User Review : Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions

Spiderman isn't amazing no more

I have always been a huge fan of comic books and the whole superhero idea, so when I heard there was a new Spiderman game coming out, I went into excited kid mode. I hoped for a fun game like the one from the PS2, so I went ahead and got everything ready. I pre-ordered from my local Blockbuster and I watched my box set of the Spiderman films. Then came the final week before release and the worst thing happened, I ran out of money so I was unable to get the game on the first week. So I didn’t mind waiting a few weeks for some more money because I knew I would get to play the game during my holiday I had booked. I then read the reviews for the game and that began to change my mind because they made the game seem like a poorly made game. I normally don’t listen to reviews on certain games, this being one of them, so I decided to watch a few YouTube videos to see what the gameplay looked like, but they just put me off purchasing the game all together. So I stuck the game on my rental list with Boomerang Rentals (English Gamefly) and thought no more of it until March came around, and what came through my letter box… Spiderman: Shattered Dimensions. I started the game up, being in excited child mode again and as soon as I saw Spiderman I was in love with the game. I decided to play the game through on the hardest difficulty because I had read that it wasn’t that much different and I fancied a challenge, so here we go.

Let’s start with talking about the story. Now this game wasn’t connected to any of the films and was its own game so the story could be whatever it wanted and it is just that. You begin playing as the Amazing Spiderman who, in his dimension, has Mysterio causing all kinds of trouble and ends up breaking a very old and powerful tablet which in the wrong hands can destroy the universe as we know it. So yes, the story is your typical superhero story. Once the tablet is broken into 4 pieces you are visited by Madam Web who tells you that you must work with 3 other Spidermen from 3 different dimensions to recover all the tablet pieces. Sounds simple, right? Well after searching for your first piece, you run into an old friend, Kraven, who finds it before you do and decides to use the power on himself and he isn’t the only one. You will run into a lot of villains that you may recognize from the films or if you read the comics. If you are a fan of the comics or movies you will enjoy seeing all these villains, and don’t expect these to be easy fights, because they are not.

As you may already know, you will change your Spiderman throughout the levels, in one level you may be taking things nice and slow with the Noir Spiderman or maybe causing chaos with the Ultimate Spiderman. One thing is for certain and that is there will be a lot of blood to clean up at the end of the day. I personally found my favorite Spiderman to be the Noir Spiderman. He had a really cool suit on (As you can see to the left) and he could take out his targets with no one else being any the wiser. He was basically a Spiderman version of Batman: Arkham Asylum, which is an extremely good thing in my eyes. Now let’s talk about the Spiderman I just didn’t get along with, the 2099 Spiderman. His voice just didn’t sound right, the setting was pretty crappy for a Spiderman character and I didn’t like his suit (Yes I am slagging off his clothing).

I thought the idea for the game was good, having 4 different styles of gameplay with your silent approach with Noir or all guns blazing with Ultimate, but the problem is the game became the same for each level. Each level story unfolded pretty much the same way. I can think of ways that it could have been different and maybe better because it followed the same format for almost all the levels, but overall the gameplay was fun and enjoyable. I just expected more or possibly wanted too much from a mediocre game.

There were a few annoyances throughout the game, the main one being the camera angles when you are fighting. You will be fighting a group of enemies and go to use your web to throw something at them and your camera will go all over the place and you will end up aiming at something else. Then there was the repetitive dialogue, constantly repeating the same lines. The main level I had this on was the 2nd Noir level when I had to save some hostages and Spiderman was constantly saying, “I need to find a way to save the hostages.” There were even points of the level where he wouldn’t have finished his last line and he would be starting on another one.

The difficulty of the game is nothing to worry about. I played the game on hard on my first playthrough and only really hit a problem with the last boss. The only problem I have with the trophies is replaying the game again to get a platinum rating on each level, but apart from that I would say the trophies are easy and quick. There is a trophy for completing the Web of Destiny, which is a list of challenges for each level, but none are too hard and most are completed by playing the game normally.

Overall I thought the game could have used a lot of improvements. It didn’t seem up to the standards of other games such as Batman: AA, but it was a fun play and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys a fairly long action game or who grew up watching Spiderman, now that it has suffered from a price drop. Hopefully if there is a sequel to the game or if a new Spiderman game is released it will follow the same kind of idea as this game did because I enjoyed the variety in the different Spidermen, but I just hope for a more in-depth story line. One thing I hope doesn’t get added to the game is online, this is one game that really would fail if online was added.

Credit to WeakerYouth for editing my review

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