Spiderman: Shattered Dimensions

I have a theory... I think that once you've made a great sandbox game (such as Spiderman 2 for PS2), trying to go back to linear seems like a step backwards to the audience. Which is a shame, because I think this game deserves just a little more love than it got.

So over the course of the game, you're playing four different spider-men all working towards the same goal.

Amazing Spiderman is kinda generic spidey. Seemed to have the best variety of special attacks, from what i could tell, but i've always been a bit button-mashy, so i may not have appreciated this for all that it was.

Noir Spiderman is pretty weak, but going stealth in the missions is a nice change of pace, and I'm a sucker for stealth games anyway. Playing Assassin's Creed 2 right now, btw. :)

Ultimate Spiderman has been forced into the Venom suit for the purposes of this game, and his specialty is a rage attack which tears down hordes of enemies.

2099 Spiderman has a thing where he slows down time, and all of his stages also have a falling mechanism. 2099 Spiderman was the only one that i didn't really enjoy.

Basically, each spidey has to collect three fragment pieces from three villains, then team up to go after the main villain. I appreciated that the main villain was not a frequently used Spidey villain. The level designs were pretty great... about the only time I wasn't having fun was during the 2099 falling sequences. It was a dodging-thing where you couldn't always sure where you were in relation to what you were dodging.

Personal favorite level was Ultimate Spider-man vs Deadpool. I really appreciated the humor in the level, although it had my second favorite pet peeve in the game, where I had to try to destroy some flying cameras... no easy way to do it that i could figure out, basically just jump in the air and mash buttons and hope that an attack hit them. Wasted way too much time trying again and again to hit those cameras.

Another little annoyance.. there are little in-game achievements that grant you extra upgrade points, which was all well and good, as far as i was concerned... problem was sometimes you would trigger the completion of one section of a stage without realizing it, and then you couldn't go back and collect anything you missed.

Aside from pet peeves I already mentioned, I loved this game. I know a lot of people loved Spiderman 2, but I thought this was a better Spider-man game, because of how well the villains were used and the levels desined around each level. 4.25/5 stars.

A new game is coming, with regular and Spidey 2099? Ugh... :/ At least the 2099 scenes were pretty awesome to look at.