Spiderman Shattered Dimensions

Spiderman Shattered Dimensions

CSU Cauldron

Date: 9/16/2010, Spiderman Shattered Dimensions: For when one Spiderman just isn’t enough.

There are other things going on in the world besides the Bungie’s swan song for the Halo franchise. Sounds crazy, right?  It is, in fact, not crazy at all and if you refuse to accept that, you will miss out on a great game. After many, many games featuring our friendly neighborhood Spiderman both as a main character and as a member of Marvel’s stable ‘o’ heroes, we get a return to the wise-cracking, web-slinging Spiderman that we have all grown to love. Spiderman: Shattered Dimensions is a solidly good game, with a lot more humor than one usually finds in a big name video game. Each of the voice actors, most notably Neil Patrick Harris, is spot on with beautifully timed quips and witty one liners while enemies monologue.

The game starts with Mysterio strolling through a museum looking for some goodies to steal, as he does, where he happens upon ‘The Tablet of Order and Chaos’. Enter Spiderman, who proceeds to shatter the tablet into many pieces and shatter reality in the process. Mysterio escapes with a small chunk, which amplifies his power, and Madame Web recruits you to fix time and space as we know it. Not only does she recruit the Amazing Spiderman (you), she also enlists Ultimate Spiderman (you), Noir Spiderman (you), and Spiderman 2099  (yup, also you). That’s right, you get the chance to play as Spiderman from across four different comic arcs.

Amazing Spiderman is the most popular and familiar one, the one with the classic red and blue suit. Next is Ultimate Spiderman, or as we all know him, Black Suit Spiderman, the one that eventually goes crazy and starts eating people. Less well known still is Noir Spiderman, a Spiderman which takes place during the Great Depression and has an interesting back story which everyone should find out for themselves. Finally we have Spiderman 2099, who is not Peter Parker, as the other three are, but a brilliant geneticist who crusades against the wrongs perpetrated by an all powerful company in, you guessed it true believers, the year 2099. I’m a huge nerd and damn proud of it.

Each iteration of Spiderman has unique strengths, while the moves carry across each Spiderman. The Amazing Spiderman is your normal, garden variety superhero with nothing overly amazing. Ultimate Spiderman dons the black suit, which would normally make him go crazy and start feasting on flesh, as previously mentioned, if not for Madame Web’s tinkering so he has all of the strength with none of the pesky, delicious side effects. Noir Spiderman is physically the weakest Spiderman, sticking to the shadows and using stealth to his advantage, bringing fear to those of his foes he has not yet incapacitated. Spiderman 2099 is the fastest Spiderman, who enjoys jumping off the tall buildings of the future to pursue any bad guy with a similar penchant, which is all of them (of course).

This game is a blast, a strictly single player experience, but well worth playing time and time again. The forced switching of roles and strategies doesn’t feel forced, it feels more like a chance to spice up the normal beat em up fare we’ve all come to expect from video games. Not being a gamer that typically enjoys stealthy games, I found myself strangely drawn to these levels where I had to stick to the shadows because a strong gust of air could KO me, simply because they were done well and the consequences were experienced by a character I felt a connection with.

I don’t mean to imply the game is without fault, because it certainly isn’t. The combat does start to get stale in the three levels that are not Noir, and a branching skill tree would have been welcome to the experience. As the game progresses, you have the choice of outfitting each Spiderman with up to four costumes which do nothing except change your coat. If each costume gave a little perk (like Spiderham) or penalty (like the Amazing Bagman, look it up, it’ll make you smile), it would give the game an added dimension of fun as well as replayability.

This game isn’t for everyone, but if you enjoy well done superhero games with a slick sense of humor, this one is definitely for you. Buy it.