The Amazing Spider-Man swings into familiar, problematic territory

When The Amazing Spider-Man came out for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, it ran into its fair share of monotony, but it also opened up a world that we had gotten used to with prior Spider-Man games on the PlayStation and Xbox, when Treyarch was in charge of the franchise. Beenox did quite a good job with the formula, creating a movie-licensed game that managed to live up to its material.

Now, nine months later, we're getting a port of the game for the Wii U, which not only includes all the original missions that it's become known for (main and secondary), but also the bonus DLC content included right on the disc, such as the Stan Lee chapter (where you swing around as the comic book legend, chasing after pages) and the Rhino Rampage mini-game. Convenient? Sure, if you're trying to save hard drive space.

But you can just tell that The Amazing Spider-Man is a pretty lifeless port. Despite being a solidly structured game, it's riddled with flaws, and you'll notice what comes up within the first few minutes of play.

Spider-Man is so badly polished on the Wii U that, if you weren't holding the bulky controller, you could almost confuse it for the Wii version. Despite the acceptable frame rate, the game has jaggy buildings and edges aplenty, as if someone forgot to turn on the smoothing effect. Also, there's screen tearing that's hard to look past, especially as you try to get the hang of swinging over the city. Finally, the load times are a bit ridiculous – even for comic book fare such as this. RPG's, we understand...but Spider-Man?

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