I’ve played quite a few Spider-Man games in my time. With that, I’ve played a lot of pretty bad Spider-Man games. But Edge of Time just might take the cake. After Shattered Dimensions proved to be a fun and well-designed (if not a bit rough around the edges) game, Activision apparently decided to let Beenox try another Spider-Man game, and made the horrible mistake of trying to rush it out before Batman: Arkham City sucked up all the comic-book-gamers’ attentions.

Edge of Time forces us into another game featuring multiple Spider-Men, but this time, instead of a dimension-hopping adventure, we get a time-travel story. The basic premise is that some bad guy from the future (2099) has built a time portal at the Alchemax building and is trying to kill the modern (Amazing) Spider-Man. Spider-Man 2099 discovers the plot and takes it upon himself to go back and prevent this from happening. Fortunately, the designers kept their ambitions constrained to just those two Spider-Men, and didn’t try to complicate matters by going further back in time to encounter, say, Black-suit Spider-Man, Scarlet Spider, Man-Spider, or any other Spider-Man variants from Marvel’s history. Just Amazing and 2099.

The time travel story gives the game is primary gimmick: the things you do in one time period (usually the past) can affect the other (usually the future). This seems to be an effort to correct one of my primary complaints with Shattered Dimensions, which was the overall lack of integration between the Spider-Men in the various dimensions. In this game, both Spider-Men now directly interact. In fact, they spend pretty much the entire game talking to each other through some time-traveling communicator thingie. Kudos to Beenox for trying to address a criticism of the previous game. It’s too bad they totally blew it.

The comic book video game genre has been one of the most disappointing genres of video games in history. Almost as bad as movie-to-game adaptations (neither of which is worse than game-to-movie adaptations, though). You'd think that with all the awesome source material at their disposal, that game developers would have been able to come up with some pretty amazing games. But other than a few stand-outs, Spider-Man held the crown as the king of good comic book video games for almost a full decade during the 2000's before Rocksteady blew all previous comic book-themed video games out of the water and gave us the first truly great comic game with 2009's Batman: Arkham Asylum.

I cannot sing that game's praises enough. It was like a video game love letter to Batman fans (and all comic book fans in general). Despite being a little tedious towards the end, this game delivered an unparalleled experience that made all comic book games before it look as embarassing as Super Mario Bros. the Movie! Elements of Arkham Asylum's design (such as the free flow combat system) have even found their way into other games and genres such as Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions and Uncharted 3.

A sequel was inevitable, and hopes were high for Arkham City (which the developers had enough foresight to tease with a secret room showing the sequel's map in the first game). Arkham City promised an open-world map with a longer story, more villains, and Catwoman as a playable character. “Bigger, better, more” seemed to be the motto going into this game. Well, they definitely got the “bigger” and “more” parts, but not necessarily “better”.

Has it already been two years since Uncharted 2 was released? Wow, I suppose it has. Doesn’t seem like two years. But I guess that’s partly because Uncharted 2 is a game that really sticks out in your memory when you play it. It doesn’t go away. It doesn’t stop feeling new and impressive. Uncharted 2 is one of – if not the – best games on the PlayStation 3. It was an order of magnitude better than the first Uncharted, which was also an exceptional game. What few flaws existed in the first game were fixed or rendered moot by the sequel, and Uncharted 2 is one of those rare games that is as close to perfect as a game can possibly be.

So, of course, Uncharted 3 has big shoes to fill. It was hard to imagine how a game could be better than Uncharted 2, whereas there were obvious areas for improvement with the first game.

Last week, on October 6th, PlayStation 3 owners may have been too busy playing the newly-released game Dark Souls to remember that the day marked the second anniversary of the release of (quite possibly) the best PlayStation 3 game to have been released so far: Demon's Souls. In fact, I almost forgot about too, until I logged in today to see this message on the game's boot-up screen:

In celebration of the event, Atlus and FROM Software have set all players' world tendencies to pure white from October 6th up through October 17th. Pure White world tendency (if you don't know already) gives the player slightly more hit points, decreases the difficulty of some enemies, and opens up new paths containing valuable loot and access to NPCs and side-quests.

But this reward doesn't come without a price,...

Years ago, when the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 were brand-spanking new, I was debating about whether I should get a 360 or stick with Sony and get a PS3. I had a lot of built-up loyalty to the PlayStation and the game franchises that had been exclusive to that console: Silent Hill, Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy, Ace Combat, Devil May Cry, Grand Theft Auto, God of War, Gran Turismo, and so on. But as time went one, more and more of these game franchises jumped to being multi-platform, chipping away at my justification for saving up for a PS3 instead of the cheaper 360. But when it all came down to it, I knew I would still be able to get all those games on the PS3, and there would still be a few of them that would remain exclusives (Metal Gear Solid ended up being the only one on the list that stayed exclusive and is worth a damn any more). But there wasn’t anything on the 360 that specifically jumped out at me. I kind of wanted Ace Combat 6 and Forza, and Star Trek Legacy looked interesting. But neither one wowed me enough to buy a whole console. I wasn’t into Halo or Gears of War, or Fable, so none of the big-name Xbox exclusives really pushed me over the top.

But there was one game that kept the thought of purchasing an Xbox 360 at the back of my mind. That game was Alan Wake. I tracked it on the internet for years, waiting for its release. Its gorgeous, scenic visuals and promise of a psychological horror story set in a small, mountain town had me captivated. But the game kept getting delayed. The fact that it was supposed to be on PC, and the lack of a firm release date, eventually caused me to give up on purchasing an Xbox. Eventually, the game was released to critical acclaim, but I missed it, since I was waiting for the PC port that eventually got canceled.

Well, I recently bought an Xbox 360 for my sister’s birthday, and one of the things I picked up for it was Alan Wake. I finally got a chance to play this game that I’ve been wanting to play for over four years.

So is it worth the wait?