The partnership between Beenox and Activision has produced many Spider-Man games over the years. Two years ago I reviewed The Amazing Spider-Man, and found it to be pretty good, although I would have rather had another Spider-Man adventure like Edge of Time or Shattered Dimensions that wasn’t “bound” to a new theatrical release. It’s not that videogames based on movies are automatically bad, but they often lack polish and generally feel confined within both the parameters set forth by the movie, and the time limit allowed to get the job done. I suspect that these are some of the reasons that The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (TAS2) is mediocre, yet still serviceable, game.
As I look over my notes and memos taken while playing through TAS2, most of what I took down was negative. But, TAS2 kept me playing, and I was, for the most part, enjoying myself. As you might expect from a movie videogame, this isn’t an epic, genre-changing, 25+ hour experience; it’s a 6-7 hour game that you can roll through pretty easily and efficiently. It’s the type of game that were it much longer or more difficult, it probably wouldn’t feel worthwhile enough to continue through. All that aside, there is fun to be had with TAS2, but there’s no getting around that the game is lacking or otherwise disappoints in some key areas.
I’ll break those down soon enough, but first, without any spoilers I hope, I’ll discuss some of the story, which by the way is the only game mode available. We all know the origin of Spider-Man by now, and how he went from confused high schooler with powers to take on the responsibility of using these powers for good, when his Uncle Ben is murdered. A brief opening scene takes us through these events and sets the stage for Peter’s quest to find the man that killed Ben. It’s obvious Peter is still distraught and blames himself in large part for the death of Ben due to his inaction. This is explained through voiceovers, and, while I’m on that note, I don’t know that I have played another game with more spoken dialogue from the main character than what’s here in TAS2. Note that this isn’t necessarily a good thing, and indeed it is not with TAS2 — no joke, Peter is constantly saying something out loud (or well, in his head which is voiced), and that gets pretty annoying. Anyway, while searching for this fugitive, he encounters a growing turf war between the Russians and typical New York street thugs. Spider-Man intervenes sometimes, but so does a serial killer on the loose known as the Carnage Killer. Spider-Man’s search for him leads him to Kraven, the master hunter who teaches Spidey some tracking skills. Meanwhile, with the crime on the rise, a special military police force is dispatched in Manhattan known as the Task Force, and, a large man by the name of Fisk is vying for more control in the city as he’s funding the Oscorp-ran Task Force. In a way, there’s a lot going on in the story of TAS2, and a handful of key characters have to be covered too, like Electro, Black Cat, and Kraven. Overall the flow of the story is coherent, but the pacing and transitions between ideas isn’t very good or always sensible.
You don’t typically play a Spider-Man game for its story though, right, so that the story isn’t all that interesting or well told is forgivable; regrettable perhaps, but forgivable nonetheless. Gameplay is where it’s at, and with TAS2, it’s ok — lots of miscues and shortcomings, but like the rest of the game, it’s serviceable enough to work through. If I’m not mistaken, TAS2 might be the first Spider-Man game to require that Spider-Man actually have a building or something taller than him and reasonable close by to sling his web over to before he can start swinging. Sometimes this is annoying whenever you start off like 2000 meters away from your objective, and you have to swing, swing, swing all the way to the mission-start marker. Sure the Manhattan cityscape looks fine, good even at times, but as with most real cities, it gets monotonous fast and you may notice that you aren’t noticing the little details any more (there aren’t a ton of these to begin with). So all the web-swinging through the city, I thought wasn’t really a net-positive for the experience and I often wished I could just fast-travel between the icons on my mini-map. You can use Web Rush mode to make accurate, medium distance movements between points though, simply by holding R1 and aiming a small reticule on the surface you want to go to. A ghostly, golden-colored shadow of Spider-Man will appear that shows you exactly how you will land. This mechanic is crucial and very helpful in stealth operations, but not very time-efficient for trying to quickly get around the city.
TAS2’s open world gives you plenty of freedom to swing around or run-up the sides of buildings, with markers on your mini-map to help you locate points of interest. These include a variety of nefarious activities that you can drop in on and save the day. These are treated like one-off minigames, and if you succeed in completing said mini-game, you have done a Heroic Act and the gauge showing your reputation goes up. If you fail the event or just avoid them, your rep reduces, the Task Force, who has helicopters and other air-based weaponry, will start to attack you if they notice you. However, this reputation system turns out to be sort of useless and I didn’t find any real value in my play-through in participating in these optional side missions besides earning extra upgrade credits to spend. There are points late in the game where the story changes such that the reputation system doesn’t matter, so, honestly I was kind of glad I only ever did about ten of these side missions total. The ones where you have to deal with rescuing civilians in a burning building while racing against the clock are bad enough that I did just two and made it a point not to do any more. This was because the rigid, capricious nature of these events is frustrating. Camera and control woes in ascending buildings rear their heads, and even if you have the last civilian on your back, safely away from the building, you will still fail the whole event if you don’t get both feet on the ground in the designated safe spot. And then since you failed the event, you are flagged as an anti-hero, but you can go back and try the event again if you choose.
