Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions (PS3)

Back before Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse introduced most of the world to the idea of multiple Spider-Men from alternate dimensions, there was Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions. Plucking four different versions of the characters from different comic book universes Marvel had made, Beenox’s 2010 action game had such a strong concept that even the comic books would borrow it for the 2014 Spider-Verse story arc that in turn inspired the animated film. Conceptually, it is definitely intriguing to see how a character might be different in a different time or a world with different rules, so it’s no surprise the idea found purchase in places besides video games, and it certainly seems like those other mediums could better tap into what should be appealing about such a crossover.

 

The four Spider-Men featured in Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions technically should be very different characters. We have the regular recognizable version of Marvel’s biggest hero, referred to here as the Amazing Spider-Man, and he has all the web-slinging, wall-crawling, and spider powers people familiar with the hero would expect to see. Then we have Ultimate Spider-Man, who is mostly the same character so they contrive a reason for him to regain the black symbiote suit that the character even acknowledges is no longer relevant to his personal story. Spider-Man Noir is lifted from a gritty 1950s take on Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2099’s Miguel O’Hara comes instead from the far-off future of 2099, but while the characters usually are quite different from each other, the game makes sure each one has a fairly similar power-set they don’t break away from. They all can climb up walls, swing from webs, and have many of the same moves in combat, but there is at least some effort to ensure that not every Spider-Man is just a costume change.

While Amazing Spider-Man is essentially the default and will spend most his time beating up groups of baddies and swinging through levels, the other three each have a gimmick with varying degrees of success. Ultimate Spider-Man’s alien suit has a rage mode that can easily tear through groups of enemies, meaning his levels often have moments heavily focused on the combat. Spider-Man 2099 has an ability to slow-down time with limited utility, so ultimately his gimmick seems to be the free fall segments where you need to dodge danger as you plummet towards the boss you’re fighting. 2099 does at least seem to have a few levels with a greater puzzle focus or goals that require exploring a large area to complete, but it’s not too much of a departure from the previous two gameplay styles that it truly feels like it sets his segments apart. Spider-Man Noir is actually the most distinct of the four. While most characters can expect plenty of fights with goons and navigating around large levels to reach the next group of bad guys, Spider-Man Noir is asked to employ stealth. The black and white Noir levels have shadowy areas you need to carefully lurk in, many goons wielding guns that can tear through you quickly if you’re detected. Sometimes you will still be in a punch up as him, but the stealth segments require picking off enemies carefully and using the level design to your advantage.

 

Luckily, while most Spider-Men do fall into the trap of spending a lot of their time in combat, it’s not too bad mechanically. Each character can buy new specific abilities with the points you earn for doing side tasks in levels like using certain abilities, collecting the spider-emblems that also heal you, or engaging with a stage specific gimmick. The basic brawling is a bit straightforward, most enemy groups easily handled without needing to tap into your bought abilities, but Amazing Spider-Man can mix in web powers and Ultimate has his living costume help with crowd control. Noir and 2099 mostly just get additional strong moves to pepper into the basic punch and throw options you’ll be relying on, and the simplicity of most of your enemy encounters is one of the things holding this game back. The different Spider-Men not being too distinct is a missed opportunity, but the basic fights feel like they are hit the hardest by this despite their frequent presence. A typical conflict will feel pretty interchangeable across the cast, but despite often being action filler, it’s usually broken up enough that you don’t spend too long doing it each time it crops up.

 

The boss fights are definitely highlights though, and Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions takes a surprisingly old-school approach to setting up how you face the different classic villains from Spider-Man’s history. Rather than stringing things together into a continuous narrative, the stages in the game are pretty much just all excuses to face off with that stage’s supervillain. The game starts with the shattering of the Tablet of Order and Chaos, its pieces thrown across multiple dimensions and finding themselves in the hands of evil individuals who tap into its powers to grow even more powerful. Madame Web contacts the Spider-Men of four different worlds so they may cooperate on reclaiming these pieces from villains they’re already often familiar with. Unfortunately, while Madame Web used her powers to allow them to share the same set of abilities, she might also have connected their sense of humor. Spider-Man is famous for cracking jokes during combat, but whoever wrote the four heroes here decided that almost every pun and bit of wordplay required Spider-Man to say “Get it?” after. It’s hard to enjoy a joke when the characters are constantly appending every line with some critique of their quip, and while some of their one-liners are corny, they don’t have the room to breathe before Spider-Man tries to make a joke of the fact he tried to tell a joke at all.

