Spiderman web of shadows: Better than I thought

[rk47]

  holy crap. Where do I start. Despite my concerns of camera problems and the crop of shitty comic book to superhero games lately (Hulk & Ironman), WoS (Web of Shadow) has managed to beat my expectations. The combat animations are a rush, despite the slight movement 'response' from spidey, the combat gave a lot of satisfaction even with basic moves with timing and combos that you can chain from 2-3 keys. Web throw, catch him with the venom suit tendril in mid air and 3 hit combo him, before he lands, catch him and again and slam him hard on the ground. The reactive combat felt like Assassin Creed with AERIAL COMBAT and I enjoyed it. Nothing like chasing Black Cat around rooftop swinging by 4-5 Goblin Gliders and knocking them down one by one.

Oh. If you feel like picking up cars and throwing, go ahead. Traffic is everywhere, just like GTA. And the nice little crime hotspots will pop on your radar, telling you where to find fights (entirely optional). You get to stop gang fights, disable a drive-by vehicles and sometimes, during a fight civilians will get injured. Getting them to hospital with grant you Red points (good guy) letting them die will give you Black points (bad guy). I'm curious whether the story will allow Spiderman to be a total jerk, but overall I'm satisfied with the writing and cameo character that are well drawn (The Hottest Black Cat Ever in PC - Now with Pony Tail)

All those fightings and mission completion will give you EXP that you can spend to improve your chain combos and unlock new moves. Not a bad idea. While collecting a set number of 'Spider Icons' across the city will increase your Max HP and Swinging speed (Which sounds silly but icons are almost too easy to find, I've found 50 so far).

So far I've done a 2 hour playthrough and met Luke Cage, Moon Knight and Black Cat. It was decent voice acting and writing. Hearing spidey making fun of Cage's old costume was a treat.
Spidey: Cmon, Cage your old costume was a golden suit and you wore a tiara on your afro!
Cage: HEADBAND ,man. HEADBAND!

Also, at certain point in the game you are allowed to make a choice for Spidey. Whether you take a Black or Red path. It might affect the ending or the story but I haven't gone that far. But I've told Black Cat that I'm ok with ruling the New York underworld with her meowwww

[Azazel]

Should this be in BiiF?

[Morfiend]

I was deciding between this and the new Prince of Persia, I went with prince cause all the bad reviews scared me off. Maybe I will pick it up with my Gamespot giftcards.

[rk47]

suffers from stuttering in PC but it doesn't stop me from playing it over n over.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TalGd_liy9k
a lil gameplay vid i made

[stray]

Prince of Persia looks to good to pass up, but I don't blame you for hesitating. I don't care how many weak review scores these Spidey games get, they always turn out to be pretty fun.

[NiX]

Prince didn't even look that fun, but then again I spend most my time watching my roomie play. Either he sucks or get used to dying over silly things.

[stray]

Do you not like platformers? Umm.. either way, they're probably not fun to watch.

[BitWarrior]

I got this game over the holiday season as well, and for the life of me I cannot understand the negative reviews. I've gotten a little further than you mention in your post, however your post is a couple days old now so that might not be the case.

WTF Reviews

Reading the reviews off metacritic (http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/ps3/spidermanwebofshadows); the biggest complaint is apparently repetition. Perhaps being a WoW veteran I have much more of a tolerance for this kind of thing, however if repetition was the only problem, and that big of a problem to bring the score from, say, 100 down to an average of 60, then WoW and all its expansions should have rated a 20 on metacritic. That's not the case, so it makes me wonder why all the hate.

Reading through all the comments on Metacritic, this one embodies all the negative quite well:

"A near-perfect Spidey game. The core Spider-Man elements people care about are all present, and arguably better than any game to date. Sadly, the developers forgot to find a way to eliminate the grinding feel of the basic gameplay. The result is a game hard line Spider-Man fans will want to beat in order to experience the story, while casual fans will likely get bored halfway through."
- Gameshark (giving the game a 58/100)

"Near perfect", but because missions are generally repetitive, the game loses a whopping 42 points. Meanwhile, "Repetitive" is one word I would strongly associate WoW with, however the word cannot even be found on the WoW:BC's review, nor on WoW:WotLK review page. At the same time, we get Penny Arcade comics like this: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/11/14/

The Game Itself

This game does bring back a classic Spiderman. For a long while in the comics they decided to adult him up, getting married to MJ and eventually even divorcing her. There was the reset which occurred for Ultimate Spiderman after the first movie came out, and although this game isn't exactly Ultimate Spiderman, its still recognizes that Spiderman is, at heart, a kid. Some of my favourite dialog so far which continues what the OP had experienced can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIVaefVZQzQ

It's classic, there's some basic choice in the game which may or may not change the final outcome, and they've near perfected the "feel" of Spiderman here. I was a huge fan of the Spiderman 2 game, but the creators of WoS were right: combat felt completely separate to web slinging, you essentially had 2 "modes". In WoS, the two intertwine wonderfully, and because of the new system for web slinging and even targetting, doing web-slinging kicks is actually quite simple, as opposed to near impossible in Spidey 2.