Other issues include times in which events in the game world do not seem to “register” with the characters themselves. For example, one short mission late in the game I was to escort a police vehicle and keep it safe from the gangs, who had armored turrets, IEDs hidden in the cars along the streets, and so forth. So here I am doing everything I can to save this police vehicle, and at the end this mission and the start of the next, my Reputation is suddenly way in the negative, even though the police just told me how great I was moments earlier. Two or three other times I was clearing up an area of thugs, doing partial stealth, partial aggressive combat, and AI that should have been able to hear the gunshots and noise as close as they were, never reacted. Or, last example, when I just cleared out an area of thugs not five minutes ago, and then a cutscene plays that makes it look like I was never there in the first place. I suppose this is as good a time as any to also mention the really cheap design found in the boss fight against Black Cat. Let me set the table for this; you’re in a museum with a lot of walls and a second floor. It’s a pretty large area. Black Cat will disappear, and you have to turn on Spider-Sense to see her. Ok, no problem — however, what you will clearly notice if you try to Heal while watching her stand perfectly still really far away is that the instant you try to Heal, she literally teleports, through floors and walls and everything else, to hit you just one time before teleporting away to stand perfectly still again. It’s a really broke design that I guess Beenox either didn’t catch or didn’t have time to fix at launch. And while all boss fights are easy (mainly because they only have two or three patterns), it’s a knock on the game’s quality to see something like this.
Let’s talk about combat and stealth, two other main gameplay elements in addition to navigating the city. Combat is highly simplified, which makes this game very accessible and probably far easier to create, but it reduces the value of the experience for more advanced players. The combat has an Arkham style design to it, but the flow and satisfaction derived from it wasn’t quite up to the Arkham game’s level. Spider-Man can unleash a barrage of automated attacks and combos simply by pressing Square, he can disarm enemies by pressing L1, and zip his way over to the enemy by pressing R1, and use Web Shot to trap average foes for several seconds. While engaged in combat, his Spider-Sense will tingle (squiggly lines animate near his head) indicating you need to evade by pressing the left stick and triangle, or just triangle. You can also double-tap triangle if you’re evading two simultaneous attacks. It’s all very fluid and often looks quite cool, but you don’t really feel in control of it since you’re primarily mashing Square. That said, coming up with combos and the logistics of how that would work with a character like Spider-Man could be difficult, so this solution is probably best. I should point out that there are Stealth attacks too, and all that is required is that you get fairly close to an enemy who hasn’t detected you and press L1 when the prompt appears. Stealth is almost completely optional in this game otherwise, and it’s easy enough to get away from a pack of foes that you might not want to fight all at once if you want to. Since you can fully heal yourself anytime by pressing down and waiting about five seconds though, scrapping stealth in all areas where it’s not strictly required is completely feasible.
There are eight special skills, about half of which are available from the start and the others are unlocked as you go. These are can be upgraded four times each. Upgrades to the Web Shot for example make it “work” quicker, while Spider-Sense upgrades increase its usable range and allow you to see what direction foes are looking. This latter skill is a must-have as there are literally about two missions where you have to be stealthy or otherwise its gameover. Other upgrades including increasing the speed of web-slinging, reducing charge time for the shotgun-like seismic web, and making the ionic web more effective against the armor of the tougher bad guys. Besides upgrades, there are several alternate Spider-Man costumes that have some unique features as well as giving you a vastly different appearance. The Cosmic Spider-Man suit is geared towards improved ionic web ability, and the Noir costume is great for stealth. I unlocked one Spider-Man suit while playing, but had a voucher code for the other five. My favorite was the Black Spider-Man suit, which first premiered in 1984. This suit is great for combat and reducing damage taken. The Amazing Spider-Man 2014 costume has Damage and Combo bonuses, as well as increased Shooting Rate for the Web Shot. Each suit has three “features” like these, and they’re all upgraded automatically as you use the suit in combat. I just wish that it were easier to change suits; you have to go all the way back to Aunt May’s house to do so. While you’re there, you can also replay any previously beaten Story Mission, but it’s a chore to get back to the house, so I only bothered to go there maybe twice.
Besides Aunt May’s house, you can visit the Comic Stand, which is run by Stan Lee. The Comic Stand is a cool comic and collectibles shop you can drop in and explore. Here you can view 3D figurines of characters that you have encountered in the story, any comic books that you have found (there are 300 comic book pages to find in all), view posters, and play a Spider-Man arcade which is the gateway to the Challenges mini-games. There are twelve Challenges, and these are scenarios where you play against increasingly difficult waves of foes. Doing this unlocks Posters to view right there in the Shop. The Comic Stand is certainly cooler than going back to the House, but I would suggest going here towards the very end of the game for efficiency sake, just to see as much of the content you’ve found along the way in one visit.
With that, let’s get to the summary…
