THE YEAR IS 1962. God (sometimes also known by the more humble name of Stan Lee) is sitting in his office at Marvel publishing wracking his brain for a new idea for a super-hero. The Fantastic 4, the X-Men and a number of other previous titles are all doing well, having lead to a surge in demand for quality comic books. Fortuity shines on our intrepid hero and he glances across to see a spider making it’s way steadily up his office wall.

Forty-seven years later, this chance event had lead to arguably the most famous, most well recognised and best loved super-hero character in comic, television and film history. With dozens of off-shot comic lines, several reinventions and re-tellings of the original seventeen page short in what, at the time, was to be the final issue of Amazing Fantasy, and three smash hit films (even if the third was crap) to reintroduce good old Spidey to yet another generation. When you consider it like that, Spider-Man : Web of Shadows (in this instance for the Nintendo Wii) has a dizzying legacy to stand up to.

Something which it does in spectacular style.

From the city spanning opening, punctuated by an extremely famous piece of classical music (which I of course have forgotten the name of) and a Spidey that is decidedly more aggressive than we are used to seeing him, to the fist full of alternate endings. Dictated by your decisions at key moments in the story, you can influence not only the final outcome of the game, but also some of the more important events along the way as well.

You have a meter that shows your general leaning either towards the “good” traditional red Spider-Man, or the “bad” black Spider-Man. We were promised during early development of the game that, for the first time, we would actually b given the opportunity to play Spider-Man as an anti-hero. Or even an outright villain, and I’m happy to say that, for once, the pre-release claims were right on the money. Not just little acts of selfishness, but outright cruelty, such as (spoiler alert) during the battle with a symbiote infected Wolverine. Upon defeating him you are given the two options of how to proceed, and if you choose the black option Spidey lifts him above his head and, literally, rips him in half at the waste. Dropping him back onto the floor in two pieces.

I could go into great detail of the plot and game mechanics, but personally, I think the game is so well made that it needs nothing further. The more important part of a review, after all, is the simple question of whether it’s any good or not. And the answer is a resounding, explosive YES. The game is absolutely amazing, and as far as I’m aware is identical to the Playstation 3 and X-Box 360 release in everything except graphical complexity. Certainly the games rooftop opening is exactly the same and I am now looking forward to playing the HD version as well to compare the two.

Spideyness: 9.5/10

Graphics: 9/10
Gameplay: 9/10
Audio/Music: 9/10
Plot/Scripting: 9/10
Overall: 9.5/10