DO NOT WANT

On no fewer then three occasions this week did I very nearly purchase Spider-Man 3 for the 360. Each time I held the game in hand and each time I came up with a suitable reason to delay that purchase. First it was "Well, I just moved, I should save my money," followed by, "Ultimate Spider-Man wasn't terribly good," and finally the tried and true, "There are no reviews yet, Gamefly this thing in case it sucks."

In general, I had a really bad feeling about the game that I just couldn't place.

In his book "Blink," Malcolm Gladwell speaks extensively about the phenomenon of human intuition, how our gut feelings often steer us in the right direction even though we may not be conscious of the reasons at the time. inspired by this book, I've gotten into the habit of calling gut feelings my "Blink."

Today, the reviews for the Spider-Man 3 game started to dribble out, first Eurogamer took their swings and slapped Spidey with a 6/10:

If only Treyarch had polished the game properly, we could have been reflecting on one of the best superhero games ever - and if you were to cut together a movie of the best bits you'd almost certainly want to buy it on the strength of that. As it stands, the total lack of consistency in what the game offers in terms of entertainment gives it the whiff of a game produced under pressure, and one developed around an unrealistic deadline so it could come out day and date with the movie. Whatever the truth of the situation of Spider-Man 3, here we are, yet again, complaining ruefully about 'missed opportunities', 'a lack of consistency' and 'unfulfilled potential'. For something as thrilling yet as disappointing as this, perhaps a rental's the smartest plan.

Then it was IGN's turn, also handing the game a 6/10:

I fought the Kingpin for an hour -- an hour of joyless reversing. It was six 10-minute installments of Spider-Man standing in the middle of the room, the Kingpin attacking, Spidey dodging, and Spidey punching Fisk once in the face. If I punched him more than once, I risked getting caught in a combo or running out of Spider-Reflexes and watching Fisk land a devastating attack. I played it safe and patiently countered the mountain of a man one slow, boring punch at a time. Now, if God's with you, you'll only have to duke it out with the Kingpin twice - you'll meet and wear him down, he'll deploy some thugs, you'll finish the job. However, God didn't exist Wednesday morning at 1:30 a.m. I got Fisk down to his last legs in the second half of our boring battle, and the game froze.

Twice.

I think my Blink may have been right, I'm glad this one will be coming from Gamefly.