As the baiting headline suggests, we’re not sure where we stand on this whole “new Spider-Man game” issue. And it’s probably because we still haven’t made up our minds on where we stand with the Amazing Spider-Man film. The facts: Sam Raimi was set for a Spider-Man 4, but by all accounts it might’ve been bigger, wackier and more of a hot mess than Part 3. Sony scrapped it. However, Sony was at a crossroads: Spider-Man makes a ton of coin, but the threequel besmirched the movie franchise. REBOOT. Yes, ten years after Raimi’s first installment, we get the AMAZING Spider-Man, which retells the origin story but in a different way. The entire world feels a sense of deja vu. Haven’t we done all this before?
But just because the movie franchise halted for a few years so Sony could get its shit together, doesn’t mean there would be a lack of Spider-Man GAMES.
That’s right! After the tie-in for Part 3 we got the following games: Friend or Foe (which was based on the movie franchise), Web of Shadows (the one with Venom and Wolverine), Shattered Dimensions (with the 4 Spideys) and more recently Edge of Time (the one with the 2 Spideys). To be fair, the last two were more self-contained and didn’t feature open worlds, but seriously, four Spider-Man games since the third movie.
And they sold modestly. Probably because every other year, the gaming population would collectively say “Oh, another Spider-Man game. Cool, maybe I’ll buy it used from Gamefly,” is something that almost certainly happened. And to be fair, these games are all relatively solid and we have to imagine there are a few chumps out there who played every single one of them with more than a passing interest.
Which brings us to the Amazing Spider-Man’s tie-in, which by and large, is another solid open-world game. Although the combat system takes cues from Batman: Arkham Asylum (what action game doesn’t?), and the game is another collect-a-thon with repetitive citizen saving side-missions. But from all accounts, the swinging is dare we say… amazing.
And isn’t that what we want? Just a new game for us to swing around a few dozen cardboard cutouts of buildings we can’t enter? Another game to mindlessly unlock more combat moves? Another game to fight the goddamn Rhino in? Seriously, just stop using that character or murder him in the comics like you did Peter Parker (look it up!).
Pointless cynicism aside, the latest is pretty fun but not in the eating-your-life-away way. Because, well, we’ve done this before.
