Spiderman 2, the first free roaming superhero game and a movie license to boot, has imbued the web spinners gaming exploits with certain standards that every following game has struggled to attain. Spider fans have expected each follow up game to be a step up but most, whether the cartoon free roaming of Ultimate Spiderman, or the linear but interesting Shattered Dimensions, have never quite succeeded. So there were some high hopes for Amazing Spiderman, does the webslinger have any new tricks up his crimson sleeve?

Well yes and no, yes there’s a few new tricks here and there but no, the game doesn’t rise to be a definitive Spiderman game. It’s definitely a case of, as good as but not quite better when lined up with previous Spidey games.

He does numerous things with a strong likeness to the arachnid, yeah, try singing that Buble

The plot follows up straight after the movie and does a reasonable job of not getting tied down by story telling elements from the film. The characters are the same, Gwen Stacy and Curt Conners are in there but the story itself is a whole new thing. It wisely doesn’t bother with any origin stuff or to catch anyone up on the movie. The game assumes right away you’ve either seen the film or are at least passing familiar with how Peter parker became the Spiderman. So there’s a few spoilers if you haven’t seen the film, also skip my next paragraph synopsis if you’re sensitive.

The games most interesting villain Black Cat, and only non animal hybrid enemy, gets an all too short side mission

The game opens with Gwen and Peter sneaking into Oscorp after hours to witness the company attempting to dispose of Conners animal human hybrid creations. The new director Alistair Smythe (the robotics obsessed Spider Slayer in the comic books) wants to destroy the experiments and refocus company resources on his robotic and nanotechnology projects. The presence of Peter Parker, a cross species himself, causes the other crazy beasties to go nuts and break out, Gwen gets bitten and infected by a giant rat man and Spidey has to rescue Conners from the asylum he got locked in at the end of the movie so he can create an antidote for Gwen and the rest of the city who are slowly becoming infected by the virus. Along the way Spiderman has to fight a number of classic enemies re-imagined in this game as cross species monsters. I should just mention that including only six enemies in your Spiderman game and changing the origins of four of those bad guys to fit in with whats all ready not a particularly great or imaginative plot is a good way to burn fans.

Much like the half man half human Lizard, the iconic enemy Rhino is now half rhino half man, because having enemies with all the same enemies is sooo more interesting (read with sarcastic voice)

It’s pretty apparent that the developers took a few cues from Rocksteady Games and their Batman series to spruce up the webslinger. Spiderman has a dodge mechanic that’s identical, although not nearly as well executed, as the one in the Arkham games, a combo meter that opens up finishers called Signature Moves, and encouragement to use a number of different web attacks in combat. The difference between the two is that the Arkham fight mechanics and controls were smooth as a whipped cream statue of Miranda Kerr, but the Spiderman controls are jerky and unreliable. Fighting doesn’t flow as well as it should, especially in tight indoor spaces of which there are too many, and you’re far too often button mashing to take down enemies as quickly as possible rather than mixing things up to pull off cool combos. The combat isn’t woeful or anything, just not nearly as fun as it should have been

The swinging controls have the extremely annoying mechanic of Spiderman’s webs sticking to nothing. As you swing your webs go straight up to latch somewhere of screen so you always swing in a straight line. One of the fun things of previous Spiderman games was the, and I use the term loosely, realistic web swinging effects. You needed buildings to swing and it made moving quickly and effectively a strategic activity. Now Spiderman can swing across central park using magic.

Smyth sends more than a few Spider Slayer bots out into New York to make Spiderman's life difficult

On the plus side the web dashing mechanic is excellent. Spiderman can now enter a slow mo first person mode to aim where he wants to dash to, then quick fire a web and zip there. You can also tap the same button to web dash in whatever direction you’re aiming. It’s highly useful, almost cheap actually, to use it in combat a lot as well.

Also on the plus side the game looks and sounds great. The graphics are not bad for an open world game, albeit with a little screen tearing, and several times while trying to turn around while crawling through vents I glitched out of the game world. The voice cast are all stand in’s for the movie actors, don’t expect Andrew Garfield’s surprisingly good impression of a Brooklyn accent (he’s English) in the game. Also adding some geek cred is Bruce Campbell who issues a few side mission challenges and Stan Lee with a similar side mission option.

This half Iguana, half man enemy is called, Iguana, are you seeing an extremely over done trend here?

The game is fun, enjoyable but on the light and fizzy side compared to the deep and immersive. Admittedly it has a difficult job working with both a fast paced open world mechanic and indoors fighting and sneaking sections. The game doesn’t really change gears between these two environments so the indoor stuff feels annoying and difficult to navigate compared to the outdoor stuff. It desperately wants to be a Batman game but the production quality and fine tuning isn’t there. The game is also too short, only three major side missions away from the main storyline and a few random but seconds long street crime events, camera sections (which really should be mandatory for a Spiderman game) and challenges to keep you busy. All of that on the hardest setting, plus the several hundred collectibles littered through the game should take you a solid weekend to get through. Amazing Spiderman is a decent title, too short, a bit rough around the edges, but also a high amount of fun. You get to play as Spiderman which is almost never boring to do. It’s one of the best licensed games you’ll play but it’s a contender, not a champion.