Spider-Man: Edge of Time (PS3)
With how much Spider-Man’s web swinging through cities is emphasized in many 3D Spider-Man games, it will likely sound a little odd to hear the action game Spider-Man: Edge of Time takes place in only one building. Not only does it take place entirely in one location, but a time travel system where you can influence the future with actions taken in the present also feels like its scope might be limited by this choice. While some limitations are certainly noticeable and some contrivances like a large jungle room try to add some setting variety, Spider-Man: Edge of Time doesn’t feel too cramped thanks to the absolutely massive Alchemax skyscraper having room to move and a few different ideas for how it’s tale across two time periods can connect.
Walker Sloan is one of the higher-ups at the Alchemax Corporation in the year 2099, and while the company made its name in chemicals and genetic testing, investigation into time travel has lead to Sloan seeing an opportunity. Using their fledgling time travel tech, Sloan travels far into the past to establish the company earlier. Things don’t go quite as planned thanks to the Spider-Men of the and present and future though. Peter Parker, the original costumed superhero under that name in the game’s present of 2011, and Miguel O’Hara, an Alchemax employee turned vigilante in the advanced future of 2099, are connected through time due to the effects of the flawed time travel system, allowing them to coordinate on reverting Sloan’s changes to history. An interesting wrinkle emerges in this cooperation though, as only Miguel seems to understand the timeline is changing, Peter Parker now part of a version of the present where he’s actually an Alchemax employee as well.
Many of the more interesting parts of the game’s plot tie to Peter Parker’s odd place in the chronology of the game. Not the Spider-Man most people know anymore due to the disruption to world history, Peter is playing catch up on figuring out what’s wrong with the world and with a path between times opened up, he also ends up with some knowledge that causes even greater confusion for the conflicted hero. Miguel has things figured out pretty well so mostly he’s there to try and keep the original Spider-Man on task and up to date, but the fact they can talk through time also means Peter is able to always have someone on hand to quip at. There are surprisingly few recognizable Spider-Man foes in this title and even fewer are decent conversationalists, so Peter and Miguel bickering can serve up some comedy and drama and keep things from being too quiet when one of these Spider-Men is a famous wise-cracker. Some more time exploring some of the questions the time hopping leads to so character shifts can feel a little less abrupt would be a benefit, but Spider-Man: Edge of Time is confident enough in its plot to have stretches dedicated to just establishing the setting or letting characters talk and it likely ends up the most memorable aspect of the game because of it.
Spider-Man: Edge of Time lets you play as both the Amazing Spider-Man of the present and Spider-Man 2099, but the linear narrative means you switch between them at set points. Between them, the two have many similarities like being able to swing around on strands of web and climb walls, and the Alchemax building is actually so large in parts that a possibly comedic but actually plausible image in the end credits implies it might be similar in height to Mt. Everest. That absurd size means it can have areas like the earlier mentioned interior jungle as well as multiple sections where Miguel plunges downwards through very long vertical shafts, but Spider-Man: Edge of Time does avoid just building a city on the inside. You’ll have high ceilings in most rooms and sometimes multiple floors have an open space between them, but navigating with your webbing is sometimes a challenge as well, either to grab the many goodies scattered around you spend on upgrades or to quickly navigate a fight or escape danger. Most of the time it works as you’d like and the few moments where some webbing or crawling becomes a bit testy due to odd camera angles don’t often endanger you enough to really grow irritated by the brief flubs. While you never spend a second off Alchemax property, there is enough room within it to embrace the agility and flexible movement of the two heroes.
The Amazing Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2099 are technically in different locations if you consider time part of the setting, and since Alchemax has 88 years to change between when Peter explores it and Miguel does, there is room for some shifts in aesthetic. Not many of these feel too impactful sadly, Miguel facing foes who are more technologically advanced at times but it feels like the future and present have a lot of technically similar enemies save for some genetic experiments that only exist in Miguel’s time. One of the game’s more interesting ideas to make the differences between time feel tangible though is the way the quantum causality field comes into play. Time is fluid during the events of Spider-Man: Edge of Time, meaning the present and future aren’t quite settled into their final state. This allows for the game to wave off some of the questions raised about how Miguel could even be aware of Sloan’s plans after they’ve already changed the past, but it also means at different points in the adventure you will do something in the present and it will impact an area in the future. The more impressive ones often involve some sort of time pressure where the Spider-Man in the present has to start breaking up something like the genetic lab or a robot assembly to help the Spider-Man in the future escape battles where he’s going to die if you can’t even the odds quickly enough. Other times it does feel a little hard to believe that a bit of the building being adjusted in a convenient matter was left untouched for decades after your actions, so at times this nifty concept feels less thought out or more like just opening doors across time.
Battles are where the two Spider-Men feel the most distinct, the two perhaps most differentiated by their primary way of avoiding damage. Amazing Spider-Man can activate his Spider-Sense to start automatically dodging nearby dangers without interrupting your actions, this almost an invincibility mode that even lets you walk through laser grids unharmed. It’s a great way for shaking off a bevy of incoming attacks since you’ll often be ganged up on, but its use is perhaps not limited enough as it can too often invalidate some of the danger in a fight. Spider-Man 2099’s damage avoiding skill is a bit more complex, Miguel instead leaving behind an illusory copy of himself that enemies will try to attack instead of you. Miguel isn’t invincible during it, but it can also be used to trick machines into firing at things like locked doors or other enemies, it having some puzzle-solving potential when most of your forward progress is otherwise normal navigation and poking around until some bad guys pop up. It does still perhaps make the fighting a bit easier at times than it should be, but Spider-Man: Edge of Time isn’t a complete pushover thanks to it stacking most conflicts with a quite a few baddies that you can’t just keep them at bay with basic combos.
