As good as Spider-Man Shattered Dimensions seems to be in the first few minutes. The graphics are stylized and very well done. The voice work is a little annoying but passable. And the MANY bugs are off putting but not game breaking. At least not most of the time. The one particularly bad bug was the one in the Kraven level where because the tutorial message switch wasn't triggered properly the game just stalled and just kept spawning enemies for around 30 minutes. I was afraid of losing progress or dropping back into the same issue again, so I put up with it. But how was that not found in play testing.
The gameplay is broken into the four parts each supposedly being completely different. Amazing Spider-man is supposed to be"old school" Spider-Man action. Which basically breaks down in to punching, kicking, and shooting a little web at people. The amount of web slinging is pretty significant and I would have really liked to see a little more fluidity in the system given the amount of time you spend doing it. The camera all ways seemed to be one movement behind. Also there were some surfaces that looked like you should be able to stick to, but you could not. It didn't occur often in the game but usually in Amazing more than others.
The Noir Spider-Man is REALLY the only unique part of this four part madness. In this alternate reality Spider-Man needs to be stealthy. But what this really boils down to is turning on your "spider sense" vision and sneaking up behind guys and webbing them. When you try and do something slick like crawl up the wall and on the ceiling. The camera feels that the best place to look when Spider-man is on a wall or the ceiling is to look right at Spider-Man's back side. Not really going to work.
Spider-Man 2099. Which is basically Amazing Spider-Man with free falling sequences. The stuttering web slinging is back but there is much less of it. I kind of liked some of the environments for 2099, but some of the path finding was very off, and I often found myself walking down a path that seemed to be the main path but for some reason I had trouble traversing.
Finally there is Ultimate Spider-Man (Which is Spider-man in the alien black suit): Which gives you rage mode which lets you kill more enemies at once also the there is a serious emphasis on web slinging which is even more so than Amazing Spider-Man. While this Spider-Man was pretty descent, the Electro Boss seemed especially annoying considering all the saving people sequences and how each could really hinder your progress rather than being a fun side mini game.
None of the above "Dimensions," seemed special or incredibly interesting. Each and every level has at least two major parts and two part boss battles as well. The repetitive nature of every single level is terrible. The game smacks of an XBOX or PS2 title. Especially with the incredibly awful A.I. camera that thinks I'm a lonely woman who wants to stare at Spider-Man's butt 24/7. Some of the environments were memorable but most seemed like they were just stock fare that someone had laying around for another game.
I really did like the web of destiny where you unlock challenges and of course unlocking all the alternate costumes and combos were really good ideas. The gameplay in the whole game could have been put into a single level and been more than enough. Every level seemed to take around hour+ on regular difficulty and that was FAR TOO LONG. The game began to feel more like a marathon to just finish each level rather than actually enjoying playing. The orb style collection quest for all the spider icons was another excellent part of the game, but most of the "rare" spiders seemed to often to be in the same places on every level and I would have preferred fewer of them and more hidden than five easy to find ones.
I do really like Spider-Man and while the story seemed ridiculous I was more than happy to go along with it; if only they had nailed the gameplay; and not felt the need to make the game much too long for that gameplay to support. While Spider-Man Shattered Dimensions isn't a horrible game, I would definitely say rent this one before you buy.
