A must for Marvel fans everywhere
Bad Points: Ending boss fight is a little anti-climatic; occasional camera issues; although there is an option for different endings starting a new game will reset all your collectables and upgrades (although there is a secret way of starting a new game with all these intact which is not entirely obvious)
Whenever you see a Spidey game with the Treyarch label on the box, you know you're going to be in for a treat. The difference here, of course is that this particular Treyarch game based around the adventures of everyones favourite web-head is that it's not bound by a movie tie-in license. In fact I get the impression that there was very much a "What if?" factor in the creation of the story line: What if the symbiote that bound itself to Eddie Brock to create Venom went bananas and started bonding with the inhabitants of an entire city? In Web of Shadows you get to play out that scenario.
One thing that I think is extremely important about any superhero game is that the player needs to have a sense that they ARE the hero in question. Web Of Shadows does this exceptionally well. The controls are easy to pick up (and certainly not that different to the other Treyarch games), the way that Spidey is animated while either swinging through the city or crawling up the sides of buildings is very well done and feels right. Indeed, the game contains spinning, glowing Spider symbols dotted around the city, the collection of which contributes to levelling the character up. There are 2,160 of these in total. This may sound like an absolutely crazy number, but swinging around is so much fun you do feel like you actually want to get them all. (After collecting the first 1,000 your map will display the locations of the rest as little red dots)
My only gripes would be that towards the end of the game there is so much going on that there is a little graphical stutter here and there. Additionally, the mostly excellent camera does suffer from struggling to keep up with the action occasionally. Whilst moving around the city is fun, and the animation of the character will react to a situation; for example pressing "A" is usually jump. If you land on the side of a building it'll stick you there until you let go. As the action is generally so fast and fluid, sometimes it's a little difficult to keep up with the situational control and what you're expecting a particular control to do at a particular time which can make getting to a specific point a frustrating process of bouncing around in a circle around it. These gripes are really minor though and by no means detract from the game enough to make you want to play something else!
In a world where super-hero games tend to be really terrible, rushed movie tie-ins, it's a refreshing change for one to really pay homage to what the character is about. Spider-Man: Web of Shadows is that game and an absolute must for any Spidey fan.