The Amazing Spider-Man, the reboot of the Spider-Man movie franchise, is going to be in theaters soon, and that means licensed video game time.  That isn’t necessarily a bad thing these days though. Half of the time, the games have been better than the movie (I’m looking at you, Wolverine Origins).  Plus, this is a Spider-Man game, and those have been very good recently.  Today, there was a demo released on the Nintendo eShop for the Nintendo 3DS version of the game.  We haven’t heard much about the 3DS version, so this demo will really be the first look at this version.  The big question: Is this game going to be any good?  Let’s find out.

The first thing I want to note is the fact that, unlike most of the other demos with thirty uses, you only get ten uses here.  Also, upon loading the demo, there was no 3D until after you press start to get to the menu.

When you start a new game, you get to choose from three difficulty levels: Human, Hero, and Super-Hero.  I’m going to start out on Hero.

You get dropped into the action inside a building that Black Cat is robbing.  You take out her goons in the standard Spidey combat style, but there are a few new little moments of what we will call “flair”.  These are some attacks that are shown in a bit of slow motion, just to kind of show off the dexterity of Spidey.  There are some good animations for the dodging too.  I was beating up a thug, and another one was going to attack me from behind.  I hit the dodge button on the touch screen, and Spider jumped on the guy attacking from the rear, kicked him, and went right back to pummeling the original thug without missing a beat.  It was surprisingly fluid.  The sound design is pretty good too.  Most of the voice work sounds nice and natural, and I like the score.  

The graphics aren’t really that horrible either.  They look slightly better than I was expecting them to be.  The character models look a little off (Spidey looks WAY too skinny), but the textures on them are nice.  The environment looks pretty nice too.  There are a few things that are laughably bad though, like the smoke and fire effects.  They look like old animated gifs.  The worst is the smoke when Felicia makes her escape from the museum.

The 3D effect in the game is fairly standard, and doesn't really seem to add anything other than a sense of depth to the game.  I'll be honest though, I love having that in my games, and I almost always play with it on.  I do worry about web swinging around town though, because that might make me dizzy.  It's the same reason I refuse to see the movie in 3D in theaters.  The web swinging in the 3D trailer made my head hurt and my stomach turn.  I hope it isn't the same in the game.

After playing around with the demo, my first impression is that if you are a fan of Spider-Man, this game shouldn’t be a disappointment for those who are on the go.  I am now officially looking forward to the full game, and I fully intend on this being the version of the game I purchase.  When it is released, I will be back with a full review.