Peter and Miguel do fight in different ways, the Amazing Spider-Man more a brawler who relies on punches and Spider-Man 2099 slashes with his claws. Both are fairly acrobatic in a fight and able to weave in webbing to pull in or disable enemies, but some of their more distinct moves aren’t so easy to work in. The many floating Orb Fragments that give you a little more to look for while exploring go towards ability upgrades, but since many of the most impressive and unique ones require you to enter Overdrive Mode where you built up stamina by not utilizing your dodge options, it’s not often available or even really worth the effort. You still do need to mix up your attacks and there’s some base satisfaction to swapping between your normal attack options, but it can start to grow rote as battles are fairly frequent and not always set apart with something like new dangers or a unique location serving as the arena. So much of Spider-Man: Edge of Time’s action hinges on these fights and even the occasional boss doesn’t always break you out of the reliable attack patterns you’ll build up, but it is at least telling that even when the game has a localized time stop power you can utilize, you do still need to work a bit to win a fight. It is less about varying up the type of your attacks and more knowing when to swap through a small set of options on repeat, the combat not boiling down to a complete cake walk.
The game does try to spice up combat and even exploration a bit more with challenges. While sometimes you’ll have a symbol pop up warning you of a nearby Golden Spider you can grab that goes towards upgrades to character attributes like health and stamina, sometimes you’ll enter a new space and be told a new challenge is active. Often these involve clearing the objective of the current area quickly or winning a fight with a certain combo or without taking damage, but rather than just displaying it you do need to press a button to see the parameters and the rewards don’t feel substantial enough to really make completing them feel like an interesting extra pressure. You can repeat them later too from the pause menu, but they feel like something layered over top rather than something the action is built around. Since you don’t see the goals on screen during them and the rewards feel pretty paltry you could easily disregard this aspect of the game and since they tend to reward you just for doing well instead of injecting variety into how you play they don’t quite energize the action enough to stave off the gradual monotony that sets in.
THE VERDICT: Some neat integration of time travel and a plot with some interesting ideas helps keep Spider-Man: Edge of Time from feeling like it goes on too long. Enemy encounters do require you to be active and reactive but at the same time your options are either too specific in use to rely on or too broad in their function that the fights start to fall into a similar mold even when new enemy types or area shapes work to stave off that repetition some. Few unique segments and boss battles also mean it rarely has huge highlight moments outside its story, but enough does change throughout the Alchemax building that it doesn’t devolve into constant button mashing conflicts. You’ll explore a little, face some time crunches, and get thrown a different gameplay type like Miguel’s long dives, and while not often exciting, they keep Spider-Man: Edge of Time a bit above mundane and that’s enough that it stays pretty decent throughout.
And so, I give Spider-Man: Edge of Time for PlayStation 3…
An OKAY rating. The 2D platformer version of this game over on the DS is a lot more creative with how the future and past differ but Spider-Man: Edge of Time on PS3 definitely has it beat in story and action, but mostly because the comparison is a little unfair. Spider-Man: Edge of Time on PS3 is competent and the battle system isn’t totally bland because you do need to mix in your webs and know when to shift your attacks around in a crowd, but the ability to press a button and mostly avoid damage for a bit feels very strong and a little too useful to pass up. If instead conflict more often asked for the Overdrive special abilities rather than you handling the masses by briefly ignoring incoming attacks with Spider-Sense or the decoy, then earning them through upgrades would give the orb collection some more purpose too. So many upgrades feel tied to powers you won’t really need to whip out so it also makes engaging with the less than creative challenges barely worth the attention, the game squandering a concept that could have pushed thing beyond the basic satisfaction of speedily pummeling enemies. There’s enough situational diversity that it doesn’t become fully automatic even if it starts to wane in its ability to hold your interest with the fights over time, but it definitely feels like ideas such as the opportunities to help the other Spider-Man across time could have cropped up more to add the kinds of extra goals or pressure that make you think of battles as more than a situation where you clear a room by smacking everyone in it around. The Alchemax setting actually doesn’t hinder the game as much as one might expect save in areas like the visual department, but having a jungle, archive, and genetics lab does lead to distinct settings and they’re clearly shaped to let you swing around or zip to perches so the failing is often more on setting them apart across time rather than within the same time period.
Spider-Man: Edge of Time does limit its scope intentionally by being entirely indoors though, but other areas where that scope is limited feel more like what leads to things being serviceable rather than exciting. Few boss characters to guide things means most of the game feels like conversations between Miguel and Peter, a limited range of distinct enemies means the battles don’t grow in composition enough, and some limited ideas on how the present can change the future means some of the more intriguing ideas don’t come into play often enough. The movement and flow both Spider-Men tap into keeps progression pretty clean and you are shown enough situational variety to hold the plot up, but despite offering two Spider-Men to play as, Spider-Man: Edge of Time feels like its half the game it could have been had there been more room to delve into its strengths.