by Kevin Gaussoin, Editor-in-Chief

Spider-Man: Web of Shadows is the best Spider-Man game ever.

The acrobatics, the story, the guest stars, the villains, the art, the multiple paths and endings… Wait! Before we really begin the love fest that is the recount of my perception of this game, let’s pretend for a moment that this is a regular review you might find somewhere other than ComicsOnline, and nickpick it mercilessly, okay? Here goes…

Nitpicks:

-I really truly strongly dislike the packaging for this game. First, I’m really disappointed in the font they used. Could you be any more bland? I recognize that you’re not going to be using the Spider-Man movie/PlayStation font, but how about the classic Amazing font or even that crappy drippy looking logo they used for a while? I mean really, out of all the Spider-Man logo fonts that have ever been used, you couldn’t get Joe Quesada to loosen his death-grip on the Spider-Man trademarks? This is the most exciting game of the year as far as Marvel fans like me are concerned, and you hide it in this? Way to be dull.

-Second, the cover image is ugly. Spider-Man seems he was coached into this stiff pose with, “Okay, you’re J Jonah Jameson posing as Wolverine… Go!” Plus, Wolverine looks ugly and Spider-Man’s webs on his mask aren’t supposed to suggest a nose like that, they follow the same pattern as the rest of the mask. Otherwise, Venom is Venom. I’ve never liked him much, but the image is decent, even if it is projected on one of Spider-Man’s arms. Who came up with this collage idea? More importantly, who approved it? If it was you, please slap yourself in the face and don’t do it again. If I wanted weak sophomoric graphic design ideas, I’d design them myself.

-For the same reason, I’m not a big fan of the advertising for this game I’ve seen in comics. It’s two pages and it’s all seemingly devoted to the symbiote parts of the story? Catering to the Venom fanboys is so 1990s. Lame. There is more to this game than just symbiotes.

-Moon Knight is a complete F*ing tool (so I guess if you consider recent comics proper reference, great job! You pulled it off perfectly!)

-Why is it so hard for Spider-Man to get out of the water if you drop in the river? does his wall-crawling not work if his hands get wet? I shouldn’t need to search around for a ladder; he should just immediately begin to wall-crawl when I touch the dock.

I’m in the middle of a fight and… oh jeez! Where did my camera go? Hello? I can’t see anything and I’m taking damage! I’m trying to fight here, pay attention!

-With a game this awesome, I want some alter-ego Peter Parker missions. Call me greedy, but I do.

-It seems like the scale of the buildings should be bigger. When you are at the top of what should be a massive skyscraper, it seems like the real estate on the roof is often rather tiny.

9 Reasons why Spider-Man: Web of Shadows is 9 kinds of awesome:

1. The Feel. This version of Spider-Man is the closest to “real” Spider-Man that we’ve seen yet. The way he moves when you web swing, run, fight, or even just stand there is the most authentic ever. Want to know what I mean? Just change direction while web swinging and see how he lithely twists in the air. Fight some bad guys on a wall. Chase Black Cat up a wall. Fight the vulture and his Vulturions hundreds of feet up and bounce from one opponent to another. In this game, FINALLY, You. Are. Spider-Man.

2. The City. You have all of Marvel Manhattan to webswing around. Want to go do a mission with Luke Cage in Harlem? Swing on by. Want to check out the Daily Bugle, the Baxter Building, the Rand Corporation, Fisk Industries, Avengers Tower? Go for it, they’re there for you to visit, and you’re free to go wherever you want. And plus, you’re encouraged to check out the whole city to collect the glowy spider symbols that are all over the place. Collecting them is how you level up.

3. The Two Costumes. You have your classic red-and-blues, but your black symbiote costume is back. Why? Well, as far as why in the story, you’ll find out soon enough, but as far as why as a player: With two costumes, you get two discrete sets of powers. the cool thing is, you can switch between them on the fly at any time. And I mean ANY time. Are you right in the middle of a fight and want to use a power from the red suit, switch to the black suit, use a devastating offensive black suit attack, then switch back to the red suit to web up another opponent? No problem. The multi-suit power combo possibilities are virtually endless. And as you gain XP and level up, you can spend your XP on new power stunts for whichever suit you want. Know now that you shouldn’t neglect either costume. You never know when one or the other will no longer be available to you (okay, now you do: it’s the final battle).

