Game Reviews

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.