The following review is based off the Wii version. Your experience on other systems may vary.
As someone who played and enjoyed Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions, I was eager to try the sequel and see how well it matched up to the first.
Overall, this game makes several improvements on the first. The story and the urgency it creates can be felt a bit more and helps connect everything into a tighter storyline. The combat works as well as the first game, allowing you to string together combos from the start instead of buying them. The upgrade system refinements work nicely too, focusing less on buying combo strings and more on acquiring new moves and enhancing them. Not linking the upgrade unlocking to the Web of Challenges is a bit limiting at times when you want more, but it's not so bad in that they come at a steady enough pace to hold one over. Speaking of the Web of Challenges, the addition of medal rankings, ease of access and the ability to retry challenges make it much more fun and allows for much more difficult challenges, adding some quality re-playability. The little tweak of the gold spider icon flashing in proximity to one is also nice, considering those little buggers could be hard to find in the first game.
The only major downside are that the lock-on ability from the first game is gone for some reason, which makes it harder to focus on targets. This was particularly troubling during the boss battles and against the larger foes, but not enough to be crippling. The spider-sense is only a brief flash now, probably to keep from being a game breaker, so that's understandable. It's also a little harder to build up energy for upgrades as well, probably to compensate for the reduced number of them.
On the whole, I'd say this game is a strong follow-up to the first game that improves upon it in several ways. If you enjoyed Shattered Dimensions, you'll most likely like this game as well.
A solid follow-up.
The following review is based off the Wii version. Your experience on other systems may vary.
As someone who played and enjoyed Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions, I was eager to try the sequel and see how well it matched up to the first.
Overall, this game makes several improvements on the first. The story and the urgency it creates can be felt a bit more and helps connect everything into a tighter storyline. The combat works as well as the first game, allowing you to string together combos from the start instead of buying them. The upgrade system refinements work nicely too, focusing less on buying combo strings and more on acquiring new moves and enhancing them. Not linking the upgrade unlocking to the Web of Challenges is a bit limiting at times when you want more, but it's not so bad in that they come at a steady enough pace to hold one over. Speaking of the Web of Challenges, the addition of medal rankings, ease of access and the ability to retry challenges make it much more fun and allows for much more difficult challenges, adding some quality re-playability. The little tweak of the gold spider icon flashing in proximity to one is also nice, considering those little buggers could be hard to find in the first game.
The only major downside are that the lock-on ability from the first game is gone for some reason, which makes it harder to focus on targets. This was particularly troubling during the boss battles and against the larger foes, but not enough to be crippling. The spider-sense is only a brief flash now, probably to keep from being a game breaker, so that's understandable. It's also a little harder to build up energy for upgrades as well, probably to compensate for the reduced number of them.
On the whole, I'd say this game is a strong follow-up to the first game that improves upon it in several ways. If you enjoyed Shattered Dimensions, you'll most likely like this game as well.