The Amazing Spider-Man 2 makes you the hero (or menace) New York deserves

Love em or hate em, its up to you

There's been a crazy tangled web of Spider-Man games over the years, but one thing that's been consistent is Spidey's superhero status. Not so with the upcoming tie-in for The Amazing Spider-Man 2 film, as this time out the in-game population of New York City will give a thumbs up or down to their friendly neighborhood webcrawler. Which is to say, they're going to rate him a hero or menace based on how well he can assist the Big Apples citizens, which adds a bit more urgency to swinging around Manhattan. And as Spidey fans would expect, The Daily Bugle reporters are always quick to notice the heros successes and failures.

I experienced the new Hero and Menace mode while trying out Spider-Mans web-swinging capabilities. The swing is more natural than in the previous Amazing Spider-Man tie-in, asking players to alternate pressing the left and right triggers as they move from one emergency to the next. The new exploration style quickly got me to a robbery in progress, where I beat the thugs into unconsciousness using Spideys nimble variation on the counter-heavy combat seen in the Arkham games. After foiling their plan, a quick Daily Bugle news piece played to promote my good deed. That then raised the hero meter and levels up Spidey.

Robbery thus foiled, I swung to a high speed chase. After hopping on the car, I got a charming series of events where Spider-Man crawls over different parts of the car to beat up the occupants until everyone but the hostage is held up in webbing. Next I headed toward a pack of armed gunmen, some of which I took out with sneaky stealth mechanic. But the city can be fickle, like when I failed to save everyone from a burning building (don't worry, the fireman got everyone out). In no time flat, Bugle boss J. Jonah Jameson got the town to turn on Spidey, which meant security drones were on the prowl for the webbed wonder. Well, being the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man always has its ups and downs. The game is out late April to coincide with the films release, so enjoy these new images of the soon-to-release wall crawling expedition

Manhattan is back as the locale, but it has more personality this time around.

Here's what B-tier Spidey villain Shocker looks like in the movie world.

When exploring the city, Spider-Man seems to always be in motion.

Brands like Daily Bugle and Oscorp should immediately stand out to comic fans.

Spider-Man's combat takes advantage of his super powered speed and agility.

Spidey uses stealth takedowns in his own unique way.