Spider-Man 2 PS4

Spider-meh

The Batman: Arkham series of games have a lot to answer for. On the one hand, they showed how to make a truly great superhero tie-in, while on the other, they’ve inspired what feels like an endless procession of imitators that borrow heavily from its formula but fail to deliver experiences of a similar quality. Swinging onto the PlayStation 4, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is taking another crack at this recipe, with the hope of spinning some gameplay gold rather than the cobwebs of its predecessor.

As with the first The Amazing Spider-Man game, the sequel tells a very different tale to that of its cinematic twin, and seems to have forgotten most of what happened in the first game to boot. As the title starts, Spidey is hunting Uncle Ben's killer through the underworld of New York. He soon finds that the city's thugs are tooling up for a major gang war, while at the same time, a serial killer is butchering criminals as each faction blames the other for the murders. As a result, it’s up to Peter Parker's alter-ego to get to the bottom of the mystery by tracking down the killer and averting an urban war in the process.

Story issues aside, swinging around as the heroic wall crawler is still as fun as it was in the first game, which is good seeing as you’ll spend a significant amount of time travelling around the open world version of New York City tackling crime. Using the left and right triggers to fire off your respective web slingers helps you arc through the sky, and is particularly useful for when you want to swing down the wide avenues that criss-cross the world. Should you want to stray from the roads, then you’re best off using Spider-Man’s ‘Web Rush’, which when triggered slows time, allowing you to pick a point within a certain radius that you want to leap to. Covering ground in this way can help you bounce around the world quite effectively as movements can be chained together, letting you pick more complex paths around the environment than the basic web slinging allows.

As you work your way through the fourteen main story missions, you’ll not only be using your powers to get around, but also to hide in the shadows or engage thugs in open combat. Most of the missions are made up of arenas which allow you to stealthily go about your business, and they’re structured in a very similar way to those found in the recent Batman games. In other words, you’ll be hiding on perches that give you a good view of the area while using your Spider-Sense to track the path of the guards, picking them off one by one or avoiding them completely.

Should you decide that skulking around in the shadows isn’t the sort of thing the protagonist would do, then you can also confront your enemies head on. Brawls play very similar to other titles that have a counter heavy combat system, and you’ll be tackling a variety of foes armed with everything from guns to their bare fists. When an enemy is about to attack, your Spider-Sense will tingle, highlighting the foe in red, and a quick press of the triangle button will trigger a counter, letting you block the attack and turn the tables on your assailant. Sound familiar? Well, the similarities don’t quite end there, as you’ll also come across baddies that require the use of specific skills in order to take them down.

Unfortunately, having to tackle crimes in order to avoid being pursued by this hi-tech group outstays it welcome surprisingly quickly. This is mainly due to the fact that there are only a few different types of events which all have very little variety to them. When you’ve rescued someone from under a block of rubble for the tenth time, or disposed of your fifth bomb, you’ll be bored by the whole process, only going through the motions in order to stop the drones and turrets from ruining the fun of swinging around the world.