Activision Used Their Great Power With Great Responsibility...For The Most Part

Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions is the latest Spider-Man game from Activision.  In Shattered Dimensions, you play as four different spider-men(Noir, 2099, Amazing, and Ultimate) in their quest to unite the pieces of the tablet of Order and Chaos.  This is done over the course of several missions in the various worlds of each respective spidey.

The four spider-men play largely the same.  Amazing, 2099, and Ultimate spider-man all have the same webslinging melee combat spider-man fans are used to.  Ultimate and 2099 spider-man each have special modes which make them more powerful or faster respectively, but I found these to be largely eye-candy on the game's normal difficulty setting, as I rarely felt compelled to use them.  Noir spider-man is the exception.  His mode features stealth missions in his black-and-white world where you perform webbing assisted ranged take-downs.  However, it is very clear that this mode is a very basic take on last year's Batman: Arkham Asylum, and by basic I mean stealth and takedowns and thats it.

I did enjoy the audio and visuals in the game.  The developers did a very good job of immersing me in the various worlds, and the many villains that appear in this game are brought to life quite well.  I was also happy to see that the design team dipped a little deeper into Spider-Man's rogues gallery than usual.  When they did use overdone characters like Hobgoblin or Doctor Octopus, they at least used versions of them other than the classic, or “Amazing” versions.  It was also nice to see characters appear that are out of Spider-Man's typical wheelhouse, such as Juggernaut.

I can find very little wrong with this game.  The gameplay, while it does remain excited, very quickly devolves into repeated use of the same move, and the game does very little(outside of a very interesting in-game achievement system) to encourage experimentation.  I did notice in the last few levels several crashes that forced me to reboot my X-Box 360.  I only mention this because, out of all the games I've played for the last four or so years that I've been a 360 gamer, this is the first time I've ever had a game-stopping crash, and that occurred 3 times in this game.  None of the bugs were ones that I was able to repeat, but that being said, this is why we have Quality Assurance departments.

I had a lot of fun playing Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions.  The problems I did have are minor ones.  Over all, I'd say pick this title up, whether you're a Spidey fan or just plain into action games.  It's a good time.

	System:	Xbox 360
	Genre:	3rd=Person Action
	Experience:	Finished the game on normal difficulty

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