Spider-Man has had a rough few years when it comes to video games. Both
Spider-Man 3 and
Spider-Man: Web of Shadows were critical failures and although they recieved a mixed reaction from fans, the majority were left wishing for a game as good as 2004's
Spider-Man 2. Judging by both the information and footage we've seen of
Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions over the past few months, it seems that it would be the game that would bring the character back to his success of the past. So, the question is - did it? The answer is yes and no.
In the game, you play as the Amazing, Noir, 2099 and Ultimate versions of the wall crawler with each level revolving around you having to find a piece of the "Tablet of Order and Chaos" which was shattered into pieces during a skirmish between Spider-Man and Mysterio, causing problems with multiple Marvel Universe realities. They may have made a big deal about Dan Slott having written this game but it's important to note that he only wrote the story and not the script so dont expect too much of the fantastic dialogue he uses for Spidey in the pages
of
Amazing on a regular basis. Overall, it's really nothing special as you basically only get five very brief cutscenes that supply any sort of story which brings me to my next point. I've come to accept that not every game will have the production values of
Modern Warfare 2 and
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves or be as epic as
Grand Theft Auto IV and
Fallout 3. The problem with
Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions though is that it just feels lazy. As I've just mentioned, there are only 5 very short cutscenes and each level begins with what are basically a series of still pictures that have a small amount of movement in them. They all also end rather abruptly with no sort of conclusion that moves any of the Spider-Men on in their own story arc. It's literally a case of working your way through the levels doing the same thing over and over with no character development whatsoever. (more on that later though) This, along with the fact that you'll often find yourself irritated by Spider-Man or the villains he faces constantly repeating the same lines over and over as if they only recorded about 5 phrases for each of them makes it feel like they put very little effort into the finer details.
Apart from the tutorial and final battle, there are only 3 levels for each Spider-Man and they're all very repetitive. I'm not going to go into a lot of detail as I obviously dont want to ruin anything for you but here are a few examples. Basically, you'll jump around the fighting generic bad guy after bad guy until a small fight with the main villain about halfway through (or sometimes at the start) and then again at the end. Along the way you'll find yourself doing a lot of webslinging as Amazing, a lot of crawling in shadows as Noir, a lot of freefalling as 2099 and pretty much everything Amazing does but in a different coloured suit as Ultimate. This isnt to say that they're not enjoyable and you'll often find some fantastic set pieces here and there along with several impressive boss battles. Despite the different locations and characters, they all end up feeling the same and whether you're pummelling Sandman's sand monsters or Deadpool's fanboys, there is very little to distinguish between these bad guys...they just look different. The fighting is much improved from the past few games but is still far from perfect. I got a 200 move combo from just continuosly pressing the square button while the moves you can pull of with various combinations are entirely optional as the bad guys you face are never difficult enough to make it necessary to start mixing things up. As you progress, you're able to buy new moves but things get so chaotic during battles, you'll find it hard to really see what exactly Spider-Man is doing. The Noir stealth sections are ok but consist mainly of just walking or crawling around in heavily shadowed areas until the prompt to press circle pops up on screen for you to watch a scene of him webbing a villain up. The 2099 diving bits are also fun enough but require very little in the way of skill.
The idea to take Spider-Man
out of New York and into enclosed areas only really works for the Noir version. Webslinging feels very clumsy and frustrating while the web zipping ability (where you automatically jump from one designated point to another) is just as irritating because you'll find yourself ending up in the wrong place more often than the right one. None of this is helped by yet another dodgy camera which constantly ends up focused on the wrong thing or unable to cope with you jumping from a wall to a ceiling. In terms of graphics, the game does look very nice. Despite things often getting far too chaotic on screen, the animations are all brilliantly done, although you may be left scratching your head after seeing Spider-Man create giant fists out of his webs to punch enemies with! The pointless first person fight scenes are also great fun to look at but add very little to the actual game. Unfortunately, most levels do have a habit of having very generic backrounds but this is often easy to ignore when there's plenty of other things happenning and you're having to swing away from a Helicarrier about to crash behind you - it's a pity things like that are so few and far between. The boss battles are often very ambitious in scale and really benefit from the power of consoles like the PS3 to make them as exciting as possible. Perhaps the best thing about
Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions is the fantastic voice work. All fours actors (Neil Patrick Harris, Christopher Daniel Barnes, Dan Gilvezan, and Josh Keaton) are brilliant as their respective Spider-Man and help lend a great deal of atmosphere to proceedings. The villains that feature are also voiced by some great actors (Nolan North reprising his
Hulk Vs. role as Deadpool is a bonus) and this is most definitely one thing they nailed. Stan Lee's narration is brief but fantastic fun.
The thing with video games is that we all have certain things we expect and enjoy. I finished this in roughly 8 hours and it's unfortunately not a case of quality over quantity. Unless you're desperate to go back and "punch X amount of bad guys" or "dodge X amount of rockets" there really is very little in the way of replay value with nothing to unlock apart from a few alternate costumes and the linear levels mean you cant go back and play through them any differently. Despite my criticisms, it's not really a bad game and I mostly enjoyed my time playing
Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions. Some great villains, set pieces and voice acting save this game and this new sort approach to the character was admittedly interesting but a failed experiment in my opinion. With the power of consoles like the PS3 and X-Box 360, they should be able to deliever an epic and impressive free roaming game which this clearly is not. The first time I switched on
Spider-Man 2 back in 2004, jumped from a building, shot a web and swung through New York I felt like Spider-Man. This just felt like any other avergae third person beat 'em up. They're on the right track to returning the wall crawler to his former video game glory but this game proves that they still have quite a way to go. Rent it or wait for it to come down in price. Perhaps the inevitable tie-in to the upcoming reboot will put the "Amazing" back in Spider-Man for the current generation of consoles...