|
I love Spider-man, I always have
– but no one has ever been able to pull off a perfect video game based around Spider-man. There have
been a few close attempts: Spider-man 2 and possibly Maximum Carnage for the Super Nintendo – but nothing solid enough
for me, as a Spider-man fan, to sink my teeth into. Will Spider-man: The Edge of Time have enough to keep
me interested in the mysterious web-slinger?
Very much like last year’s attempt, Spider-man:
Shattered Dimensions, you play as more than one Spidey… modern day Spider-man and Spider-man 2099. You
go back and forth between the two characters between levels. Let me tell you a little bit about the basic
storyline, and let’s start with that – it’s a basic storyline. In the opening
sequence you play as modern day Spider-man as he’s fighting Anti-Venom – and within seconds Venom kills you.
I loved that aspect of the game, it really pulled me into the story and the game mechanics. The
next scene shows you as Spider-man 2099 – he soon finds out that someone invented a way to travel back into time.
The story gets just a little confusing from there, but the general idea is that Spider-man 2099 gets trapped between
times – and he goes back to make sure the actions that happened in the beginning of the game never take place.
As I said earlier, you play as both Spider-men in separate time eras… but they are able to communicate back
and forth during the whole game. This game really focuses on cause and effect, for instance, one thing
Spider-man 2099 does can and will cause a change in the modern day Spider-man’s world. Sometimes
it can help him out, but for the most part it causes delays and increases the difficulty.
The game-play was fun, Spider-man was easier than ever to maneuver (although he still has a difficult time while
crawling on walls – the camera angle never agrees with you). But my only gripe about the game-play
is the repetitiveness. It was fine during the first hour or so, but as soon as you realize that it wasn’t
going to change – the game went downhill. You will find yourself in this exact scenario over and
over again in the game: You enter a room, the door locks, hordes of enemies come out. That scenario will
play out over and over again – from the beginning of the game until the end. (With only a few
boss fights in-between) The game also featured multiple free falling sequences in which you had to
avoid debris. I can only take a few of those free falling levels, but to give us more than five?
It just made no sense.
Another problem I had with
the game was the dialogue. It wasn’t a problem at first, but after the 100th “SHOCK”,
it got a little out of hand. Let me explain, since this game was rated T (for Teen), they can’t
get away with colorful dialogue – so they got creative and replaced every word with “Shock”.
“Let’s get the shock out of here”, “That scared the shock out of me”, and it was even
used in places where it made no sense whatsoever.
The
Bottom Line: I think it’s as good as last year’s
Spider-man: Shattered Dimensions, but it was way too repetitive. And I wish they could perfect the controls
when it comes to maneuvering Spider-man on the walls. It had a pretty cool story-line, with a couple good
boss fights. But I only wish we could go back to playing as only one Spider-man.
|
