WEB Power Band: Worth it?

Are you looking forward to the new Spiderman W.E.B. Adventure at the recently opened Marvel Avengers Campus? It gives you the chance to defeat an army of Spider-bots that threatens to overtake the whole complex. That’s a big responsibility and any recruit (that’s you!) might be tempted by an opportunity to tilt the odds in their favor. That’s where the WEB Power Band comes in.

Of course, this piece of gear comes at a cost. The base unit sells for €40 in the Mission Equipment shop at the heart of MAC. A series of add-ons are available at €30 a pop, but the base unit is stand-alone and is advertised as a way to increase your score within the attraction.

But does the mission require this bit of somewhat pricey gadgetry? We at D2DLP decided to put this question to the test at the recent press preview event on July 9/10, 2022.  We shelled out those €40 for the basic Power Band, though the friendly neighborhood CMs did their best to upsell us. To their credit, they nearly succeeded. Three WEB Tech Enhancements were available: Doctor Strange’s Mystic Amplifier(a sort of gold, spinning affair), a Web Shooter (electro-webs!) and Iron Man’s Repulsor (intense laser canon blasts). We were told that all of them would have a big visual effect on the in-game screen, as well as enhance our score. The CM particularly recommended the Iron Man model as being spectacular. 

That said, we went with just the base unit, thinking it would be a fairer test of concept (and easier on the budget, of course)

We did one run through of W.E.B. Adventure with no Power Band and our test subject got a pretty modest score. To be fair, it was her first time and none of us had a clue what was going on.

For the second round, the Power Band was strapped on the wrist and given a sling. We were mystified and disappointed to see that it seemed to have no effect at all on  game play. But a closer examination of the Power Band afterwards showed us that we should have read the instructions better. It had been in “Play Mode”, which means the unit is lit up with a steady glow. However, to be visible to the attraction’s game system, it must be in pairing mode (lights flashing). Suddenly we realized that we were probably not the sharpest recruits on the Campus. But what we lack in brains we make up for in persistence, so we turned it on properly and had another go.

This time around, It worked! It really did allow Test Subject to fire three webs at once, as advertised. That said, while it improved her score somewhat, it had no visual “wow” factor. Spectacular on screen effects are what is promised with the add ons, so we got what we paid for – but we were still a bit underwhelmed.

So what is our final answer to the question: Is the WEB Power Band worth buying?

Answer: No, not it if the Power Band is all your budget can stand. The slight increase in your score hardly seems a fair trade for €40 euros, though it does look pretty cool strapped to your arm. Our teenaged benchmarker had a lot of fun wearing it and taking selfies, but there are far cheaper photo ops available.

On the other hand, if you have €70 euros to spend on merch and you enjoy shooter games, we think it probably IS worth buying, especially if you are a big fan of one of the charcter add-ons proposed. (Out test agent is an Iron Man stan and we plan on buying the Repulsor on our next MAC trip.)

In short, as with most things in life: it depends. But we hope our short, rather unscientific experiment has given you at least a vague idea of whether you’d enjoy owning this fun piece of interactive Marvel merch.