I got the Amazing Spider-Man game yesterday, and was up until three this morning playing it despite having to be at work by 9. I love this game. It's like Arkham City, only your protagonist isn't an emotionless hyper competent brick this time around. The voice acting is very good on the part of the major characters, though there is the inevitable problem of overly repeated lines by NPCs and eventually by Spiderman. But there's a few moments where it really shines and I found that drew me into the story.
Swinging around the city is a ton of fun, and once you figure out web rush mode you can change directions on a dime. Combat isn't quite as flowing as the batman games but still a lot of fun. You also get the feeling that Spiderman is hardly invincible, you aren't some indestructible badass obliterating the opposition. If you aren't on the ball even fighting thugs, they will own you. This is also reinforced as his suit slowly gets destroyed, though I think they took that a bit far. By the end of any major plot mission it's practically shredded. I can't help but wonder if Parker spent the last 6 months doing nothing but making spares, as I've gone through half a dozen of them already. Supposedly you can unlock more variations but I haven't found out how yet.
One problem with the game is that the boss fights are very repetitive. When its Smythe's robots, it's hit them a few times and then attack the weak point for massive damage. For the "cross-species" bosses (who are mindless monsters, which I think is unfair treatment for Scorpion and Rhino, but that could be just me) it's dodge initial attacks until you figure out the pattern, abuse them repeatedly. Scorpion was especially bad for that, never varying attack patterns despite getting smacked around over half a dozen times the exact same way. That's not to say that they're easy though. The robots especially will smack you down if you do it wrong.
In terms of the characterization, Spidey comes off as a lot more human than certain other comic book/video game protagonists. The voice acting (and better writing[footnote]Note: I am referring only to the protagonist dialogue here. Asylum and City both had their share of awesome lines, but none of them were spoken by Batman.[/footnote], but Batman's lines in both Asylum and City were always godawful) certainly helps there, but the overarching story arc basically has Spidey pushed to his limits and hanging on by his fingernails halfway through the game. What I found odd was that the villains had no respect. In the batman games the thugs were damn well terrified, and you spent both games proving that it was well founded fear. In this game, they clearly don't take spiderman seriously. Maybe it's the costume, maybe it's because Spidey is just getting started in this timeline, but it feels weird to have them showing not the slightest bit of hesitation in charging the super fast/strong/agile guy who beats up giant monsters and robots as a hobby.
I can't speak for the other spiderman games, but this one is awesome and worth checking out.
