The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) is much better than its Metacritic score

I just finished The Amazing Spider-Man 1 (2012) on my PS3. I feel this game is quite underappreciated for what it has to offer, which is a really joyful ride through a colourful and funny world with a nicely presented storyline.

I'm not a Spiderman fan at all, never watched a movie. So I don't care if it's canon or not or if it does the franchise justice. I just played the game because I like shiny open world action adventures.

The Batman Arkham or Infamous series from that era still get a lot of rave, but I had to dig quite deep to stumble across this one. It only got 71% on Metacritc, so I didn't expect too much.

But I'm surprised how good it was. It ticked a lot of boxes for me.

• nice movie atmosphere with a decent story
• nice, colourful open world that actually feels inhabited
• ironic humour instead of gritty seriousness
• great voice acting actually
• combat that's fun yet not gory (no blood, no real deaths)
• the web-swinging through Manhattan alone is awesome

Now the story won't win any awards, I'm sure you could say there are many games that get all of the mentioned individual points done better. You could argue the "rescue button" (web retreat) makes combat too easy (I only used it when almost knocked out). I would have loved more missions in the open world instead of linear inside levels. And yeah, the side quests/collectibles are rather repetitive (but isn't this the case in most sandbox games).

But still this was quite an awesome combination of open world and linear action adventure for me. I put almost 30 hours in it and 100%ed it, which I don't do with every game.

One of the major advantages I found was the way it unlocked its content. After each mission the open world filled with a reasonable amount of side stuff for a leisure break until the next mission. I found it a nice mixture to go down the sewers or inside of a skyscraper for a mission and then web-swinging through the city doing various stuff.

I've finished Uncharted 1, Infamous 1 and this one currently and I must say I'd put all of them pretty even. To be honest, I liked Infamous 1 very much but Spider-Man was actually more fun in the end. I didn't have to force me through it but hoped it would last a little longer, which is always a good sign.

I don't know if I'll do a second walkthrough but for sure I'll keep it in fond memories.