The Amazing Spider-Man by Gameloft has proved to be an incredible game with a great storyline, amazing cast of characters and stunning gameplay for a mobile game. Gameloft has seemingly done the impossible by bringing you a perfect Spider-Man experience to the palm of your hand. Even though the game does borrow from Total Mayhem, Gameloft ultimately improves on it incredibly to make it a fresh and unique game. The Amazing Spider-Man is not one to miss, folks.
The city of New York is Spider-Man's responsibility. The story of the game is plain and simple, however it is not a sequel like Beenox’s version of The Amazing Spider-Man for consoles. The storyline of this game is greatly inspired by the plot of the movie where Dr. Curt Connors is researching limb regrowth with Lizard DNA in hopes that he could eventually get back his missing arm. However, when things go wrong Connors eventually becomes The Lizard and starts transforming the city and begins to wreak havoc on all of New York. The story is quite linear as it does not involve Peter Parker’s parents, the police going after Spider-Man or anything else except finding out who created The Lizard and their intentions. There are easter eggs in the story such as a short appearance from Gwen Stacy and a mention of Richard Parker being the former lab partner of Connors, but it feels as though there are no complexities or evil masterminds at work. What also brings down the story of the game is that there are only 2 different bosses despite having multiple boss battles that all feel the same except for the final showdown with The Lizard which only adds on an excruciatingly tedious mini-game. The story does encounter some plot holes, especially a major one that would make you think this game is based off of the Raimi Spider-Man trilogy. A very interesting yet short and simple storyline that should run you about 6 hours isn’t bad at all for a mobile game.
Graphically, the game holds up pretty bad on an iPod Touch 4th generation (The device in which I played on.) as it is severely stripped down from what we have seen in the trailers. In the game, you will not see more than a few cars and civilians at a time. The game shows little effects such as fog, sunlight and radial blur which will be missing from the game to save the frame rate. However, Spider-Man still stands out as extremely detailed and easily has the best model and textures in the game. Graphically, the game holds up as well as Spider-Man in 2001 did. If you have somewhat of a nostalgia trip for those kinds of graphics but slightly enhanced, you’ll love this game.
A real ladies man. As with any Spider-Man game, we always look forward to how well the voice actor behind Spider-Man can hold up to the past versions. I am sorry to say that this version of Peter Parker is awful and definitely lacks any emotion or character. The man behind the spider in this game seems inexperienced in the voice acting field and is an extreme disappointment. The Lizard does sound villainous but sounds too much like Bane from the upcoming blockbuster The Dark Knight Rises. The score in this game is pretty bland as you don’t hear any sort of music while web slinging through the city by yourself. Most of the music is done during action sequences or cut scenes which really bring down the excitement of the game. With disappointing voice acting and a lackluster score, the sound department of this game definitely needs to step up their game for a sequel.
The Spider-Man: Total Mayhem fans can feel just at home with the combat system implemented in the game. When you start out, you’ll be reduced to simple punch and kick combos but as you evolve you’ll gain lots of skill points quickly to help evolve your combos to unleash ridiculous amounts of damage. The combat also seems to borrow from Spider-Man 2 and it probably will give you flashbacks, but I wouldn’t hold my breath on it being a duplicate. The combat system can get very deep if you choose to have it that way, or you can simply button mash to get the job done.
With the symbiote, he's unstoppable. For a mobile game with a short story, I have been repeatedly playing for a few hours a day even after completing the story because of the bonuses and replay factor it holds. After you’ve beaten the game, random events such as women being trapped in their burning cars and gangs attacking police officers are still active around the city for you to stop. The game also offers a flash back option allowing you to replay any mission of the game. If you really dislike the suit from the movie, you’re going to have to work extremely hard to collect 20,000 spiders (the in-game currency) to unlock the symbiote suit from the Raimi trilogy. In my eyes, The Amazing Spider-Man will always be replayable even after the game’s completion.
The seven dollar price-tag is extremely fair for the 1.35GB worth of Spider-Man action on your mobile device, especially if you are looking to have fun on long road-trips or you are stuck in the waiting room.
3 out of 5 stars.