It would seem that comic books should make one of the easiest transitions to video game form. However, for the most part many comic book video games seem to either be buggy, boring, or full of issues that many other games manage to get right. As we’ve seen before in games such as Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, the titles know what to aim for but often end up missing the mark. Unfortunately, Spider-Man: Web of Shadows really doesn’t get much right, either. While at some points it can offer genuine fun, Spidey’s better off sticking to blockbuster movies or, I don’t know, comic books. 

Your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man’s sweetheart, Mary Jane, is being attacked by the nefarious Venom (Eddie Brock). Spider-Man intervenes, as expected. However, during fight number 728 between the two of them, Venom infects Spider-Man with a particularly nasty symbiote. Finishing the fight rather than stopping to take note of what just happened, Spider-Man’s suit blackens as a result and he continues to grapple with Venom. As the fight ends and Mary Jane is wheeled away on a stretcher with a broken arm, Spider-Man is faced with the fact that he has now been infected by the symbiote that plagues Venom, and that once nearly ruined his life. From there on as he cleans up the city teaming up with other superheroes, it’s known that he will have to make plenty of good or bad decisions. The remainder of the game revolves around taking out several baddies in order to get closer to and vanquish Brock. While doing so, Spider-Man must wrestle with his newfound demons as well as his conscience to do the right thing.

Players are presented with a sprawling city with which to explore and carry out missions in a style similar to games such as Grand Theft Auto; i.e., use the minimap to arrive at a location on the map, talk to someone to trigger a mission, and then complete said mission. The majority of missions available to tackle are simple: complete X amount of villains, perform X amount of combos, locate X, etc. While swinging through the streets, Spider-Man can also locate injured civilians and carry them to the hospital. Each successful mission awards Spidey experience points and upgrade points, so it’s definitely in your favor to complete as many as possible. However, running around the city saving injured men and women, assaulting gang members, and taking out boss characters does get extremely old and quite predictable.

One would assume these types of missions would plague only the beginning of the game, but alas, they are present for the entirety. When Spider-Man is not beating up random baddies in the streets, he’s whooping up on villain bosses or performing a chase mission. This is extremely disappointing, seeing as the city is large enough to accommodate many different types of missions aside from your everyday "kill everyone" directives. This brought down what could have been a much higher-quality Spider-Man title, because we all know the life of a superhero can be much more glamorous than gang battles and saving old people. Thankfully, the boss battles are quite interesting and enjoyable. Taking down Venom for the first time using cars, and meeting Black Cat after chasing her furry behind through the city, are actually engaging experiences. However, since boss sequences are few and far between you’ll have to make do with beating up nondescript criminals and symbiotes in order to progress.

Even though Spider-Man is usually seen being a hero, along the course of the game he will be faced with decisions that will determine what kind of superhero he will ultimately end up as. For instance, super-strong Luke Cage asks the web-slinger to help clean up the city streets from gangs. Do you kill all of the gang members or try to reach a peaceful solution? Depending on your choice, Spider-Man will be awarded "red" or "black" points, representing good or bad, respectively. Similar to the system in Mass Effect and other games before it, the game will tally up how many good or bad decisions you make and reward you with an ending based on how you performed. While this does add a bit of an interesting layer to the game, it’s been done countless times before, and better. It feels as though it was lazily tacked on as a way to encourage gamers to replay the game. There are even achievements that are unobtainable if you make certain decisions, so that you will be forced to replay it a different way if you are a completionist. If there were more instances in the game that actually called for Spidey to have to evaluate his situation, then this aspect of the game would have felt more fleshed-out rather than just a haphazard addition to a mediocre title.

Aside from fighting crime and the occasional boss character, Spider-Man can also attempt to collect all of the red and purple spider bonuses scattered all over the city. It takes little effort to collect them, seeing as they are often in plain view and do not take much skill to obtain. This is another lazy addition, seemingly serving only to prolong what would be an extremely short game otherwise.