Spider-Man is back, and so is black suit.
The game starts off with Spider-Man walking in slow-motion with his head down, to the tune of Midnight Sonata, as chaos unfolds around him. It can easily be ascertained from this introduction that Web of Shadows is not your happy-go-lucky Spider-Man story. Peter Parker's decision to keep his symbiotic alien suit eventually lead to the creation of Spider-Man's most popular arch-nemesis Venom, and now Venom has caused a whole slew of trouble, infecting the city of Manhattan with a plague of his own symbiotes.
Web of Shadows is the tale of two suits. Peter has retained his black suit, and he can swap between it, and his classic red suit with a simple click of the left stick. You have a red and black alignment, depending on your actions in the game, and what paths you take at key story branches. Such actions will influence who will assist you in the game. Characters such as Luke Cage, Wolverine, and Moon Knight will come to your aid when you're aligned with red. Black Cat, Vulture, Electro, and Rhino will join you when you're aligned with black.
Each suit has its own arsenal of offensive moves. The red suit is designed more around athetic and agile combos, while the black suit is all about raw power and damage. If you want to weigh your enemies down with webbing, red is your suit of choice, but if you'd rather snatch your enemies from afar with tendrils, go with the black suit. Aside from their combat abilities, they also have different healing attributes. The red suit regenerates faster, but the black suit can generate just as fast based on how much damage you're delivering.
There's an experience points system that allows you to purchase upgrades for both suits, and you collect experience points from beating up enemies and accomplishing mission objectives. A fast way to build up experience points is to keep your combo meter rising, and you only have so much time to move from one enemy to the next. Depending on what suit and what combos you use, it's possible to get combos in upwards of a few hundred hits, netting you a large number of experience points when the fight finishes.
One particular move that's very important is the web strike. Spider-Man will either leap into the air, or kick off of an enemy and flick a line of webbing at a target, yanking himself into it. You can then follow up with more attacks, or bounce off the enemy, and immediately web strike another foe. This move is integral when engaging in aerial combat, and plus, it's a very cool looking move.
Web-slinging over Manhattan is just about as fun as any other Treyarch Spider-Man game, but the real problem lies in the wall maneuvering. Spider-Man will not automatically stick onto a wall when he brushes against it in the air. Rather, he'll either slide across it on his knees, or he'll kick off of it. You have to hit the right bumper to make him stick to it, or the left bumper to make him run along the wall. It takes a bit of getting used to, but it definitely makes for some frustrating moments when precision wall maneuvering is needed.
Spider-Man can also attack his enemies on the very walls he's stuck to. When fighting on a wall, a new range of moves and combos are utilized, and since your perspective is altered, it can be a little trippy. There's also some issues where Spider-Man may not stick to the right side of the wall, or may get totally mixed up and stick to a parallel wall across the alley, or just keep rotating back and forth from the wall to the sidewalk when he's close to the ground. It's really not the most refined of gameplay mechanics.
Speaking of gameplay mechanics in need of refinement, the targeting system comes to mind. For general purposes, it works well. You hold down the left trigger, and Spidey will send out a radial burst of his Spider-Sense, which will highlight enemies and allies. Flicking the trigger will activate a target lock. The problem, though, comes in during the heat of battle, when there are dozens of targets to choose from. Treyarch has commited a cardinal sin and assigned the same stick that controls the camera to cycle between targets. The system also likes to target enemies automatically after you rescued a civilian you've just targeted, and this can play a bit of havoc on the camera. With a little practice, you can work around these problems.
A major problem is of course one of the hardest things to get right in a sandbox style game, and that's the camera. It's almost as nefarious as Venom himself. One of the most common instances is the camera spazzing out when Spider-Man makes a transition from a wall to a rooftop. It's very easy to recenter the camera, however. Just click the right stick in, but when you rely on your camera to show you where things are, especially in chaotic melees, it really makes things easier when you're not fighting the camera along with your enemies.
Spider-Man: Web of Shadows is an exercise in monotony. The game has a decent pace, provided you stick to the main story missions, but it seriously drags out when you commit yourself to the option missions. For the most part, optional missions work like this: Kill X amount of bad guys. The next mission after that will have you killing twice as many. The next mission, even more and so on. This can be repeated as much as five times.
What's really tedious is when a mission involves rescuing civilians, because it involves you swinging all over the city trying to find people in need of help, and that could take a while. Also, the city has a couple thousand "collectables" (they're just glowing Spider-Man icons) spread throughout, and it can be very easy to get distracted from what you're doing by collecting them. They also decided to base the leveling system on the amount of collectables you gather, so if you want to level up, you have to keep searching for them. This, in conjuction with the the overly banal optional missions makes the game feel like it's been stuffed with more filler than a scarecrow has with hay. A plus for some could be that there are no point to point races, but still, a wider variety of side missions would have been greatly appreciated.
Graphically, this is the best looking Spider-Man game to date. The city has an enormous attention to detail. The buildings look very nice, and the enemies along with Spider-Man have been modeled and textured well. There's a ton of flash and great special effects being used. The animations are pretty fantastic as well. The acrobatic nature of Spidey has been captured very well. The only major issue with the visuals is when you begin Act III. For some reason, the game's performance takes a serious dive. The frame rate drops quite a bit when there's enough happening on screen, and even several times, it's enough to cause the game to lock up.
Audibly, it's rather solid. The constant bashing of Spider-Man's fists, the explosions, the screams of symbiotes, and even the "whoosh" as Spidey's flying high on his webline are satisfying. The soundtrack is well done, sounding good enough to belong in an actual Spider-Man movie. The shortcoming of the game's sound, though, is the voice acting. The actor who performed as Spider-Man is far too whiney when his character is panicked, and not nearly as convincing when his character is dark. The other voice actors, such as the ones who did Wilson Fisk and Wolverine did much better jobs. It also doesn't help when the dialogue isn't that great. It has its moments, but it's not nearly as funny for someone with Spider-Man's repertoire.
This isn't a bad Spider-Man game at all. It actually has one of the best stories of Spider-Man games in recent past, as the story's completely original instead of based off one of the movies. Thanks to the different outcomes with the black and red suits, there's incentive to play through again. The combat and web slinging are a lot of fun, provided you're able to to forgive the frustrations that come along with it. Also, since it's a sandbox game, it's rather peculiar that there is no stat keeping, or new game pluses to be had; two staples of sandbox games. It's just that it's a crying shame that Treyarch can't seem to fire on all cylinders, getting past a "pretty good" Spider-Man game to an "excellent" Spider-Man game. Still, it's pretty good for your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man fan.