If you knew anything about me, you’d probably notice that I’m a huge Spider-Man fan. I have multiple posters around my room, multiple ticket stubs from Marvel movies, and heck, I’m even drinking out of a Spider-Man mug right now. Needless to say, I was very excited to play Beenox’s latest Spider-Man game, The incredible Spider-Man 2 for Xbox One. Usually I’m scared to play a movie-related game, but he’s my favorite hero. Even if it’s an average game, you should be able to look past its flaws, right? After playing through the fairly short campaign, I have to say this Xbox One iteration of the web-slinger should have been crushed.

When you first stumble upon the game world, the opening sequence is a recap of Uncle Ben’s death from the first movie. Of course, it can be hard to tell who the characters are just because of how different they look from the source material. Here, Peter Parker looks more like Charlie Day from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, especially with the jacket they’re wearing. The opening scene is total filler and adds nothing to the overall story.

Speaking of the story, it’s a complete mess. I understand that this is a tie-in to the movie, and the developers may not get the full script for the accompanying movie, but at the end of the day, the plot here is just too hard to follow. The movie itself is already taken, but when the game adds its own villains from the comics to the movie, the main antagonists of the movie take a backseat.

My main issue with the main story followed by the game is that it completely omits Gwen Stacy from the entire experience. Gwen is Peter Parker’s closest ally, and in the Amazing Spider-Man 2 movie she plays a pivotal role. I don’t understand why we needed Uncle Ben, who’s not even in the movie, any more than we needed Gwen Stacy. Just a bit of a head scratcher there, but one of many problems with the convoluted story.

Once you get used to the topsy-turvy plot, you’ll realize how much fun the dialogue is. Unfortunately, this is not a good thing. What I mean is that the dialogue could have been written by a four-year-old. My favorite exchange is when Peter Parker first meets the dangerous hunter Kraven in his luxurious New York apartment. Kraven explains how he fought an adult tiger and how angry it makes him to see endangered animals hunted and killed. Meanwhile, directly behind Kraven is a tiger skin adorning his couch.

Fortunately, the game itself is not that desperate. Spider-Man moves with incredible agility and web shooting is now mapped to the left and right triggers. There are minor issues, such as the need to be precise when traveling, but the game’s ‘Web Rush’ mode helps with that. The city feels more alive than in previous Spidey games, but ultimately it’s still a poor man’s GTA. Honestly, the most fun I had with the game wasn’t the combat, but just swinging from one side of the city to the other.

When the punches finally start to happen, you’ll notice how clunky the entire combat system is. With Amazing Spider-Man 2, Beenox attempts to copy the extraordinary hand-to-hand combat of Rocksteady’s Batman titles. What you’ll get here is sloppy, broken, glitchy anarchy. He was fighting the camera harder than any of the bad guys. Even with the clunky viewpoints and floaty combat, the game was never challenging. Throughout the short six-hour campaign, I managed to die only once and that was due to my controller batteries dying.

When you’re not busy fighting random gangsters on the street, you’ll have to face off against some of the web-slinger’s most famous adversaries. During boss fights, you will rarely have anything to worry about with his mechanics. It mostly boils down to dodging the incoming attack, then hitting the attack button until you win. Of course, like in Arkham City, once you defeat a boss, you’ll unlock new gear for your hero. Ion Webs and Seismic Blasts to be exact, both abilities are just ways to take down cannon fodder later in the game and both are incredibly boring.

If the story and combat weren’t enough to make you turn off your console, the appalling in-game visuals just might. While playing the game on Xbox One, I felt like this game was more on par with a PlayStation 2 launch title. The mouths don’t sync, the clothes have fewer pixels than Pong, and the environment resembles Rampage on Nintendo 64. Visuals generally don’t make a game great, but when the other aspects of this title are so bad, muddy graphics stack up the rest of the problems and the result is a game that is, in a word, rubbish. The first Amazing Spider-Man game that came out in 2012 looks better than this game running on Xbox One!

Like I said before, this game is a movie and we can’t expect GOTY stuff from it, but with a starting price of $60, I can’t find any reason to justify the price. The only positive thing I can say about The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is that the game includes a ton of unlockable costumes for Spider-Man and there’s a pretty diverse selection. Since developer Beenox is just making a useful Spider-Man game, it may be time for someone else to take the helm. Stay away from this Xbox One title.