Spider-Man has had his few ups and downs, not just as a web-slinger, but as a product of media attention, whether it is through the comics, the cartoons, the movies or its games, public reception has varied exceedingly. Of course, if you're a 'Spidey' fan - like I am - then there's naturally going to be a slight bias in what you like and what you say, with an exception being a fun but stranded little game called Spider-Man: Web of Shadows, as this game doesn't even have Spider-Man in it.

No, Spider-Man or Peter Parker aren't to be found in this new release, even with his name in the title, as he's been sacked and replaced by the cheap rip off in a Spider-Man suit. I don't know who he is, but he sounds like he's about fifteen and should be back at school. But in all seriousness, whoever chose the voice actor for Spider-Man ought to be ashamed. If the budget was too small for Tobey Maguire, or anyone else who had voice-acted for Spider-Man previously and was convincing, then there really shouldn't be any monologue, dialogue or words in general for that matter coming from his mouth.

Now that's out the way, we can move onto more pressing issues.

Gameplay:

When it comes to Spider-Man and Spider-Man games I really think there's only so much you can do with a given character, similar in a way as some feel that World War II games have been going on for long enough, and that there are too many FPSs on our consoles. The difference here though is that with a World War II game you can cover many aspects of the six year conflict, with Spider-Man you tend to be stuck in one setting, as one person and with the same theme. So, when you're on your fifth played Spider-Man game you tend to predict the experience quite accurately, Spider-Man Web of Shadows isn't quite a 'stab in the dark' when it comes to content.

Swiftly moving onto what this game entails, basically the plot-line is a string of convenient catastrophes. There really isn't an overall plot-line to the game, you'll be confused at the beginning, wondering when everything's going to be explained, and you'll be confused at the end as there are things which still don't quite add-up. Basically, this game is a sequence of events which lead either to a good ending or a dark ending, which they call a plot. These endings are representative of your random 'moral' choices in the middle of main missions, since at the start you obtained the "symbiote" spawn from a fight with Venom and have the ability to change between the two costumes. These choices though give the illusion of the result of two Spider-Man forms, but in reality they're pretty much unrelated.

Essentially, the two suits - which you can transform to and from at any time - give you a unique play style, and will allow you to do the odd 'bad deed', but it won't affect the direction of the path your heading down in the missions, these are affected consecutively through every other main mission. For example, at one point you bump into the Black Cat, she starts flirting and you then have the choice to either start kissing and betraying MJ, or being true to MJ and backing off. And many of the 'good' and 'bad' choices aren't really your typical good and evil acts, they're normally minor moral wrongs and petty actions.

The different suits though also allow you to perform different moves, which are acquired after spending experience points on upgrading them. In the menu, you'll have an upgrades bar which can allow you look at the moves/combos you can do, and the moves/combos you can acquire. This definitely adds some interesting RPG elements to the game, and makes the combat that bit more expansive.

Although the missions themselves aren't all that involving, the moves you obtain and what you can do with Spider-Man was one of the biggest traits found. An important feature for any Spidey fan, or any Spider- Man game for that matter, is web-slinging around the city. Being able to actually do it should go without saying, but to hit the nail on the head with the controls and sense of movement when swinging through the air is an enjoyable experience indeed, and congratulations to Treyarch & Shaba as this is the best Spider-Man roaming game since Spider-Man 2.

Number two on the Spider-Man's must have feature list is an accessible and intuitive combat and control system, and if I understand correctly I don't think any Spider-Man game has done this to a point of satisfaction yet, but from all the Spider-Man games I have played Web of Shadows has come the closest. Although you don't sound or act like Spider-Man in web of Shadows, you do fight like him. The controls are simple enough to use, but hard enough to master. X is your basic punch attack, this can be chained up to make a simple combo, and Y is your aerial/kick and normal kick attack, which you'll be using a lot when fighting on the move. Not only do you fight on the ground, but the developers have been risk worthy and jumped one step ahead, you have a number of moves in the air and attack types on the side of buildings, so yes... you can fight vertically. These ambitious design implements don't come without their problems though, you might have the potential to fight like the real Spider-Man but good luck at seeing yourself and the enemy at the right angle. You'll be fighting with the camera at nearly every point during the battle scenes. The camera has some bad behaviour issues, as at one stage you'll be best mates when traversing through the city, but that camera turns into a Rottweiler chasing its own tail when you see an enemy or two. It's quite unfortunate when the battle scenes are the most compelling.

