The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (Xbox ONE)

The only reason I bought this game was because of a pricing error at Tesco that meant I got it just after release for half the price. That said, it wasn’t the best decision I ever made because the game is shit. It is shit for many reasons, most of which I will go into here.

Reason Number 1

Spider-Man/Peter Parker is a fucking twat. Nobody likes an arrogant twat and I know that Peter Parker is a nerd and so having super powers is great, blah, blah, blah. But why do I, as an innocent bystander, have to listen to constant renditions of ‘I’m not just awesome... I’m extra-awesome!’ and of course, ‘That’s why they call me Amazing!’ Just shut the fuck up Spider-Man. You are not the coolest super hero.

Reason Number 2

On several occasions when playing the game, I actually had to turn it off because Spider-Man got stuck on scenery. I did wait for a while for the game to auto-correct, a function that many developers have built in because it’s easier that actually creating a half decent gaming universe, but Activision didn’t even do that. It’s a classic case of ‘Spider-Money.’ Let’s release a game based on a film that kids will go, ‘Hey Mummy, I love Spider-Man can you get me that game?’ Activision are laughing all the way to the bank. At you, Mummy.

Reason Number 3

Activision are twats.

Reason Number 4

Looking at the content of the game, it tries to do far too much and includes about 27 bad guys from the Spider-Man franchise, most of which weren’t in the movie. In fact, Electro only shows up for a boss fight and there are three boss fights in a row towards the end of the game. It’s like they ran out of ideas and just thought, ‘Fuck it, let’s throw in a couple of generic villains from the cartoons.’

Reason Number 5

More on the content, once you get into the open world, you constantly have to complete these mini events in order to show the world you are a good person. If you don’t, then you become notorious and the police come after you. If you don’t do an event, you lose points regardless of whether it’s right in front of you or on the other side of the city. It’s completely ridiculous. You also have loads of collectibles to get, not to mention the main story that’s going on. The worst bit about it is the loading screens and the fact that a news report follows of Spider-Man’s heroic actions or inept failure every time you do one of the fucking things. Talk about dragging it out. Also if you fail to get everyone out of a burning building, world acts like it was Spider-Man’s fault in the first place!

Reason Number 6

The camera is a bag of wank. It never faces in the direction you want and when you have to go into buildings, you may as well just play with your eyes closed. It will honestly make it easier.

Reason Number 7

The combat system is a poor man’s Batman: Arkham Series game. Don’t rip off other games Spider-Man. Just fuck off.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 46 Achievements

After you’ve got over the pain of starting the game, there is the small matter of the 46 achievements to get. They can be broken down into three categories – main story, collectibles and dicking around. To be honest there aren’t a lot of dicking around achievements and only two are potential struggle points.

Both struggle points are secret achievements. The first is for using web strike to destroy an enemy’s body armour. The reason this is stupid is because it’s a secret and also it’s poorly worded. The description says ‘Destroy any armoured enemy using Web-Strike (secret)’ which give the impression you have to defeat the enemy rather than just destroying his armour.

The other secret achievement is for damaging the final boss with fire three times and this is only a piss take because it’s secret.

The main story is fine, the collectibles are also fine but there are also achievements for doing those stupid events a certain amount of times. There are also some difficulty specific achievements for playing through the game on the highest difficulty level. Completing the events and playing on the hardest difficulty do not go hand in hand. You have to do some fire rescue missions where you save people from a burning building. This is the only event that is difficult on the highest difficulty level and instead of trying to push through, I waited until I had completed the game then changed the difficulty to easy and got the last few I needed. But what I don’t understand is how everything else in the game is doable on the hardest difficulty except the fire rescue missions. Talk about imbalance.

The last achievement I unlocked was also a cunt. You have to collect all the various suits that Spider-Man has worn over the course of his comic book career. There are 13 suits to wear and you have to level them all up to the maximum level. The only way to do this is to continue playing for a few hours after you’ve finished the game, repeating the same things over and over and over again until you have all suits to level 8. Or you quit and throw out everything you own that even references Spider-Man. 

Downloadable Content – N/A

It’s a horrible game. Don’t play it.