Basically, you'll arm one of your allies at the power-up manager and when you need him or her, you'll hold the left shoulder button and use the directions to cycle to the appropriate power-up slot. Still - if the name of the game didn't give it away - the biggest deal in the power-up arena is the ability to call in your allies. You'll earn and unlock these abilities by finding spider tokens hidden throughout the levels, and you'll be able to stockpile them in the power-up menu. Before you go on a mission, you'll be able to arm these circles with allies and abilities to help you crush the competition - exoskeleton power-ups make it harder to damage Spidey for a period of time, web darts turn your webbing into fast and furious projectiles, and Spider-Man Flurry allows our hero to speed around the screen and clean everyone's clock. For starters, you'll notice five slots in the upper-right corner of the screen. If that combat system sounds weak, Amaze has tossed in a number of extras to try and keep the fighting fresh. If your feet are on the ground (or wall or ceiling) and you tap the right shoulder button, you can cast webbing at your foes, but this only stops them without hurting them.
If you leap into the air and hold X, you'll cast out a web line to swing and kick from, but those two simple buttons pretty much amass all the offense you're going to have in Web of Shadows. To take these guys down, you're going to rely on Square to punch and Triangle to kick. The majority of foes you face on this quest will be street thugs and symbiote-infected folks, but there's the occasional robot and boss (Shocker, Tinkerer, Kraven, Jackal, and more).
Of course, it wouldn't be a superhero game if you didn't have waves of bad guys popping up and keeping you from rounding up the few power couplings you need. to run from left to right through New York's buildings, air ducts, and secret bases on a mission to find the components that can create a sonic wave large enough to send the symbiotes packing. Web of Shadows on the PSP plays as a side scroller featuring 3D characters on a 2D plane - think Bionic Commando Rearmed. With that, the major similarities between the two SKUs stop. Soon, the city is a black, gooey mess that only our friendly, neighborhood Spider-Man can clean up. As you wrestle with these choices, Venom's symbiote continues to break off and infect New Yorkers. From there, Spider-Man can switch between his red duds and his black duds at will and has to make choices throughout the game that dictate whether he's staying true to his "Great Power/Great Responsibility" roots or he's letting the symbiote turn him into the aggressive jerk from the old school comics. Venom shows up, Spider-Man fights him, and part of the black suit we know as the symbiote leaps onto our hero and outfits him with the familiar black and white costume.
On a story level, the portable version of this game shares a bit with the tale you'd find on a console. That light - that glimmer of hope - is Spider-Man: Web of Shadows - Amazing Allies Edition. Still, in the midst of the dark clouds surrounding the main version of the title, a ray of light has shone through. Some wept for another mediocre rendition of their favorite hero, some unleashed screams calling for my head, and many just buried their faces in their hands to ignore the mess altogether. Earlier this week, I reviewed Spider-Man: Web of Shadows on the PlayStation 3, and the world cried.