Spider-Man: Web of Shadows part 5 - Conclusion

To conclude Spider-Man week, I'll give my final thoughts on the middling-to-poor game, Spider-Man: Web of Shadows by looking at the controls and overall presentation.


Web of Shadows incorporates a lot of motion based controls. It has to. It's a Wii game. The problem is, these motions are very similar, and you may end up executing the wrong attack just from a subtle movement of the nunchuk. For instance, to lock onto an opponent (which is essential due to the dodgy camera) you flick the nunchuk down. To change costumes, you flick the nunchuk left or right. While locking onto an enemy, you may end up changing your costume, or half way through your combo, you'll change costume, breaking your planned attack strategy. Furthermore, Web-striking and Web-swinging use very similar motions, so you may try to web strike an opponent and end up swinging into the distance, wasting time and losing your hit combo counter. Very frustrating.

The game also features quick-time events, but these are few and far between, so be prepared for them, but they aren't too hard anyway.

Apart from this however, the controls are pretty fluid and easy to pick up, and because its an easy game, you'll be forgiven for the occasional mistake.

The presentation is another matter. The menu screens are fairly basic, and the type is very small, meaning you may squint or need to move closer to the screen just to read what is there, unless you have a fairly large TV.

Do you remember instruction manuals? Games seem to have stopped using them altogether now, and Web of Shadows is the last game I remember that came with a manual, but the presentation of it was terrible! This really annoyed me, as it was the first time I had come across such a poor instruction manual. As a kid, after I had bought a new game, I would read the instruction manual in the car or on the bus home, to psych myself up for playing the game. The manual that comes with Web of Shadows is bland, contains no in-game shots and, worst of all, contains inaccurate controls. The combinations listed do not match those in the game. For instance, how to do Special moves or to dodge.

Conclusion:

A satisfying, yet flawed, addition to a long series of Spider-man games, which will delight hard-core fans and appeal to the uninitiated. Its an easy game, but that means you can just kick back and enjoy swinging around the large city beating down on criminals and monsters, but don't expect anything great.