I've also never felt so comfortable fighting in mid air, considering it's a character that cannot fly. I engage baddies hundreds of feet in the air without any real thought to where I might actually be - and it's a lot of fun. Being able to hop from airborne opponent to airborne opponent is a blast, and the camera does a near perfect job of keeping up with you.

Additionally, there is comic trivia in the game! When you fight a certain someone, he or she will ask you questions like, "What are your parents names?" (since he or she is trying to confirm you are who you say you are). In all my genius I picked "Ben and May", to which Spiderman then says, "Ben and May! Oh wait, you said parents...this is going to hurt." More trivia came along, and long time readers of Spiderman who get the questions right will potentially have a slightly easier fight ahead of them, versus someone who might not know any of it.

It simply seems like all the negative reviews for some reason just focused on the one problem with the game, perhaps generally boring quests, and didn't focus on all the good the game brought to the table. No idea, but it strengthens my conclusion that reviewers typically like to hop on board whatever train they can detect ASAP.

[Morfiend]

Can anyone comment on how this plays as compared to say Ultimate Spider-Man, which is one of my favorite games of all time.

Ether way, I think I am going to have to pick this up.

[stray]

Air combat sounds great.

Yeah, I think reviewers just bandwagon on things too... There is no other explanation for it. Even Ultimate Spidey, probably the better one of the bunch, is fairly middling on the review scale (metacritic has it at 74.. deserves a little more love than that).

[rk47]

Can anyone comment on how this plays as compared to say Ultimate Spider-Man, which is one of my favorite games of all time.

Ether way, I think I am going to have to pick this up.

i remember trying Ultimate spider man out a bit and got a little bored after beating rhino, but I found no such dullness in WoS. It's near perfect, the negative reviews glossed over the fact combat and movement is fluid and really of all the retcons Spidey has gone through this is the best in this game: Spiderman has gained the power of immunity from fall damage. You literally engage in air combat with zero fear of consequences. Sure their missiles and glider charges might hurt, but no longer you would feel like Wile. E Coyote everytime you miss that web swing before plummeting to the ground straight to game over screen.

And the surprising cameos fits, none felt forced or badly written. I hate to spoil it but Vulture with cybernetic feathers = Wow. Engaging him and 20 of his glider henchmen is a rush.

Combat is nicely paced with a slo-mo in between blows to let you input another combo or disengage. One moves lead to another and switching custome in mid attacks sometimes lets you finish combos in different ways, but I still prefer Black's brute force. ;)

Hopefully the team behind this game won't give up and make another game based on this engine. Daredevil etc would work.

[Morfiend]

Bought it. Its decent. I think the best way to describe it is that its very very combat focused. Unlike the other spider-man games I enjoyed (Spider-Man 2 and Ultimate) it doesnt seem to have any races or such. Is that a bad thing? Guess it depends.

I am very let down that web swinging is dumbed down from the above mentioned games. I noticed a few times that my web was attached to the sky in an area where there where no buildings. Also the actual swinging is much easer. Press web button, push direction. There doesnt seem to be a way to climb up or down on your line, or make a burst of swing speed.

It seems all the bells and whistles went in to the combat, which is very good.

I still like the over all play of Ultimate more as it felt more well rounded, but WoS is fun. I have a lot of little gripes with the game compared to Ultimate, but over all I will probably enjoy it for a few weeks and put it away.

The web attaching to the sky is a big big big let down for me.

[stray]

I didn't care about races, but dumbed down slinging? The way you describe it sounds like the first Spider-Man game (which is the worst one).

[rk47]

i think he meant characters, yeah i feel i should get some sort of replay value by having chars aside from spiderman in free play mode. Too bad really.

[BitWarrior]

I didn't care about races, but dumbed down slinging? The way you describe it sounds like the first Spider-Man game (which is the worst one).

Uhh...No. Let's stop this little rumor before it gets out of hand.

The swinging in the S2 was basically exactly on buildings and building corners. To make things a little easier, in WoS the web is connected usually a little ways outside the building, to prevent you from slamming into buildings (as you could easily accomplish in S2). Additionally, there is the odd time there is a "gimmie" connection spot, but they're somewhat rare. If you're in an area of generally low rising buildings, you're only going to be swinging a few feet off the ground. It is NO WHERE CLOSE to the first Spiderman game we all know.

