lien Spidy is a platforming arcade title that features a cutesy spider that traverses many challenging levels where it must collect as many items as possible throughout his journey. How does his adventure turn out in the long run? Well, let’s find out.

Presentation:

The game is presented in a charming and a cute alien-like personality. The small spider is an alien and all he wants is just to travel the worlds and collect items to score points. The music is appropriate for the game and it was never annoying to listen to it as you play. The graphics is a mix of 2D/3D, 2D backgrounds and 3D spider. It’s not a gorgeous looking game, but it does the job done and fits with the overall theme of the game.

Gameplay:

Alien Spidy consists of very simple mechanics. The core of the game is to platform through the level as fast as possible, have least amount of deaths and collect as many items as you can by the end of the level. If you die or take a long time to finish a level, you will be deducted a certain amount of points.

The first few levels in the game act as tutorials. One tutorial teaches you the jumping mechanics, while others tell you how to use your spider web to create a rope and be able to swing from one place to another. The tutorials give a pretty good idea on what to do and how the game works.

Alien Spidy has 3 different worlds. Each world has many difficult courses; every course also has a certain platforming rhythm to it. The later levels get really challenging, but hopefully by that time you’re used to the flow of the game and the player is good with timing of his/her actions.

In one of the levels I was going through a cave with many dangerous objects that could kill me on contact, so I had to be very careful. In another level, I had to be precise and quick with the rope swinging mechanic in order to go with the flow.

The later levels mix all of the mechanics together to create more of a challenging and unique experience. Checkpoints are provided throughout the levels, so if you mess up you will respawn at a certain point of the course.

Throughout the game you come across power-ups. One power-up allows Spidy to do super jumps; another one can provide him with a magnet. These power-ups break up the pacing of the levels and make the game more fun.

The scoring system is a core part of Alien Spidy. Players have to travel as quickly as possible if they want to nail that high score. The higher score you get the more stars you earn for the level.

The player can earn to a total of up to 5 stars. If you manage to get 5 stars in every single level in the world you will earn an achievement. There is a separate achievement for getting 5 stars in the entire game.

The game is addicting and a lot of fun, especially when you’re going through the levels in a perfect manner. It gives you that hyper adrenaline rush once you’re done with a level and have scored 5 stars after going through the difficult platforming course.

Gamers who love to perfect levels will be spending a long time in each of the challenging platforming courses.

The Problems

Thankfully, Alien Spidy is not filled with glitches or a crazy amount of issues. However, the controls of the game can be very unresponsive at times and can lead to a frustration. One of the levels I had to jump of a platform at the right time to avoid something, so I press the jump button and Spidy doesn’t jump.

At the moment, I thought it was me being bad with my timing, but it wasn’t. This happened many times all throughout the game and it was annoying. This is a platforming game and having unresponsive controls can make/break the game. I hope there will be a future patch to fix this issue.

Overall

Alien Spidy is actually a good game. I love the concept of racing through a level, collecting as many items as possible, failing as least as you can and achieving a high score by the end. It provides a fun and fast paced platforming arcade style gameplay. However, the unresponsive controls of this game can really bog down the gameplay experience.

If it wasn’t for the controls then the game would be much more addicting than it already is. However, I would personally give this game a chance and hope that the developers will appreciate the support and fix the issue in a patch or a future sequel if there is ever one.

This game was reviewed on the Xbox 360.