Spider-Man: Web of Shadows/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Acceptable Targets: Emo teenagers are this, as Wolverine has no qualms with verbally tearing into them when chatting it up with Spider-Man.
  • Anticlimax Boss: Despite the final boss being humongous and absolutely intimidating, Venomzilla is a bit of a letdown as far as the battle itself goes. All it really comes down to is getting one of Venomzilla's heads to reach in front of the main torso while you attack once. About two or three hits defeats each head, while the most Venomzilla can do is lash out at you with tendrils and vomit up Symbiotes as backup. A bit of a let-down, especially compared to the previous battle with Symbiote Vulture.
  • Awesome Bosses: Thanks to this game having what's considered the best combat system out of any Spider-Man game, a lot of the game's boss fights are incredibly fun. The Vulture fight deserves a mention as it's ridiculously cool to use his Mooks as stepping stones while weaving in and out of his attacks as you go after him in the New York sky as you air-combo him into oblivion. Symbiote Vulture turns this Up to Eleven as the battle takes place even higher than his first battle, and you're having to deal with tons of Vultureling Symbiotes while you get to zip around S.H.I.E.L.D hovercrafts in order to stay in the air while absolutely pummeling the hell out of him with all the abilities you've accumulated by this point.
    • Electro also gets an honorable mention, as it's pretty fun to chase him all around New York City while beating him senseless while having to deal with TONS of lightning. It's a pretty tough battle, but it's also full of pulse-pounding action as you're dodging all the electricity he tosses your way.
    • The Venom fight at the middle of the game is also quite fun, as it's nothing more complicated than a straight-up brawl with Venom that spans over most of the city. Simple, but quite fun and intense.
  • Breather Boss: Most of this game's bosses aren't overly hard by any means, but Symbiote Electro is noticeably much easier than not only his non-infected counterpart, but the rest of the game's Symbiote infected bosses as well, given that he pretty much stays in one place where it's easy for you to wail on him.
  • Complete Monster: Venom, but only in the PS2 and PSP versions of the game, where he's explicitly stated to be in control of the symbiote and orchestrates the infection of New York as a way to kill Spider-Man. In the XBOX 360/PS3 versions, he's basically a tool through which the symbiote itself acts through.
  • Crowning Moment of Funny: During one of the optional conversations with Wolverine, Spider-Man will ask if Wolverine likes the Black Suit. Predictably, Wolverine hates it, and goes on to say that with it, Spider-Man looks like (Paraphrased) "One of those emo kiddies who whine on the internet about how hard their lives are while they haven't known true pain." Hearing Wolverine mock emo teens is funny enough, but it crosses into hilarious territory whenever Spider-Man asks if he has a "My-Face" page and Wolverine gets defensive about it, leading to Spider-Man mercilessly mocking him for it.
    • There's also a scene where the Tinkerer is being difficult when asked to help create a device to help with New York's Symbiote problem. After being met with tons of demands courtesy of the old geezer, Black Widow looses her cool and storms off, muttering angrily in Russian while Spider-Man, Vulture, Tinkerer and even the Kingpin all check her out as she leaves the room.
  • Demonic Spiders: Kingpin's mechs have guns that do an incredible amount of damage when they shoot at you. Fighting them head on is useless since they take forever to break down with your bare hands, so the way you're meant to deal with them is to toss a car at them. The main problem is that picking up and throwing a car is a rather slow business, and the Kingpin mechs will launch missiles at you pretty damn fast which means that more likely than not, you're going to have the car blasted out of your hands which will hurt you even more due to the combined forces of the missiles and exploding car.
    • Berserker Symbiotes are basically the Juggernaut in Mook form: They can do tons of damage by plowing right through you, and can dish out tons of punishment. It's also not that easy mounting an assault on them since they have an annoying habit of catching the player and mauling them with their tendrils.
  • Evil Is Sexy: Black Cat as usual, given her love for skin-tight bodysuits that show off huge amounts of cleavage. Her second Symbiote form also shows a lot of skin. Her first form could also count as well if you're into freaky-faced women with killer bodies.
  • Fan Nickname: "Venomzilla" (the giant multi-headed form Venom possesses during the end).
  • Goddamned Bats: Most heavy-hitting enemies aren't really hard per-se, but can be incredibly annoying to fight as they can launch you a good distance away with their attacks while you're helpless for a few seconds. It gets incredibly annoying when you're faced with packs of them as they'll all gang up on you and bounce you around like a pinball.
