Spider-Man: Edge of Time
Sling when you're winning.
Spider-Man 2099, meanwhile, remains the close-up fighter, aided by a new ability that lets him create decoys. It's great for getting behind enemies with shields at the front, and it's a smart addition to his capoeira-flavoured kicks and jumps, and his nasty talon-reinforced punches. As with the last game, both characters are beautifully animated with a lovely range of speedy moves and exaggerated poses, and they're well-voiced, too, although Neil Patrick Harris has been replaced by Josh Keaton. Hello, Josh.
Breaking up the ceaseless brawling, however, is Edge of Time's really big idea: cause-and-effect moments, which erupt as Amazing makes changes in his timeline, altering things for 2099. Amazing's fairly restrained with this, by the looks of it – I'd spend ages just moving chairs around unexpectedly, or opening manhole covers – and the whole thing is tightly scripted, presumably to ensure that the game doesn't devolve into chaos.
The example shown so far has 2099 battling a giant robot that can only be defeated if Amazing finds the original prototype and destroys it. It's hardly Sports Almanac levels of time-rupturing, but it's a nice touch and should keep things moving along in an entertaining fashion.
Elsewhere much of the structure of the original game remains: you'll collect orbs, defeat rooms of enemies, and unlock new powers and probably buy additional suits. There's no word yet on the villains, who, in one of Shattered Dimension's nicer touches, were threaded through each level as prolonged encounters.
Equally, it's hard to judge from such a brief reveal whether Peter David, the new writer, will bring as much charisma to the scripting as Dan Slott did with the previous outing. (David wrote Shadow Complex, which was a great game, but not because of the dialogue or characters. And here he gets to work with a great Marvel hero this time around, rather than a cast dreamt up by a windy old right-wing homophobe.)
Spidey still hasn't had that fabled Arkham Asylum moment yet, then, by the looks of things, but Edge of Time should be another smart cartoon brawler with an eye for set-piece spectacle. Grown-up comic book fans might want a little more ambition in their video games, but it's nice to know that Marvel's younger audience – the ones so crazed by Spider-Man they'd presumably want anything with their hero in it – are in safe hands once again.