As I sit here blankly staring at the article submission back-end of this very website, I’m pondering a quick witted quip to start this review of Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions and I can’t seem to formulate anything that would make the snarky Peter Parker proud. I find myself focusing too much on my love/hate relationship that I have with the game. There are many aspects of the game that are inherently cool because you assume the role of four different web slinging super heroes while others leave you wondering what the good people over at Beenox were thinking when developing the game.
Game: Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions
Publisher: Activision
Developer: Beenox
Genre: Action
Price: $59.99
Verdict: You’ll love it or hate it. I did both.
Pros: Combat is a blast. Four Spider-Men are each fun to play.
Cons: Sounds get on your nerves, crazy camera, boxed in repetitive levels.
Acquired via Publisher
Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions takes an interesting spin on the iconic arachnid imbued hero and introduces you to four unique web heads each with their own suits, timeline, fighting moves and personalities. This aspect alone makes the game shine as each character is fully realized and believable as the appropriate Spider-Man of that time period. Each Spider-Man plays uniquely different and excels in different types of battle.
Presented in an extremely linear staged environment, you choose which Spidey you’d like to control during one of the 4 main Acts in the story. The original Amazing Spider-man dons his famous red and blue suit and fights villains in a world filled with heavy cel-shading which fits the comic book theme quite well. Later you’ll find that the younger Peter Parker has become one with the infamous symbiote black suit and harnesses the powers that gave birth to such frightening comic book creations as Venom and Carnage. Fast forward to the future and you’ll control Miguel O’Hara in his glowing suit as you sail across towering cityscapes dodging hover cars and the “public eye.” Rewind a bit and you’ll find my favorite Spider-man of the bunch, Spider-man Noir who sticks to the shadows in this sepia-toned world and dispatches his foes through stealth take-downs and guile.
As fun and interesting as the worlds surrounding the quartet sounds, there are issues in which they are delivered. First of all, the free-roaming that has been known in many of the past Spider-Man games is gone. This, to me, is a sadly missed inclusion which allowed you to control Spidey in the sandbox playground and sling around from building to building at your leisure. That’s been axed in favor of extremely linear and equally as limited 14 levels in which you chase down the latest villain until the inevitable crescendo at the end. Each level, while different from the last, has the same formula overall. Meet the bad guy of that level, he runs, pursue and fight baddies along the way, mid-boss fight, pursue again until the mutated baddie confronts you for an epic showdown. Once you’ve played each of the Spider-Men, you will have a very good idea of what to expect the next time they come around. To make matters worse, a vast majority of the levels take the art of web slinging completely away in favor of web zipping from point to point. While this can be articulated into some fascinating and viscerally appealing combat scenarios, it does lose a bit of the mystique of playing as the masked man.
The overall story centers around a Tablet of Order and Chaos that contains immense power. Mysterio finds the tablet and is confronted by The Amazing Spider-Man. After a short battle, the tablet breaks and the dimensions separating the four Spideys is, well, shattered. The fragments of this tablet are spread out among the four dimensions and it is up to you to track them down. Much to your dismay, each piece is nabbed up by a different villain from the Spider-Man comic book universe, which sets up the aforementioned monotony of each level. The overlying sense of the story is only hinted as you complete each act as each individual level only focus on that particular villain obtaining that fragment and wreaking havoc on that part of their city. This makes the entire story seem disjointed and contrived.
As long as we’re beating up the latest Spidey game, we might as well talk about the sounds in the game. This has to be my biggest problem with it. While the voice acting for each character overall is good and the inclusion of a narrative with Spider-Man creator Stan Lee is well done, the in-game sound bits consisted of mostly one-liners that the heroes and villains say to the point of ad nauseum. It was quite obvious how proud the developers were of one. Some sound bytes are tied together with conversational pieces between the boss and Spider-Man, so you may hear the same phrase and response several times during a relatively short pursuit phase. On my playthrough where I was chasing The Juggernaut through construction fields, I quite literally heard Spider-Man quip the same exact scripted snide remark three times in a row. This leads one to believe they found good voice actors but couldn’t afford to pay them for more than 10 lines of dialog per level.
My final gripe is the camera that follows you throughout the game. Most of the combat relies on seeing which opponent you’re targeting and often times the camera becomes so confused, it makes it virtually impossible to see exactly where you’re going or who you’re supposed to fight. Unfortunately, this always seems to happen at the most tense moments in a fight. I recall an event while playing Spider-Man Noir where I web zipped to the top of a building and immediately to another location on the map and the camera couldn’t keep up with me. It locked itself in a perspective staring at Spidey’s crotch, and I couldn’t get out of that screen until I reset the game.
For all of the linearity and problems that the game has, the combat makes up for it. It too can be considered repetitive, but the sheer amount of combos and combat upgrades which are readily available to you as you advance and level up your hero is staggering. By the end of the game, the repertoire of moves you have at your disposal can topple even the mightiest of foes with ease. Ultimate Spider-man is a brute against mobs of angry foes while Spider-Man 2099 uses his massive speed and dexterity to confuse and punish his assailants. Gamers who put up with the monotony of the game are rewarded by a brilliant level and boss fight when they reach Carnage in Act 4. Fighting the red crazed symbiote to me made up for the hours of repetition in the way it was executed. Player who wish to sample this game owe it to themselves to see it through to this stage.
I never was a huge comic book fan and don’t confess to know every detail about the subject matter, but Spider-Man has always been a hero I’ve enjoyed. Whenever a game comes out that lets me control the web-slinger, I get excited. Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions does a brilliant job of allowing you to experience the world through four vastly different Spider-Men, but falls short on executing the world in which they inhabit. I do like this game in spite of all of its flaws, though. Every time I had a gripe in the game, it was trumped by the sheer enjoyment of the combat. Reading this, you may see a lot of negative, and there is, but fans of Spider-Man should at least pick the game up for cheap thrills in four different variations of the theme. Not a must buy, but it is a must play for fans.
GrE Grade: C
Popularity: unranked [?]
