Following 2010’s critically praised Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions, game developer Beenox has come up with Spider-Man: Edge of Time, another title that hopes to improve upon last year’s Spider-Man formula and give the web slinger’s franchise a much needed revival.
Spider-Man: Edge of Time is a sequel of sorts to last year’s impressive Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions. In Spider-Man: Edge of Time, you once again play the role of the amazing webhead as he battles hordes of enemies and staple villains. However, instead of playing multiple Spider-Men like in Shattered Dimensions, Edge of Time focuses on only two: the well-known Amazing Spider-Man and the high-tech Spider-Man 2099.
The game begins in the distant future when Spider-Man 2099 (a.k.a. Miguel O’Hara) discovers a fiendish plot that involves Alchemax scientist Walker Sloan. Sloan managed to get his hands on a time machine and plans to rewrite history in his name. He eventually succeeds and turns New York City into a dystopian society. In order to restore time back to its original form, Spider-Man 2099 creates a mental link with present day Peter Parker and both of them battle in two separate timelines in order to repair the damage and defeat Sloan once and for all.
The Wii Spider-Man: Edge of Time game mostly involves battling baddies as they come at you in waves. Standard offensive moves involve punching and kicking, trapping enemies in chunks of web, and lifting heavy objects and smashing them down on someone’s head. While it gets repetitive soon enough, the brawl is still satisfyingly enjoyable. Furthermore, both Spider-Men have unique abilities of their own. Amazing Spider-Man can move at hyper speed, while Spider-Man 2099 can create copies of himself. All the traditional abilities are there for fans to enjoy as well, including the ever trusty spider sense and, of course, the web swinging.
The voice acting is excellent, with longtime Spider-Man voice veterans Josh Keaton and Christopher Daniel Barnes reading the scripts for Amazing Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2099 respectively. Also, Val Edward Kilmer lends his talent as the voice actor for Walker Sloan, making this release have as good a voice cast as you can get.
The storyline is moved along quite nicely by various sequences and provides enough momentum to keep players’ attention glued to the game. There are also appearances by major villains in the series including Anti-Venom, Dr. Octopus, Shocker, and Rhino as well as other characters in the Marvel Universe. Lastly, the story features a unique twist where the actions of either spidey can have drastic effects on each others timeline, and this is used by players to help the spideys overcome their own difficulties by interfering with objects in the past or future.
Unfortunately, the Spider-Man: Edge of Time Wii game is an inferior release when it is compared to last year’s Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions.
First, the graphics are dull and uninspiring. The levels usually revolve around the interior of Alchemax, the corporate building where Sloan resides. Spider-Man works best in wide and open environments, and seeing him boxed inside corridors and shafts can be disheartening.
The bad guys are your everyday generic enemies, and no matter how satisfying the beatdown is, you’d soon wish there was more variety to the villains. It also doesn’t help that Spider-Man: Edge of Time only has a fraction of the large villain cast that Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions had to offer, and Edge of Time’s limited characters simply do not provide enough star power for the game.
Lastly, some game mechanics still has bugs that need to be fixed, including a shaky camera and faulty web swinging and wall climbing abilities.
Spider-Man: Edge of Time is a single player game for the Wii. It can be played with the standard Wii remote.
While Spider-Man: Edge of Time is an above average game, it definitely is a step back from its predecessor Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions. Its satisfying combat mechanics, entertaining storyline, awesome voice acting, and good game momentum lays the foundation for an otherwise awesome game, but the low replayability, small cast of characters, subpar graphics, and minor glitches mar this release and prevent it from reaching, much less exceeding, the heights of its predecessor. Spider-Man: Edge of Time is still a good game, but unfortunately not the Arkham City Marvel counterpart we were looking for.