4. The Story. You start out with the easy stuff getting coached in how to use the controls by the computer at first, but then you start getting combat training by Power Man which quickly and naturally turns into you helping him to end some gang violence in the city which then leads to fighting the Kingpin’s various hirelings, and then eventually you star seeing some regular civilians acting really weird. You’re forced to fight them, and when you beat them, they dissolve into goo that looks… familiar. Per the expected Parker luck, the police see you punching civilians into goo, and then the cops who used to cheer you on are trying to bring you in, and since you’re Spider-Man, “bring you in means shoot you and keep shooting cause Spider-Man can obviously take it. You start seeing more and more symbiote creatures, and then your worst fears are realized when the symbiotes start taking over first your enemies and then your friends, twisting them into Venom-ized versions of themselves, and then eventually they start taking over the whole city, turning buildings into huge symbiote nests. It’s as ugly and horrific as it sounds, and you’re the only hero who can stop it! Your final “Boss” is an enormous multi-headed version of Venom himself that attacks you on board the SHIELD Helicarrier while he spawns more and more symbiotes to attack you while you’re supposed to be battling him. Another good point is that this version of Marvel Earth doesn’t seem to suffer the blight that is the One More Day/Brand New Day idiocy that has ruined Spider-Man comics for the past year or so.

5. The Guest Stars: Mary Jane. Luke Cage, aka Power Man. Felicia Hardy, aka The Black Cat. Moon Knight. Black Widow. Vulture. The Vulturions. Electro. Wolverine. Rhino. Tinkerer. Venom. These may not all be A-Listers, but they’re all well done from modeling to skinning to acting to voicing. Perhaps the best example of the great voice cast is that they got Battlestar Galactica’s Tricia Helfer to reprise her role from The Spectacular Spider-Man cartoon as The Black Cat.

6. The Symbiotes. I’m not a fan of the symbiotes in the comics. Venom was fine to start but then ever since they’re really gotten out of control with Carnage, the Anti-Venom, and all the other symbiote spawn. The funny thing is, this game has all the alien symbiote cacophony that I find so so annoyingly lame in the comics, but here I find it thrilling. It’s got something of a zombiesque horror movie feel as you progress through the second and third acts of the game.

7. The Story Action Scenes. It is here where you decide if you are going to be more good (red costume) or evil (black symbiote costume). The choices you make here affects who will help you out in battles later. There are several of these story action scenes when you are in the final moments of defeating a “Boss” where you go into a mode that is delightfully reminiscent of Dragon’s Lair or Space Ace. The camera switches to a more cinematic mode, your combat and movements are not entirely your own, and the dialog changes to be more in depth and progresses the story rather than remaining an assortment of appropriate Spider-quips. At this time, like the aforementioned classic animated games, you’re prompted to quickly hit a specific button. if you fail to hit the correct button immediately, you will fail and die (and start again, having been returned to your last autosave point). I really enjoyed these as something of a cross between a standard cut scene and normal gameplay, and yet somehow better than either.

8. The SHIELD Helicarrier. A craft larger than US aircraft carriers, but instead of floating in the ocean, it’s hovering a couple thousand feet above the Atlantic Ocean outside Marvel Manhattan. Modeled more fully than ever before, this is an awesome location for a final Boss battle.

9. As yet unrealized Potential. With all this scenery and game mechanics mapped out, there is simply no good reason this game should not immediately spawn a sequel. In fact, using these already created and skinned models, we could get a whole series of Spider-Man and other Marvel games. Civil War? World War Hulk? I enjoyed this game so much, I’ve decided I should write a game myself that uses it. This game setting aches to be reused.

Let me say it again: Spider-Man: Web of Shadows is the best Spider-Man game ever. I’ve read the complaints about repetitiveness and visual glitches, and really they just hold no water with me. This is not just a great Spider-Man game, not just a great superhero game, but it’s a great game, period.

This review is really of the PS3 version, but I understand that the XBox 360 version is virtually identical, and the Wii version is almost identical, except reportedly it has even more costumes. The PS2 and PSP versions of Spider-Man: Web of Shadows are really another game that happen to have a very similar plot.

For more info, read about our beta test of this game at the Activision Web of Shadows party on the roof of the Hard Rock Hotel this past Comic Con or check out how it figures into our Holiday Video Game Gift Guide by Erin Hatch

ComicsOnline gives Spider-Man: Web of Shadows 5 out of 5 bites from a radioactive spider.