  • Good Bad Bugs: This game is very glitchy, but fortunately, most of the glitches are harmless and can lead to some very funny events. While I'm not quite sure as to how often they happen to other players, I've had things happen to me such as having a couple of police officers gun an innocent civilian to death who doesn't try to run away, seeing the physics glitch to where Spider-Man flung a car out of orbit, to a civilian walking backwards to the point where he looks like he's moonwalking during Electro's pre boss fight cutscene.
  • Moral Event Horizon: While all of Spider-Man's Black Suit choices are quite assholish, some really cross the line such as whenever the Park Aves and Rolling Seven's gang leaders try to make a truce, Spider-Man can simply let them gun each other down which really pisses off Luke Cage. Another noteworthy moment is the fact that the black suit choice whenever Venomzilla has been defeated is to flat out brutally murder Eddie Brock without giving him the choice of sacrificing himself to destroy Venomzilla. And while it doesn't end in the poor guy's death, Spider-Man brutally beating a helpless Electro can be viewed as this due to the fact that Electro is not only very mentally unstable, but also only violent this time due to being desperate to find his sister and being possessed by an alien symbiote.
  • Most Annoying Sound: "Spider-Man, halt!" "Spider-Man! CEASE and DESIST!" The policemen's orders for you to surrender after mistaking him for a murderer get annoying VERY fast, and will be a common occurrence since they always show up whenever random crimes are afoot.
    • During the Riker's Island segment, Rhino's rage-filled cries are extremely repetitive and will grow to grate your nerves the more you hear them.
  • Nightmare Fuel: Venom as usual due to his demonic voice and creepy obsession with Peter Parker, but the fact that he starts reproducing and ends up turning New York into an alien-infested hellhole makes it even worse.
    • And then, there's his final form as Venomzilla: not only is he huge, but he has multiple heads that are all filled with sharp, lovingly-rendered teeth. He's genuinely intimidating and quite the imposing villain.
    • At one point in the game, innocent civilians get infected by the symbiote but don't turn into Venom-like forms until a bit later and instead look like normal humans but act like rabid animals. The effect is a lot creepier than it sounds, not to mention that it's really unsettling to watch normal-looking humans barrel at you on all fours in an attempt to claw you to pieces.
    • Oh yes, Symbiote Wolverine is exactly as terrifying as it sounds: picture Wolverine beefed up thanks to the Symbiote with all moral boundaries removed, and now not only possesses the ability to grow tons of thick bony spines as armor, but also will stop at nothing to slaughter Spider-Man. Then, there's the way Spider-Man takes care of him on the Black Suit path by tearing him in half.
    • While Symbiote Vulture loses a bit of his edge thanks to the fact that he still keeps a very civil and polite manner of speaking, the way he casually strangles a S.H.I.E.L.D troop to death while the sound of him choking and desperately struggling to breathe can be heard is quite chilling. Hell, even Black Widow is noticeably uncomfortable upon hearing this, and is understandably ready to tear him to pieces.
  • Older Than They Think: The game's main gimmick is the ability to switch between the classic red costume & the symbiote at the press of a button - The same thing was done in the Spider-Man 3 tie-in game, only it was done via small quick-time events.
  • That One Boss: Wolverine's fighting style isn't all that hard to deal with, but ends up being hard anyway due to the fact that at random intervals, Wolverine will pause to ask you questions related to Spider-Man trivia in an attempt to see if he's battling the true Peter Parker. The main problem is that quite a few of these questions are quite obscure and if are answered wrong, Wolverine's health fills back up a lot. You starting to see the problem now? Hilariously enough, he's easier when you fight him later after being taken over by a symbiote, which completely removes any moral inhibitions and turns him into a bloodthirsty killing machine.
    • While a pretty thrilling boss in itself, Electro can be quite the tough opponent as well. He constantly zips around New York City while leaving huge electrical pillars that are easy to swing right into, and when cornered will fill the area you two fight in with tons of electric projectiles. It's very easy to rack up damage incredibly quickly if the player isn't paying attention or has bad reflexes.
  • That One Level: Riker's Island, hoo boy. Picture this: you're on a prison island where there is a never-ending stream of armed guards that will tear you up with rapid gunfire, mines placed everywhere deeper into the prison that will do tons of damage and very likely blow you into more mines should you step on them, and a mechanic where you must mount Rhino and have him charge around in order to bash your way into the prison where he will throw you off every few seconds and throw a tantrum for about a minute where he does a lot of hard hitting attacks. Combine that with the fact that Rhino is prone to glitching and will do things such as not destroy generators you need to him to break and will instead stop in place and inexplicably damage you, or even worse get stuck in a loop of him charging at a wall and being impossible to stop once he does so, and you have on HELL of an absolutely irritating level.


Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Spider-Man:_Web_of_Shadows/YMMV?oldid=1611583"