While the four only meet in the final stage where they all use their unique abilities for character specific segments, the levels they traverse solo all get to focus on making the powered up versions of the villain the main focus. Electro is able to tap into a hydro-electric dam in a level focused on trying to safely avoid and counter his electrical form. Sandman has become a massive tornado of sand that devastates an old digging site. The Goblin in Spider-Man Noir hides within a carnival where he was once part of the freak show, and Spider-Man 2099’s technologically inclined villains have plenty of future tech to play with.

 

Having such a huge focus on the bosses means the levels get to stay interesting despite the time spent whaling away on the less than stellar grunts. Kraven the Hunter isn’t just a boss battle waiting at the end, his whole theme of catching human prey is turned into a massive jungle level that culminates in multiple confrontations with the classic villain. Bosses usually have some pretty interesting gimmicks to them so that the battle requires a bit of thought, and fights like the ones in Spider-Man Noir’s levels do play to the strengths of his abilities. Fights do often rob their climax of some punch though with a very bland first-person segment where you and the villain get intimately close and trade blows in an all-too-straightforward simplified fistfight, but these can be stomached because they are often surrounded by boss battles where there’s an interesting shake-up to the combat design. There are some unfortunate glitches though, like when a boss battle with Noir’s vulture couldn’t conclude as it intended so I was stuck in his boss arena with a misbehaving and nauseating camera, and at some points other errors like enemies that had to be beaten were stuck behind doors and unreachable. Refreshing from a checkpoint usually cleared it up and the game isn’t too harsh in how far it will set you back to rectify these problems. The Vulture fight even let me just finish the fight instantly instead of repeating the battle, but the glitches are still annoying since such niceties aren’t guaranteed when you retry that area. These hiccups don’t completely undercut the appeal of the supervillains and their level theming at least, so it’s still enjoyable to press forward and see how the latest tablet-enhanced foe has twisted the world in their image.

THE VERDICT: Glitchy in parts and bland during most of its basic battles, Spider-Man Shattered Dimensions relies mostly on its creative boss fights and Spider-Man Noir’s stealth stages to stay afloat. Three of the four Spider-Men are too similar to sustain the combat portions of the game, but when a souped up supervillain takes center stage with their incredible new powers, you can expect the kind of fights and level theming that makes the repetitive enemy battles worth pushing through. When a level is mostly focused on the boss gimmick or the stealth you’re in for a much more interesting time, and while the close range fistfights with supervillains are still shallow, there is at least enough to the more unique parts of the game to balance this out into a decent package.

 

And so, I give Spider-Man Shattered Dimensions for PlayStation 3…

An OKAY rating. A lot of the gameplay mechanics in this Spider-Man game aren’t really all too exciting. Web-slinging and wall crawling are mostly functional parts of getting to the next place where you can fight more generic thugs, but the loose plot allows the game to focus more on the supervillains at parts to the game’s great benefit. The fights with Spider-Man’s rogues gallery can take on some incredibly interesting shapes, and the more the level plays into focusing on the conflict between superhero and supervillain, the better the stage is for it. There is just enough creativity to these to make the normal levels tolerable, and with Noir’s stealth stages to occasionally break things up even more, the less exciting design choices like the first person punching are easily put aside. The game certainly would have been more interesting if all four playable heroes were more distinct, especially since things like the free fall and rage mode are such minor things they only get brief highlights in levels that otherwise feel pretty much like Amazing Spider-Man’s stages retooled to match the universe’s visual aesthetic.

 

With the Spider-Verse concept taking off the way it did, it’s pretty easy to see how Shattered Dimensions could be made more diverse, but at least the game this focus on the multiverse sprung from has its moments. It’s certainly an uneven game overall, but those moments where Spider-Man and his villains interact nearly help you forget the padding and repetition between those exciting fights.