Open World Manhattan Returns


Activision’s most recent series of Spider-Man games have taken the character into a few interesting locations across both time and space, but with the soon-to-be-released film, Activision and Beenox are preparing for a new game that takes place just after the feature film.

The Amazing Spider-Man puts you back in an open world Manhattan similar to the previous movie-based games. With his trusty, upgradable webslingers on-wrist, Spidey can explore the massive city and hunt down everything from common low-life thugs to major super villains like Rhino, Iguana, Vermin and Scorpion, but the main enemy of this story seems to be the scientist Alistair Smythe and his army of Spider-Slayer robots.

Based on the hands-on time we had with The Amazing Spider-Man, we were able to get a good feel for how Spidey behaves and moves in the Manhattan high rises. Web swinging in such an open area takes some getting used to after several games of being confined to claustrophobic levels, but it doesn’t take long before you … get back into the swing of things … sorry, had to do it.

While launching yourself around, you can freeze the game and look around in first-person view in order to decide exactly where and how you want to land and the game shows viable locations on everything from flag poles to the sides of building. Once you’ve found your target, you are on your way to easily sticking what should be a difficult landing. As a result, you get a bit of the feeling of just how acrobatic Spider-Man is without it being too convoluted or causing you to accidentally land in places you don’t want to.

Another interesting aspect of the game is how closely the camera sticks to our friendly neighborhood webslinger. This close-up approach really shows off how well the developers nailed the new suit and seems to help keep you, the player, in the middle of the action. In order to help this effect, there is very little U.I. on the screen so there isn’t too much of a distraction from the world around you.

During our hands-on time with The Amazing Spider-Man, we got to try out two missions. One was a car chase that had us hopping from speeding car roof to car roof in the hopes of getting to the suspect's vehicle. Once there, it was a matter of dodging bullets while trying to get to the driver, and ultimately net the car in a giant web for the police that were right behind us.

The other mission involved taking on a Spider-Slayer. The whole fight took place in the air. We had to keep a close pursuit on the flying robot and get onto its back. After a few well-placed blows, it would throw us off and we would go after it again. This part did seem to get a bit repetitive, but this feeling was often broken by the massive electric pulses the machine would occasionally send out.

Of course, as an open world game, there are various side missions and collectibles. Some of the side missions include photography tasks to help keep Peter Parker employed, while the collectibles consists of comic books scattered across the city.

The Amazing Spider-Man is scheduled for release June 26th on the PS3, 360, PC, Wii, and both the 3DS and DS, so check out the trailer in the meantime.