[rk47]

Finished it. They were running out of ideas and were throwing everything in the finale. I am still somewhat happy but kinda felt they need to put in a free play mode with unlocked powers and alternate chars to play AFTER I FINISHED THE GAME, not just boot me back to desktop. The city's big open playground and I had my fun just swinging around doing superhero stuff (CoH on steroids) having a free play mode wouldn't kill dev time. Just take away all plot advancement points and let me mess around in different stages. Tadaaa, replayable content to show your friends when they come over to your house or when you feel the itch to re-sub CoH/CoV (HA!)

And I kid you not, PC VERSION ONLY HAS THREE SAVE SLOT AND AN AUTOSAVE  wtf is wrong with these guys?!
On mean time this is the most fun Spidey game I've played. No doubt about it. I hope the devs get more projects like these, fuck those reviewers.

[Morfiend]

I didn't care about races, but dumbed down slinging? The way you describe it sounds like the first Spider-Man game (which is the worst one).

No where close to the first spiderman. But not as polished as 2 or Ultimate. There where several times where there was no high buildings to stick my web to, so he just shot it up to the sky and it stuck. The most notable of these was over the park. I was just hanging there looking at the web attached to the sky. It was disappointing.

As to being dumbed down, what I mean is that as far as I can tell once you are swinging, the only non-combat control you have is to push the thumbstick in a direction. In 2 and Ultimate, you could climb up and down your webline, and also press a button to get a speed burst, giving swinging a much more interactive feel, and also much harder to master.

I think the best way to describe WoS is to say it is a Spider-Man "combat sim" where as Ultimate and 2 where full Spider-Man "life sims". No doubt the combat is fantastic in WoS, but I miss the little touches.

Like the web zip. In Ultimate, you could shoot a web zip anytime, but if you where not close to a building it would shoot out, but not attach to anything. In WoS, you cant shoot a web zip until you are in range. I know its very small, but it was annoying, cause I couldnt tell if I was doing it wrong, or just out of range.

I also do not like the no falling damage. If you where any good at all, you could always web zip to safety if you fell. It gave swinging and fighting a little bit of fear. I dont like that I can fall forever and not get hurt.

Damn. I'm starting to sound like Schild talking about GH3 difficulty vs Rock Band or WT.

[stray]

Still, that just sounds like a step above Spider-Man 1 then. I liked the speed boost and web zipping. 

[Morfiend]

Still, that just sounds like a step above Spider-Man 1 then. I liked the speed boost and web zipping. 

You can still web zip. Its just not quite as intuitive as it was in Ultimate. And its quite a step above 1. Just go in to the game knowing that combat is a very large focus of the game, and you will have a great time with it.

[BitWarrior]

Morfiend, there is a speed boost here as well. Press and hold X (if you're playing on the PS3). Not sure what it would be for the other systems.

Regarding difficulty and web slinging in the park, personally I know it's there for the more "green" players, so I simply don't do it. If I do go into or over the park, I simply web zip my way along. It would have been nice for a "hardcore" mode or something like that though, for sure. In the meantime, however, that factor has done little to sour my experience :)

[Morfiend]

Morfiend, there is a speed boost here as well. Press and hold X (if you're playing on the PS3). Not sure what it would be for the other systems.

It is "A" on the Xbox, and I also was informed by one of the loading screens that pressing LB (L1) will make you climb your webline. Guess I should have read the manual.

After a lot more play, the game is fun, but I think I am very close to the end, and I have like maybe 5 hours in, if that.

[Morfiend]

Finished it.

Fun game. I enjoyed it quite a lot. I am starting over again to see if there is any difference if you pick the Black Suit decisions.

[Azazel]

Sounds like it has potential. I didn't like the race and "collect 4 billion tokens" aspects of the previous Spider-Games, so one more focussed on combat without any races sounds right up my alley.

[Morfiend]

Sounds like it has potential. I didn't like the race and "collect 4 billion tokens" aspects of the previous Spider-Games, so one more focussed on combat without any races sounds right up my alley.

I actually really enjoyed it. There is some collection, but its not really a hunt for collectibles, more like a "hey there is one" and stop and grab it. The combat is very very fast later in the game, and can be disorienting to some, as you can go from ground to wall to air combat very quickly.

If you like any of the spiderman games this one is a rental for sure.

After beating it once, and playing halfway through a second time,  I can say my only real gripe is they way they "cheated" on the web attachment points, but its a small thing really.