Your web-shooters are empty.

The "Amazing" Spider-Man 2 video game

Well after it's underwhelming release of the motion picture of the same name, it's time we talk about the video game adaptation of The Amazing Spider-Man 2. Oh boy, this game has it all! Well this game looked great in trailers but turned out to be a steaming pile of Rhino spooge. 

You start off the game with very little connection to the the movie franchise it was connected to (you had an apartment in downtown New York in the first Amazing Spider-Man and now you are back to living with your Aunt May in Queens so HAVE FUN TAKING THE TRAIN HOME SUCKAS!) and step into the shoes of mild mannered and heavy hand gesturing Peter Parker who may have a job at the Daily Bugle or may go to college or may still be in High School because it's never made clear. As you try to understand the mechanics of web swinging you are constantly bombarded with floating comic books or lazy civilians being trapped under rubble and right out the hot gate this game is a mess. Apparently the setting of this game takes place in the middle of The Cold War because about 87% of the bad guys are part of a Russian mafia who has stolen some technology from the seemingly run down but still thriving Oscorp Industries. 

So here is what is on your plate for when you begin the game, there is a car chase where all you do is bounce around from window to window before you realize that you should have just saved the always female hostage right from the get go and as soon as she is safe enjoy the cut-scene of Spider-Man doing what you wanted to do but won't let you do by webbing up the car for you, then there is the constant break-in's of business's/cars that you have to stop every 5 minutes (real time), there is a bomb you have to use your spider-sense to track even though you have eyes and you can already notice something out the ordinary bland atmosphere and you have to take the ticking bomb and throw it into the already polluted Hudson River, then there are buildings on fire where you have to jump into them and use your spider-sense to locate survivors in smoke filled areas but you only need to save how many they tell you to save even though there about 5 people in every building begging for their lives and you only need 2 so fuck them right? right, then there are also shoot-outs that the inept NYPD can not handle so they start screaming over their radios for more back up and help and your only job is to go there and beat them all up with no finesse. These are the random missions you encounter and every single one of them end with a news report by Whitney Chang singing your praises to the masses. Every single mission. Every single stupid tiny mission ends with what is essentially a loading screen. But it's here on this loading screen i can shoot a line to my next complaint about this game and that is the voice acting.

I once did voice over work for friend of mine who went to school to become a sound engineer and i had to do the voice of a Power Ranger. That was a fun and great experience and even though i didn't nail it on the first take i eventually got it and made it sound good. But the cast of this game were professionals and they only needed one take to capture the essence of a character because they are pro's...i just told you a lie. You need to say a line a few times before you say "that's the one" and this game obviously had no one in charge of that. For example, Spider-Man swings through the city and shoots a web-line that will launch him into the sky and he exclaims "I guess it's time for me to take another form, of transportation. heh" He has been only taking this form of transportation since he was bitten by a radioactive spider and invented his web-shooters. "Man, i almost died right there...OF BOREDOM!"...Jesus Christ, is this the guy i loved when i was a kid and reading the comic books? I owe "young me" a slap to the face if i get time travel to work for liking a character who is such a fucking knob that he has to express his emotions with his god damn jazz hands. 

How about this gamers? you can collect 15 different Spider-Man suits with varying degrees of uselessness! but make sure you swing to the only one place in ALL of New York that you can catch your train home to go to your actual closet and pick an outfit because that's what you wanted! A Spider-Man who needs to worry about what he's wearing. You run into Jamie Foxx's Max Dillon character (because this game is based off the movie so they gotta do something to cover their ass) ONCE and later in the game he is Electro and trying to kill you for no reason other than you are Spider-Man. 

So in closing, if you are high and just want a game to swing around in then this is the game for you. For no other reason should this game be played though especially under sober circumstances.

-R