn a bit about them, but they offer no reward and are honestly pointless. Beenox tried to craft an intriguing story with some very notable Spider-Man foes, but it ultimately turns into a bland story with a bunch of villains thrown in for no good reason.

I believe this game was in development for two years; I could be wrong. But, for being in development for two years, I really would have expected this game to look better on Next-Gen consoles. Beenox developed the game for last-gen consoles then ported it to Next-Gen. Talk about a bummer… If they had more time, I’m sure the game could have been better. I’ve seen this time and time again; developers in charge of movie-licensed games often release a bad game due to their time constraints. Also, I’m pretty sure Beenox is tired as all hell of making the Spider-Man games. This is the fifth one in the series for God sakes. Just give the damn Spider-Man license to Rocksteady so they can make something awesome.

The characters in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 game include Peter Parker/Spider-Man, Aunt May, Wilson Fisk/Kingpin, Kraven the Hunter, Herman Schultz/Shocker, Felicia Hardy/Black cat, Max Dillon/Electro, Harry Osborn/The Green Goblin, and Cletus Kasady/Carnage. Gwen Stacy is completely absent from the game besides being mentioned in some brief dialogue. Rhino is also completely absent. Aunt May’s role in the game consists of one scene where she talks to you about Uncle Ben’s death; THAT’S IT. The Kingpin is in control of these task forces that watch over the city, who also attack you when you drop down to menace level, but we’ll get into that later on. Kraven the Hunter decides to mentor Peter as his protégé. Shocker is in the game for one boss fight, then he’s gone. Black Cat has her own boss fight, plus stealth mission. Electro just has a boss fight. Harry has a decent role towards the end of the game, plus a boss fight as the Green Goblin. Carnage or “The Carnage Killer” is part of the game’s main premise and is the final boss fight.

Combat in the game is bland and generic. It consists of very repetitive moves, a couple finishing moves, and a counter system. There is an upgrade system, but honestly, none of the upgrades really NEED to be used to play through the game. During combat, Spidey has a few quips that he yells at the bad guys. Almost every single one of them is repetitively-stupid, except for one that has a bit of nostalgia to it, “Can you at least say some fun bad guy things like, curse you Spider-Man!” Also, most of Spidey’s quips are demeaning rather than clever. Most of Spider-Man’s moves consist of kicks with a couple punches thrown in. The finishing moves are either triggered by just beating down an enemy until a white swirl appears above the head signaling you to perform the move or you can just web-shoot an enemy until the swirl appears. They are the best part about the combat allowing you to web an enemy to a wall, etc. The counter system changes depending on what type of enemy you are fighting. If you are fighting a gun-wielding enemy, your spider-sense flashes red above your head signaling you to dodge incoming bullets. If you are fighting basic enemies, your spider-sense flashes white, and the enemy glows red signaling you to counter their attack. Stealth combat consists of Spidey webbing enemies to walls or ceilings, or actually repelling from ceilings to web enemies up; which is pretty dang cool. Besides repelling, most of the stealth is uninspiringly boring. The Amazing Spider-Man games honestly borrow a ton from the Batman Arkham games, and it is really getting obnoxious. The combat is nowhere near as fluid and diverse. If you are going to make a game similar to another one, at least put the effort in to make it a good contender.

Side missions consist of beating up street thugs, rescuing people from burning buildings, stopping a car chase, Russian hideouts that when beaten unlock new Spidey-suits, and photo investigations. Collectables include more comic book pages, audio logs, Spidey-suits, and crates around the city that give you upgrade points. The pages are collected in intervals unlocking a comic every set of pages. The comics can be viewed in a comic book shop that is actually owned by Stan Lee, a wonderful little addition to the game. Inside the comic book shop, you’ll also find character trophies with their own descriptions, concept art, and a combat simulator similar to the Batman Arkham games pitting Spidey against waves of different enemies. The combat simulator offers little variety and simply consists of 12 waves, and that’s it.

The hero/menace system is a COMPLETE DISASTER. Many games nowadays seem to be employing the choice to be good or bad attributing rewards or consequences for your actions; inFAMOUS and Watch Dogs make use of this system in different ways, but do it a lot more successfully than Spider-Man does. Your meter goes up or down depending on the crimes you choose to stop throughout Manhattan. Random crime is always happening and it never stops. Beenox succeeded by adding unlimited crime to the game, but failed in the aspect that for every random crime you don’t stop, your meter goes a little bit down. You have to constantly stop crime to stay a hero, and honestly, it’s a huge PAIN IN THE ASS. It ruins traversing through Manhattan because once you hit Menace-status, electric barriers are put up throughout the city and the task force is everywhere trying to kill you. Being a menace offers no evil rewards, AT ALL.

The game’s graphics can be described by one question; how the hell does this game look SIGNIFICANTLY worse than the last one? There are bugs/glitches everywhere, buildings look bland and uninspired with a muted color pallet, pedestrians look like they came from Spider-Man 2 on PS2, and main character models look like they came from early PS3. The only thing that looks good in the game is the unlockable Spidey-Suits that have excellent detail.Oh, and did I mention that there is horrible texture pop-in literally EVERYWHERE? At first glance I thought that Beenox was just going for comic book style graphics, but I was sorely mistaken once I played the game for myself.

Finally, the most important part of the game in my opinion is web-swinging. Web-swinging is controlled by the left and right triggers on the controller. Spidey’s arms are mapped to each trigger. For a faster swinging-speed, the player can hold both triggers down. Web-swinging is the only thing the game FULLY succeeds at. It is an absolute, exhilarating blast swinging through the streets of Manhattan. Oh, and get this! Your webs actually attach to buildings now! Not invisible points in the sky. Web-rush is also back allowing Spider-Man to quickly web from one point to another.

In conclusion, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is a game that I would only recommend to absolute DIE-HARD fans of our friendly neighborhood wall-crawler. For a casual gamer who wants something new to play, wait till this game is in the bargain bin for $20 or $30 bucks. Beenox tried to improve on their last game, but only seemed to make it worse. There are only two reasons for someone to buy this game, and those are the web-swinging and the awesome, collectable Spidey-suits; but those just aren’t good enough reasons to justify spending $60 bucks on a game like this. I give The Amazing Spider-Man 2 game a 4/10.

PROS:

- Traversing Manhattan

- Spider-Man 2 style web-slinging

- Collectable Spidey-Suits

- Comic books

- Lots of villains

- Unlimited crime

CONS:

- Lame story

- Villains are thrown in with barely no explanation

- Old visuals

- Repetitive combat