Once you've tamed the camera, and mastered the controls there can be some interesting and memorable fighting instances. The boss battles even more so, when you put all the moves you've learnt to action you can pull off some real impressive and funky manoeuvres. In the end, you'll find out the hard way that the missions are just excuses to play with your newly gained attacks and combos, and that the environments are nothing more but a playground for you to swing about in, as there is certainly two halves to the game - and we're not talking about symbiote Spider-Man and Red Spider-Man. On one side, the fairly well structured and open gameplay, and the other side the poorly directed missions and storyline. But to weigh up your reasons for buying, it's best to look at the full picture.

Graphics:

Spider-Man: Web of Shadows is many things, but technically astounding isn't one of them. Playing this game surfaced my nostalgia and enjoyment of Spider-Man 2, not only because it plays similarly, but because it looks similar as well. If you wanted to talk about the standards of next generation graphics and visuals, this would fall short of almost every expectation except view distance... which has admittedly come quite a way since the gassed out cities of New York in the first game.

One thing that Web of Shadows should gain credit for is its stick to the traditional theme of the comics and cartoons. It's a lot more bold and colourful than the film adaptations, but not completely cel-shaded like Ultimate Spider-Man, which suits the game fine.

There's probably two ways to look at this game visually, there's the technical side where the game's engine is fairly basic, but designed for optimisation of rendering a larger world, or the more artistic side where it doesn't present anything interesting to look at, but it definitely looks like Spider-Man and the simple design would appeal to its younger fans. I think the latter is what the developers were aiming for.

Audio:

This is where the game falls head over heels, and then just keeps falling. I understand that the developers weren't looking for something realistic and particularly sophisticated in the witty section, but the voice acting is sub par and the dialogue is just damn right stupid.

If all of the voice-acting was bad, and Spider-Man's was mediocre, then this game could scrape satisfactory in the sound department, because Spider-Man is all about Spider-Man and you're seeing the story from his perspective. But when Spider-Man is the worst voice-actor, is less convincing and comes up with the most cliched one liners (which only works with the trademark voice by the way) then you know there's something terribly wrong.

There was one point in the game when Spider-Man was talking to one of the goon leaders and he says "be there or..." hoping he wouldn't finish it with the one line I was dreading, and then "...be square!" at that point, I knew script writing hit a new low.

Moving away from the unpleasant experiences of cheesy dialogue, the music and sound effects are pretty much a different story. The music tends to mix an awe inspiring Superhero orchestral theme in the menus, and when fighting an upbeat techno soundtrack, and it all matches the pace of the game, that is generally very fast anyway.

So again, there are two sides to it, just one of the sides happens to be a lot worse than the other. Any real Spider-Man fan would be offended.

Longevity:

There's quite a lot to do in a short space of time here, it brings quite a familiar draw to missions in a way that it allows you to take on a few optional tasks in between main story-driven missions. The contrast to its predecessors though is that the optional missions you partake in have to be accepted from your main objective giver (who changes as the game progresses) and that these missions will only appear once. That doesn't matter though, because as expected, these 'mini missions' are very trivial and unnecessary.

The first few missions you'll find yourself doing them to get used to the controls, mess about a bit and maybe gain some experience, but, as soon as you find out that gaining experience is more of a personal concern rather than a recommended one, you most likely won't bother. The biggest interest comes from fighting the next boss battle, which in themselves are a bit prolonged.

These errands consist of you generally beating up a few bad guys, actually... a lot of bad guys, or saving citizens, and if you're really lucky searching for items. You can't have too much of a downer on this portion of the game though, as the story element of the game - however nonexistent it maybe, until its final moments - is relatively long, and even though they might seem like shallow extensions of the smaller missions and more reasons to beat up air-headed goons, it's still a lot more involving when you're giving a scenario to fight in.

Overall:

To draw this review to a close, Spider-Man Web of Shadows introduces an interesting concept of innovation from previous titles. It definitely learns from other titles mistakes, borrows some of the better features, and adds some more 'meat' on what used to be an enjoyable but short lasting experience. But what this game has improved on, the developer has only made things worse in other departments. With some of the worst scripting and voice acting I've seen in a long while, and one of the most unwieldy and superficial plots, you can't help but wonder why the good and bad formula could have only been applied to the Black and Red Spider-Man.

This may be one of the better Spider-Man games, but by today's standards, other than a decent beat em up with some familiar faces, I recommend even the truest of Spidey fanatics give this a rental.