Nintendo Okie

I‘m a nerd with a top ten list of favorite superheroes.  Spider-Man is number three.  As much as I love Spidey, I’ve been a bit nervous of Activision’s annualization of our friendly, neighborhood, web head.  I really enjoyed the first Spider-Man tie-in game.  The second one was pretty good too.  After that, I skipped a few years and stopped back in to play Web Of Shadows which I really enjoyed.  Since then, two other Spider-Man games have come out, Shattered Dimensions and most recently Edge Of Time.  I was always curious of Shattered Dimensions but never got around to playing it.  So when Tony mentioned we had a review copy of Edge Of Time, I jumped on the opportunity to sling some web.

What You Need To Know
Edge Of Time is not a sequel to last year’s Shattered Dimensions but more of a follow up.  Instead of four different Spider-Men Spider-Mans Spiders-Man web heads, we have only two; Amazing Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2099.  The game opens with Spider-Man getting beat up by a supercharged Anti-Venom.  But as per the Hollywood standard of annoying me, this is simply a tease as the story is then rewound to an earlier time but in the future.  You follow that?  The real opening of the game sees Spider-Man 2099 infiltrate Alchemax (think OSCORP but futurey) to investigate a shady employee, Walker Sloan, experimenting with time travel.  As time-traveling, comic stories tend to go, the worst happens and Sloan succeeds in changing the past to make Alchemax a monopoly in both 2099 and our current time.  In order to return the time stream to its rightful course, Spider-Man 2099 establishes a link with Peter Parker and together they manipulate the world around them using “quantum causality” (a fancy way to say doing stuff in one time affects the other).  Like other Spider-Man games you can purchase new moves with orb fragments and upgrades to health and stamina using gold spiders.  Unlike other Spider-Man games, Edge Of Time is not a sandbox game.  The game plays with the Wiimote and Nunchuck ands that where things start to go wrong.

Bad Control Layout
Right off the bat, I knew something was wrong when I was told my main attack button was down on the d-pad.  I get the strong feeling the developer took the control mapping for the PS3 and 360 version and simply mapped it to the Wiimote.  The default layout has attacks mapped to the d-pad, jump on A and web swinging is B.  To control the camera, you have to first hold Z and then use the d-pad.  Even – and 1 are used in combat.  The controls felt very unintuitive as I would go from 1 to the top of the d-pad while trying to web zip around the room and fight enemies all at the same time.  If Peter Parker had to deal with this layout, I think even he would get tangled in his own webbing.  To the developer’s credit, there is a minimal amount of waggle in Edge Of Time.  The camera winds up your enemy most of the time as it isn’t easy to control and it often gets confused when you start crawling on walls.  I imagine this same control layout works better for the 360 and PS3 versions of the game.  To be fair, camera and control problems are a common thing with every Spider-Man game I have played.  The web head must be a developer’s nightmare; he can be swinging through the air then web zip to a wall and start crawling on it to then hang from the ceiling.

Feels Like A Tie-In Game
Throughout the whole game you fight the same handful of enemies; some have shields and you have to hit them from behind, some have big AOE moves that hit you from too far away, some can stun you for long periods of time, etc.  These are the same tricks studios use to artificially pad games lacking quality content.  The missions follow a tie-in structure as well; get to the destination before time runs out, protect these slow moving objects as dozens of enemies try to destroy them, you need three keys before you can travel through this door so go find them.  Normally, Spider-Man games are sandbox games but the entirety of Edge Of Time takes place in one building, so you can imagine the environments lack variety.  If I didn’t know any better I would say Edge Of Time came out the same week as a summer movie with the same name.  Activision’s annualization strikes again.

Glimpses Of Presentation Quality
There are moments in Edge Of Time where I felt the game was really trying to break free of its tie-in box.  The prerendered cutscenes look really good but there were only like five of them.  “Quantum causality” is used to change the layout of your surroundings.  If one Spider-Man gets trapped, the other changes the blue prints for the building and makes a ventilation shaft appear.  When the bad guys start busting up the building in the presnet, it will cause walls to pop up in the future forcing you to change course.  It’s a really cool concept but is under used to add variety to the missions.  The opening sequence with Spider-Man 2099 breaking into Alchemax was really awesome.  As he starts crawling through the ducts you get a low angle shot as if the camera were next to Spider-Man 2099’s knee; making me feel like I was in the duct with him.  As you crawl, you pass the opening credits on the walls ala Splinter Cell: Conviction.   The camera angle opens up when SM2099 enters a large manufacturing area to reveal the game’s title on the side of the duct.  The camera then returns next to SM2099 but this time over his shoulder looking down as you follow the bad guy and learn his evil plan.  The sequence had me thinking the whole game would match this presentation value, but sadly it doesn’t.

Web Of Challenges
That isn’t another of my bad puns but the name of the challenge system in Edge Of Time.  For each area of the game, there are specific tasks you can perform for rewards.  These could be as simple as clearing a mission or defeating so many enemies.  The rewards for these challenges are usually orb fragments which you can use to upgrade your heroes but sometimes you unlock alternate costumes.  It’s a clever addition that adds some replay value to the game.  The downside is I never had the desire to actively complete any of the challenges.  I always had enough money to buy the moves I wanted and after completing an area once, I felt no need to do it again.  Several times I felt I completed areas by luck alone and figured if I went back it would only result in my frustration.  Never the less, the options is there for the completionists out there.

Conclusion
$50 (USD) is a hard sell for Edge Of Time.  $60 is even worse.  There are flashes of greatness in Spider-Man’s latest outing but for the most part, the game feels like it was built under a strict time limit and budget; both being too small.  If Edge Of Time had a couple more things in its favor, it could be an alright game.  Unfortunately the tie-in vibe is too strong to overlook.  I think the only people who could get $50 worth of fun from this game are the Spider-Man die-hards.  They are never going to look at this review because they will buy it regardless.  With the way Activision is pumping out these games, it shouldn’t take long for it to drop in price.  In which case you would probably feel good picking it up for twenty bucks or so.

Final score –
Total play time – 7.5 hours
Completed the game on normal difficulty
Review copy provided by Activision
Screenshots from IGN.com