Spider-Man has been around a while (since
1962, to be exact), and like every superhero, he's gone through big
changes both cosmetic and practical over the years. But it's still
surprising that developer Beenox chose to take three recent incarnations
of the web-slinging superhero and bring them together in the same game:
Spider-Man:
Shattered Dimensions. When the evil Mysterio breaks into a museum
and the Tablet of Order and Chaos is broken, problems in multiple
realities ensue -- to set things right, Madame Web tasks the Amazing
Spider-Man (voiced by Neil Patrick Harris) to work with three of his
counterparts from other dimensions: Spider-Man 2099, Ultimate Spider-Man
(in the symbiote suit but without any evil side effects), and
Spider-Man Noir.
The result of this team up allows you to switch between four
different play-styles (to change things up between stages), and you can
also choose the order in which you play the levels within a given act.
But this latter freedom really only serves to make the already weak
story feel more disjointed. Each level feels completely separated from
the others, and it's only during the final act that there's any sort of
communication between each of the Spider-universes. With a plot penned
by comic veteran Dan Slott, it's a shame that the generic story is one
of the game's largest shortcomings.
While the separation between levels sacrifices any compelling reason to travel through these comic book worlds, it does allow for wholly different ways to approach each new challenge. For instance, when playing as Spider-Man Noir, you must use the darkness to your advantage and stealthily eliminate enemies; whereas, Ultimate Spider-Man uses his Rage ability to deploy powerful combos against large groups of foes. Changing the way in which you fight is an interesting idea, but every level follows an almost identical formula: meet the boss, battle them once, save civilians, battle the boss again. Rinse and repeat.
Another one of my qualms with Shattered Dimensions is the same issue that every Spider-Man game seems to have: an unstable camera. Every once in a while, in the middle of a fight, the camera ends up getting stuck too close to the ground. This drastic change in view makes it more difficult to finish off a combo or see how many enemies are left. While this only happened to me a few times during my 10-hour playthrough, fighting with the camera while crawling on walls or ceilings (especially during the Noir sections) can really hamper your enjoyment.
