Folks, looks like we have a winner here. The game is absolutely amazing. Perhaps the best Spiderman title I have played till date. I have completed the first act and it took me around 45 minutes with collecting all the spider emblems and completing all the challenges.
The story so far, is with the intro cut-scene of Mysterio entering a museum and trying to steal the 'Tablet of Order & Chaos'. Our hero decides to make his entry, rants off a few cheesy ass line & starts swinging his web. Mysterio gets his hand on the Tablet and is about to marvel at it when Spidey tries to catapult at Mysterio to knock him out, but he accidentally hits the tablet and shatters it completely. Mysterio laughs his way out of there and our hero is left clueless of what's happening. Enter Madame Web, our psychic ally, who explains that breaking the tablet caused a rift in the dimensions of Universes (Marvel universe that is). The tablet (and now it's fragments) have a great amount of power and whoever possess it will have unimaginable powers. So it's our to duty to go through each universe, with every version of Spiderman to gather those fragments & restore balance amongst the dimensions.
The tutorial begins post that and we are presented with each versions of Spiderman; Amazing, Noir, 2099 & Ultimate Spiderman (fused with Symbiote). Each of them have their own unique attributes and their time-lines. Hence their location, too, gets a drastic change. I loved the set up for Noir and Spiderman 2099. Visuals are cell-shaded and it largely resembles that of Friend or For, albeit with a more polished look. The surroundings aren't that great, character models are good and the voice acting is awesome. Speaking of voice acting, it's a relief to hear a decent voice job being done on Spiderman from the disaster that was in Web of Shadows. His one liners feel kiddish & cheap, but still funny at times. For instance, the first act has the main boss Kraven setting us up to fight his goons and the dialogue is something like this:
*Kraven's goons assemble*
Spiderman: Oh come on Kraven, you have a boy band now?
Kraven (irritated): They are my disciples and I have trained them personally to knock you out. So do you have what it takes to face my disciples?
Spiderman: You mean your boy band, right? Sure let's see what they got. :rofl:
Some of these dialogues do crack me up momentarily. So you'll have a lot of these in the game. Anyway, the cut-scenes, for once, are done marvellously in 3D instead of rendering them from the in-game engine. So they do proper justice to the story narration.
Now coming to the main gameplay, I'd say it's a culmination of all the previous spiderman games in terms of combat. You'll have your web attacks, punches, mid-air combos and weapon/objects disabling and throwing. Traversing is extremely easy. Hold down RT and you'll perform a web swing, double tap RT and it will cling onto the closest grapple locations for quick travelling. Of course the Spider sense play a big role here too. You can activate to scan the surroundings for any enemy threats or interactive object in the environment.
The real change in the gameplay occurs when you take control of the Noir Spiderman. It's the closest you can get to the feel of Batman: AA in stealth mode. You need to trade very carefully and use the shadows for effective cover. Performing stealth kills is just one button touch away. You just need to make sure you're hidden, be close enough to the enemy and BAM! Let the web do it's job. The stealth aspect is really well integrated and the noir-ish look given to the whole environment is amazing.
Last but not the least, the upgrades. You characters gains spider essence which is similar to XP points in the other games, by collecting Spider emblems, hidden spiders, knocking out enemies and completing the challenges. In any given level, we have different set of challenges to complete, systematically allocated in what is known as the 'Web of Destiny'. The Web of Destiny is a web-like design which has challenges assigned on it for us to keep a track of in any level. Once you complete certain challenges, more keep unlocking till the whole web is complete. Completing these challenges will grant you a lot of essence for your upgrades. Now the upgrades are of 2 types; combat upgrade and character upgrade. Like the names denote, one is to enhance your fighting skills and the other is to enhance your personal traits.
These are just a few set of things which I could pick up after the first act. I think there are tons more to come. One thing if for sure, the amount of fun ahead is unimaginable.
handheld, but this has changed, according to the team's Twitter page.
