Spider Man: Shattered Dimensions

Full disclosure, for the first time, I have not finished this game and probably will not. I got it through Blockbuster online from their free trial, played through what appeared to be about 2/3rds of it, didn't care for it, and sent it on its way so I can move on to other games before the trial expires. But on with the review!

Spider Man: Shattered Dimensions essentially takes the concept that Spider Man is fighting Mysterio and accidentally shatters this tablet that contains unimaginable power, so Madame Web shows up and explains that the pieces have exploded into other dimensions and need to be recovered and reunited before they fall into the wrong hands. From there you take on the role of Spider Man in the Amazing, Ultimate, Noir, and 2099 dimensions, recovering pieces of the tablet and fighting your way through various versions of famous villains and their thugs.

None of that make sense? Then this isn't your game. This is a game celebrating all things comics, and all things Spider Man. You know that's the case when the first words you hear are Stan Lee calling on us "True Believers!" to see what nefarious plot Mysterio is hatching this time. It's an absolute hoot, and his narration throughout remains one of the best parts of the game. The other way you can tell this is for fans is that there is little to no backstory for anyone. Sure there are little bios you can unlock and read, but really, when you're battling Kraven and Hammerhead and Hobgoblin and even Electro for goodness' sake, each with special moves and ways of defeating them, who cares about backstory?

So while there's a lot of fan service, and the narration and voice acting/dialogue are great, what about the actual game? Well, that's where things start to fall apart.

Each Spider Man has special abilities. Amazing has a lot of web based attacks, Ultimate is in the black suit and as such does massive damage in a wide radius, 2099 is all about speed and skydiving, and Noir is focused on stealth. Of these, I found Noir to easily be the most fun. It could be because it copied nearly everything from Batman Arkham Asylum, but introducing an element of strategy to a game that was otherwise about mashing buttons at least brought something interesting to the table. Yes, you gain experience from defeating enemies and hunting down spider tokens to spend on better moves and such, but it never really feels like you're doing anything new or interesting or all that useful. Most of the time you end up just swinging off light attacks while trying to dodge the massive amount of bullets and bats coming your way. Of course there are enemies who force you to use certain moves to defeat them, but most of the time I found myself just wading through the hordes of enemies, dodging and mashing square. So when the Noir levels came along I actually felt excited because it meant my thumb got a rest. However, they do mess up quite a bit in that there are distinctly stealth, and distinctly fighting portions. In stealth, if you get spotted, unless you retreat you die, even if it's just one guy. In the fighting sections, you may be weaker than the other spider men, but you can still hold your own against a big horde. This disconnect was substantial, and lessened the experience for me.

As for the others, Amazing and Ultimate blended together for me, and while 2099's style was flashy and interesting, the skydiving sections were a bore and almost impossible to get through without crashing into something due to the sheer amount of indecipherable-from-the-bright-background stuff that comes flying your way. Web swinging was handled fairly well, though it often gets taken away from you in favor of zip lining to certain highlighted spots (Sandman battle), but the problem with that is there's no way of locking onto them, and if you move the camera even slightly you could end up somewhere completely different from where you wanted to go. In one section as Ultimate, there are hundreds of one hit kill enemies coming at you, some of whom perch on lampposts and shoot at you, and the best way to deal with them is to zip up there and knock them off, but it gets nearly impossible when there's more than one place to zip to around as you can't take the time to line up exactly where you want to go and so end up on top of a train instead of the lamppost.

What this really comes down to is the fact that the controls simply don't have the level of precision required of them to make web swinging and fighting feel fun. Instead, they just provide frustration.

The boss battles throw in some great variation, most playing out almost as a puzzle. But then they included this gimmick where you pull into first person mode and punch the crap out of their face with the analog sticks while avoiding their retaliatory strikes, and it really felt like nothing less than a tacked on gimmick. It was stupid, and should've been left out.

Nonetheless, I also think this game wasn't really aimed at me. I got the very clear sense that this is a game for kids. Kids who will enjoy wading through countless enemies that don't require much skill to defeat, who can figure out the simple boss fight puzzles (and if not there's always a handy pop-up from Madame Web), and who would love nothing more than to see villains get punched in the face up close. It seems like the perfect game for them. But having played the more mature and well put together Batman Arkham Asylum, which this game is very similar to in terms of gameplay, I just can't play this with the thought that it could've been better. It's not bad, it just wasn't good.

Spider Man: Shattered Dimensions gets a 5/10