With the recent announcement of Spider-Man: Edge of Time, another web-swingingless Spider-Man game,  I decided to take a look back on the series’ slow and painful descent into darkness over the past couple of years.

Lets face it, Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions was a mess. The developer, Beenox (also developing Edge of Time), seemed to have spent too much time on making four Spider-Mans seem interesting, instead of just making one Spider-Man perfect. The madness that came with jumping from one Spider-Man to the next made for a game that was easily forgettable, and deeply regrettable. Honestly, my largest issue with this game was that somewhere along the line, somebody at Beenox decided that it would be a good idea to get rid of the open-world web-swinging. Yeah, the thing that made Spider-Man games fun.

The last game I have knowledge of that actually included open-world web-swinging was Spider-Man: Web of Shadows, and that game was decent at best. Aside from all of its technical glitches though, Web of Shadows had some solid core game play concepts, as well as a pretty enjoyable storyline. Still, the most enjoyable part of this game was the ability to swing around New York City, taking out bad guys at your leisure.

I guess I just don’t understand why developers have been venturing away from a perfect concept. Even today I still consider Spider-Man 2 as one of my all time favorites, and that game was the king of open-world web-swinging. Call me old fashioned, but I still believe in the concept of if something works, it probably doesn’t need fixing.