With great power comes great responsibility, a wise man once said in the very pages of the comic book that this game originated from. Since the video game that came in hand with the Spiderman 2 movie, the series has taken a swing for the best, adopting one of the greatest free roaming experiences available within video games. Spiderman 2 was to be the keystone in the success of the all of the mask webslinger’s outings until people started to question whether the awe and freedom from the series would fair well on next generation consoles...

          Spiderman: Web of Shadows is set in Manhattan, New York, as it has always been. Also, of course you assume the role of Spiderman in his fight against super-villains who threaten the safety of innocent people. The game kicks off with Spiderman strolling slowly across a rooftop with classic music played in the background as aircrafts come crashing in all around, spraying debris into the air. Creatures have overrun New York City, staining the buildings with a purple hue and engulfing the city’s inhabitants. Fans of the series will already know of what I speak, alien life-forms known as Symbiotes have invaded the city and have corrupted its residents, turning them into feral, super-powered beings, one of them being the main villain in the recent Spiderman movie, Venom. This scene is set in the present, and as you run through a small tutorial, you are beamed back into the past, a few days before the invasion when you are attacked by Venom. After the clash, small specks of Symbiote manage to infect Spiderman (the main focus of the game) and allow him to change from his Red costume, to his corrupted Black costume any time through simply clicking down the Right analog stick. The choice is yours, but the side you choose will decide the outcome of the story. Ultimately, there are two separate endings to the game, but the moral choices can trigger interesting cut-scenes. The story starts out slow, but you will appreciate it as it rolls up to a grand finale which was nothing short of Spidey standards.

          The game plays out like every other recent mainstream Spidey hit, you swing around Manhattan looking for missions, and then you carry them out to proceed. These missions can either be escorts, search, battle, or event missions which will each gather experience points and raise your level, a new feature within the series. However, you will find that the missions feel the same every time you do them, and then to follow up, side missions will be unlocked requiring you to do exactly the same thing as you just did, completely eliminating the fun in trying to level up. Levelling up will allow you to access more upgrades for your combo lists, both costumes each having a unique list of combos. Some missions will also entail a choice between Red and Black (good of evil) which will reflect on how the game plays out and on how people will react to you. When in the Red suit your strength is limited, but you are agile and very maneuvrable, whereas in the Black suit you can do pretty much the same but your web attacks are replaced with tendril attacks (a black tentacle that can extend to unleash various combos). In the black suit you will also be able to throw cars, yes, only cars which is kind of lame beings there is a vast amount of objects laying around in the game. But to decide whether you are a good or evil character, you must either earn Red of Black points, and as you can imagine Red points are earned through doing good deeds and Black through causing mayhem.

          The actual gameplay itself has changed somewhat to conventional Spidey games. You have your punch combos assigned to the Square button, and your Web shots to your circle button, but Treyarch have cleverly implemented the “Web Attack” feature. Pressing Triangle will hurl you into the air, locking on to a target and then swinging directly at them, when only an inch away from them you input another action button to carry out the desired move, some being more stylish and effective than others. The point of the web attacks is that you can chain them together, meaning you can bound off of one enemy and then hurl yourself at the next, meaning you can plough throw hordes of enemies. However, you will notice that using the same attack against every enemy is incredibly tedious. Treyarch also implemented a brand new lock on and locate feature. Holding the R2 button will trigger your spider senses casting a variety of icons all over your mini-map indicating small crimes which you can go to and earn experience points from resolving. This function also maps out enemies on the screen as yellow, red or blue silhouettes, depending on whether they are good, neutral, or evil. Tapping the R2 button will snap onto an enemy, indicated by a red pillar of light which you can toggle around with the Left analog stick. This has to be one of the worst lock on systems ever implemented into a video game, most of the time it will assign you to the wrong enemy, and it’s a pain to try and target an airborne enemy too, and in some cases the targeting will just ruin the game, snapping onto a distant target when you don’t need to. It may not sound like much, but I found it to be a major inconvenience as I played it through. Boss battles are also thrown in at intervals which alter the gameplay somewhat depending on who you battle. Vulture, Electro, Rhino, and Venom all make an appearance within the game as bosses along with allies such as Luke Cage and Wolverine, so at least there is a decent character roster to refer to. Each main character you encounter will available to summon once encountered to aid you in battle depending on whether you are evil or good. Another point to make also is that the enemy difficulty will ramp sharply at the occurrence of the Symbiote invasion. Before the invasion, you will be fighting street criminals with barely any hit points and minimal damage which is then suddenly warped into a hellish escape from hordes of Symbiotes.

          The first I have to complain about in the game was the voice acting, as the game is a rather darkened setting compared to the joyous days of Spidey 2, his voice hasn’t ripened much, and wheels back to the days of the Ultimate Spiderman voice-overs, but at least Toby Maguire isn’t present. Scripting can be dodgy in places but overall there is a decent voicing cast and characters are portrayed as how you would expect. The game’s scoring didn’t stand out greatly, most of it was fast tempo tracks branching away from the epic action sequences. Graphics are even worse, if there was one complaint people had about Mercenaries 2, it was that the graphics looked as though they had been taken from the Playstation 2 version, and it feels the same way in Web of Shadows too, every building has a dull and featureless aura, and some characters designs look effortless, but at least with the help of Shaba, Treyarch have poured a lot of flexible moves into the game, making every swing and punch an endless ballet of web slinging action.

          Web of Shadows was one of the games I had an eye on in early 2008 with a trailer that would draw in any Marvel fan, but the deliverance was poor. With so much repetition and tedium, combined with under average visuals and a annoying Spiderman voice actor, I struggled to finish the game to be honest, and fans can only hope that the series will take a turn for the better in the future, and that Treyarch will too.