Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions

I am stunned that this game is not more popular. I had to look really hard to find this game and eventually paid over the odds for it, but was really excityed in doing the Spidey thing on my PS3. The game involves you playing through the 4 spideys; Amazing, Noir, 2099 and Ultimate to assemple pieces of a mythical tablet that Mysterio wants for himself to become a real sorceror. You taverse through the different prallel dimensions to do this.

One of the cool things about this game is that not every Spiderman is good/bad at the same things and you have to learn how to get him to fight the bad guys, whilst playing to his own strengths. Noir Spidey for example is rubbish at taking on villains head on and he needs stealth to surprise his enemies, 2099 Spiderman is great at leaping and flying so alot of his challenges invlove flying and web traversing.

It seems that the makers of this programme have picked the best things from Arkham Assylum and have unashamedly used these to enhance this game. A good example is the similar way that Noir Spidey dispatches his enemies by dropping down and hauling them up to dangle, rather than getting shot to pieces.

Most levels take around 50 mins to complete, but could easily take more depending on the difficulty chosen and the degree to which you are interested in finding the hidden items. So there is easily 10-12 hours worth of game and plenty of challenges and trophies to capture. This has been my first game bought since the summer drought of games and was bought on the spur of the moment, but well worth the money spent! (and I am not even a Spiderman fan)

Much fanfare was made of the fact that you can play as four different Spider-Mans with their own gameplay, but the reality is far, far removed from the fantasy. This is a stale, boring button-mashing combat-oriented game.

You play as Spider-Man, but you might not actually realise that until you get pretty far into the game because there's no real webslinging (except for one level where it really works) and you can play pretty much the whole game without even realising you can wallclimb.

The game is split into four categories, where you play as Amazing Spider-Man, Ultimate Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2099 and Spider-Man Noir, explained by the fact that some artifact gets shattered and something or other about alternate dimensions and recollecting them. Amazing, Ultimate and 2099 are all very nearly completely identical in terms of gameplay in as much as they're all button mashing combat games. The biggest difference between the three is that Spider-Man wears different clothes.

In the Ultimate version, Spidey's wearing the Venom costume, so in addition to looking all sleek and black and cool, he has a RAGE meter. Because the kids today are angry and you've got to cater to that, right? So as you fight, this rage meter fills up and when it's full, you can start kicking some serious behind. In the 2099 version, you get basically the same thing but it's slow motion instead. The 2099 version also has this little minigame where you skydive, which plays kind of like a racing game except rather than steering around corners you are steering around obstacles in a straight line course.

The Amazing universe has nothing unique about it.

The Noir universe is the one that really stands out. It's a cooler, grittier (yes, I used THAT word) version of Spider-Man, that sort of has a `what if Spider-Man was Batman?' vibe to it, with everything being dark and black and white, and Spidey using fear and terror as tools (in the books I mean - there's no gameplay related to that), preying on his enemies, while his villains are mostly horrible freaks in the vein of Killer Croc. Vulture is particularly cool, being a hideous, freaky cannibal birdman.

So it stands to reason that this universe would play as a stealther, and that's more or less true. While you do need to stick to the shadows and take enemies down stealthily (something done easily thanks to being able to do it at range with your webs), not to mention your Spider agility means you can escape danger effortlessly, there are still more than a few occasions where you're forced into combat sequences with groups of enemies, which doesn't make much sense as these are the same enemies you were forced to flee from moments ago. Overall it's decent stealth, but the star of this universe is the universe itself.

In all versions, Spider-Man's Spider-Man-ness has been neutered because you're playing in small, linear environments. This is a world away from the Treyarch games of the PS2 era. You can web swing, and by targeting certain objects (by looking at them), you can web-zip onto them, but this is definitely not a game that is about webswinging, in any of the universes.

This is a game about combat.

The combat is super simple button mashing, and even though there's a HUGE selection of moves/combos available to you (as unlocks, you earn XP), the standard attacks are more than good enough to get you through the entire game. After the amazing rhythm-game style combat in Arkham Asylum, it's a little mindboggling that they didn't copy that, and obviously adapt it to better suit Spidey. Rather than relying on Spider-Man's speed and agility to dance between enemies and perform all kinds of acrobatic awesomeness (like, perhaps, Sands of Time), this is just button mashing with all the finesse of a Hulk smash.

And what really hurts the game is that that IS the game. Fight after fight after fight after fight, without even proper webswinging or missions or a city to explore or anything. It's just a straight line to the bosses. The one notable exception is a level set on an oil rig, which is a full blown open world level, albeit a small one. Here you can make proper use of the swinging around, which is cool and fun, and your objectives in that level are mostly not combat oriented which is great, though the combat is always forced on you sooner or later.

The bosses themselves are really quite awful, almost down to a man each consisting of dodging his or her attacks (simply by jumping out of the way most of the time), then countering. Then repeating. Again and again. And again and again and again. To be fair, some of the bosses are really cool as characters (Deadpool is laugh-out-loud funny), but that just plays in to the reality of this game: it exists just to introduce us to as many characters as possible, to sell as much merchandise as possible.

And that's fine by me, I'm too aware of it to be influenced by it and hopefully you are too, but it's just a pity this game itself is merchandise, no better than a lunchbox or poster. They could've done something really special with this game. If they'd really played up the four games in one idea, rather than go for the four different versions of one game in one idea, it could have been special.

I think the Amazing universe should've been oriented entirely to webswinging, the Ultimate universe should've been devoted entirely to combat (which needs improving), Noir is fine as is, but it should've had the combat removed entirely, while 2099 should've been dedicated entirely to a vastly expanded and improved version of the skydiving. If they had actually offered four games in one, so that getting to the next level actually offers something new, even if that new thing is not actually great, that would still have been a big improvement over the stale, endless button-mashing.

The only highlight here is the Noir universe, and while the gameplay is a far cry from great, or even good, frankly, it works well through its uniqueness, and had the whole game reflected that, this'd be a contender for a 4 star game.

Superheroes and computer games have never been easy bedfellows; for every `Batman: Arkham Asylum' there are ten `Superman 64'. The problem is that your average superhero can pretty much beat up everyone, except for your average super villain. Therefore, an army of normal enemies is not going to do much, the secret is to pack your game with bosses - this is exactly what `Spiderman: Splintered Dimensions' does. You play as four versions of Spiderman who each look and play slightly differently. The core gameplay is consistent, webbing around and taking out enemies, but whilst some are more action orientated others are more stealth based.

With 4 different realms the game never gets too stale, if you are bored of playing the Amazing Spiderman you can go ahead and play Spiderman Noir for some entirely different gameplay. Each of the 4 modes are fun in their own right, but for me Noir was the best as it was the most different; all the other three felt similar, but with different graphics. What I enjoyed about the game was as much about the characters and story, as the gameplay. Each level revolves around tracking down and defeating one of Spiderman's most famous enemies. The script is really well written and Spiderman is at his best when he is firing off sarcastic comments alongside his webs.

With diverse gameplay and a good script `Spiderman: Shattered Dimensions' is one of the best Spidey games to date, although I did enjoy `Web of Shadows' as well. The swinging around and fighting is not particularly original, but it is well programmed. Also Beenox did a good job in creating a camera that was able to follow Spiderman around as he darts across the screen. Overall, a good game that does become a little repetitive towards the end.