As is my ritual every time I go on a long trip, I purchased a PSP game for my recent adventure in Las Vegas for CES 2009. Pressed for time, I simply picked up the coolest looking PSP game at EB Games that I did not own. What I ended up purchasing was Spider-Man: Web of Shadows – Amazing Allies Edition. Since then I have flip-flopped between hating the game and singing its praises.
Find out what my final verdict is on Spider-Man: Web of Shadows – Amazing Allies Edition after the jump!
The storyline for Web of Shadows on the PSP is entertaining, even if it is a bit redundant. Basically, Venom shows up, he and Spider-Man fight, and a piece of Venom’s symbiote attaches itself (how many times has this happened?) to Spider-Man. After which, Spider-Man can then change between his classic red suit and the black & white symbiote suit. Of course, Spider-Man is not the only person the symbiote has the hots for In short order, the symbiote breaks off and infects most of New York City, providing tons of enemies for Spider-Man to fight. The end goal is to acquire all the components necessary to build a weapon capable of shooting a huge sonic wave.
Visually the game is only a half step up from the Sega Game Gear days. It’s a side-scroller with 3D characters on a 2D background. The characters look pretty good, but everything else looks half finished or worse.
The general combat in the game sucks, there really is no other way to say it. If you like hitting the square and triangle buttons about a million times, this is the game for you. Most of the fighting is repetitive to the extreme, as you beat the snot out of street thugs and tons of symbiote-infected New Yorkers. You can’t hit bad guys when they are down on the ground, and even the boss battles (of which there are a good number) limit you to attacking only at specific times, even if they are just standing there charging up or what have you.
The standard web swinging mechanics exist as well, but are not terribly effective. Swinging from a web in order to do an airborne kick never works all that well and shooting your web to stall an opponent for a few seconds is rarely worth it. The fact that checkpoints are not save points is pretty freaking lame too. If you quit or turn off your game mid-mission, you’ll lose all your progress and have to start the whole mission over again.
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I may be in a minority but I really enjoyed Web of Shadows on the 360. Best Spider-Man game yet in my opinion.
This version looks pretty cack though…
Krelith: You’re not the minority. Many people have considered Web of Shadows to be the best Spiderman game since Spidey 2. Granted it has it’s flaws.
The version does seem dumb though…especially considering the superior DS version.
The idea that a piece of the symbiote broke off and bonded with Spiderman seems a little off, especially if you know the comics history, however it has a lot of potential.