SPIDERMAN: WEB OF SHADOWS

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For this, the latest take on the massive multi-million dollar Spiderman film franchise, Activision have gone off the script. Spiderman: Web Of Shadows sets itself free of the scripted film stories and offers you the chance to choose the outcome with some web-slinging and city-street fighting thrown in for good measure.

New York City has become overrun by a ‘deadly’ symbiote army lead by the eponymous Venom character and it is your job to curb their enthusiasm. As usual you have a wide array of swinging moves, fighting combos, web-related defences and offences at your disposal. But this time you can choose to don the black suit, and play as ‘emo’ spiderman who’s all power and brooding, and tentacles.

This is the big new thing – how much you choose to go to the dark side dictates your characters development in terms of new moves, how civilians react to you, which characters join your side and, ultimately, which path the game takes. Choose the red suit and you could be fighting alongside Wolverine, choose the black suit and you could be smooching The Black Cat… and causing Wolverine a whole heap of problems.

The gameplay is slick and swinging round the city raining chaos on endless bad guys is still a hell of a lot of fun – plus you can now fight wall-climbing symbiotes on the sides of buildings which can be a bit exciting. But the fighting is still limited and the dialogue is the worst thing since Spiderman 3.

You’ll find yourself using the same sequence of a few moves over and over again, only to be faced with another group of slightly more bad guys to work through in the same way. If that’s your bag then great but if you’re looking for something with a bit more edge then you’d best look elsewhere. While it seems like replayability would be high – finding out what would have happened if you’d chosen the red path – it just doesn’t seem worth it when it comes down to it. The intro sequence is the best thing about this one.