Spiderman is back on our consoles in his latest game, SpiderMan: Web of Shadows, but is it an improvement over the last game which in all honesty was a huge disappointment? Well let’s find out shall we?

Web of Shadows sees Spiderman endowed with the powers of the black suit once more, allowing you to switch between good and evil Spidey at the press of a button. The story is not based on a movie this time round but is a unique tale made specifically for the game. At the beginning of the game Spiderman comes across Venom who is trying to hurt Mary Jane, during the fight Spiderman is then infected with some of the symbiote from Venoms suit, hence the reason for the return of the black Spiderman, anyway the rest of the game follows Spiderman through his story as he tries to restore calm to the city and free it from the symbiote which seems to be affecting even normal humans, who throughout the course of the game can be seen crawling up buildings.

One of the most enjoyable things about the spiderman games has always been swinging about the city using your web, I actually find it quite therapeutic, but then maybe Im just strange, anyway, swinging around is just as easy as in the last game, holding the right trigger will cast your web and attach it to the nearest structure, then all you need to do is tap the trigger and before you know it you are flying, albeit aided by a stick substance. Other controls include your handy Spidey sense, which by the tap of left trigger allows you to see enemies in the distance, even if they are behind a building, this also allows you to lock onto them and with a press of the Y button you can attach yourself to the enemies and fly towards them, this then allows you to beat seven shades out of them using some of the games great combos.

The combos included in the game are pulled off using the Y and X buttons, depending what suit you are wearing the effects of these moves will change, however whether you are in good or evil mode the moves you pull off will have a devastating effect on the enemy. Evil Spidey can also pick up cars and throw them around, allowing for some fun devastation, don’t expect any damage to the indestructible environment though.

One of combat moves I enjoyed pulling off the most came during a mission where you had to stop gang members from blowing up a petrol station, five cars where circling the block and your mission was to stop them, the way to do this was to highlight the first car using the left trigger, press Y to latch on and jump onto the vehicle and then press the X button attack and eventually destroy it, before moving onto the next one, of course you could use a combination of moves to destroy the vehicles but I fond this move quite sweet and very effective, though I have to admit to playing that mission quite a few times before I eventually got to grips with it.

When you are exploring the city as either Spiderman you will come across special spider tokens which are spread throughout the city, you will be required to collect a set amount of these and once you have achieved this you are then able to upgrade your health and swing, combine this with the fact that you will also collect experience for defeating enemies  which allows you to achieve new moves and you can see that this game has some hidden depth that you maybe never thought would be there.

So all good yeah? Well no, not quite, you see while Web of Shadows does have it’s moments, most of these are filled with what is a rather bland, boring, button bashing experience, time and again you will be tasked with beating up a set amount of enemies in order to progress and to be honest it is a bit hard to motivate yourself to do this after a while.

The game isn’t helped by the fact that it is just plain ugly, just like in the previous game the cities just don’t look right, the graphics just seem lacking in detail to me, the cities are very bare with hardly anyone in them, basically it just really smacks of a lack of effort, which may seem a bit harsh but it’s true, however the smoke effects look good, no really they do. The sound doesn’t really fare much better, Spiderman’s voice acting is annoying at best and the effects throughout the game are very unrealistic, perhaps these issues may not bother fans who just want a game from their favorite superhero on their console, but they sure bothered me.

Overall Spiderman Web of Shadows is the type of game I would go out of my way to avoid, i’ve never really enjoyed any of the previous games and to be honest the same can be said for this one, sure it’s certainly better than the previous game due to the included combo system but only just and unfortunately for me at least “only just” is not good enough.