Shattered Dimensions is a good game, just not a great one.
What I disliked : Subpar combat ( as always in the Spider-Man games ), horrible camera during wall crawling and the action of wall-crawling itself is so badly done that it's a chore to use.
Spider-Man Shattered Dimensions is a Spider-Man's fan wet dream. It's not my case, because i'm no Spider-Man fan. I just like video games, particularly action titles, no matter who's the protagonist.
The game is, to my knowledge, Beenox's first real effort in the video game industry. Beenox is also a newer company, which is based in my very hometown of Quebec City. I must admit, I bought this game mainly because it came from local talent.
Spider-Man Shattered Dimensions, as you're all aware, has four different protagonists, with four different worlds. I'm not very fond of the Ultimate version of Spider-Man, because there's too much resemblance to Amazing in the first place, but they're all fun to play. For the most part.
Beenox decided to leave the free-roam aspect of the previous Spider-Man games, while concentrating into making it a simple action game, which is very reminiscent of the very first Spider-Man games on the PSX.
Is it a bad thing? No, it's not, when you can make the gameplay awesome. Because let's be honest, half of the fun of the Spidey games is about swinging around a city. So what's left with this game? The combat and boss fights.
The combat itself is exactly what you'd except from a Spider-Man game ; it's frenetic, generic and fairly simple, with relatively lame enemies to fight off with your fists and kicks. There are four variants to the protagonist's main fighting style, but in the end, there's little to no difference between the heroes. They all have combos, they all have a unique ability ( except Amazing who's ability is to be... huh, amazingly ordinary I guess.
Ultimate, Amazing and 2099 Spider-Men all have the same goals, more or less, which is to beat your foes to a pulp. Only Noir Spidey stands out, with a Splinter-Cell-ish approach where you'll have to stick to the darkness and do silent takedowns. It's fun, but it gets old real quick. There's just not enough meat around the bone for Noir Spidey. For instance, if the whole game had been only with Noir Spider-Man' s setting, it would have been a total bore after two levels. On the other hand, Noir has the most unique setting of them all, and is quite awesome to look at.
There are swinging mechanics to help you traverse the dangerous, well-crafted levels, but as the old action-oriented 3d Spidey games, swinging can only get you so far before you crash into a wall in a jitterish animation. The same can be said about the wall-climbing, which is downright broken. Look, no sane person would have green-lit that atrocity that is the wall-climbing. It's slow, not precise, unresponsive, and the camera flickers around like mad. Worse ; it makes your character spin around, with no sense of direction.
There are also boss fights, but they obey to the rule of the '' good ol' boss fight ''. Which means, you can hurt them only when the game decide they're vulnerable, otherwise, they aren't. So you have to spend a good minute trying to figure out the way to take them down.
The graphics are very well done, and that is one of the achievement I can give to Beenox ; they managed to create a lot of unique settings and enemies even if they're mostly re-skinned. You definitely won't get bored by Shattered's Dimensions visuals which are downright striking. As for the animations themselves, I found them to be quite good, but once again, like in any Spidey game, the transition between the moves is stiff and very unnatural, which is a bit odd considering the agility of the protagonists.
The audio is on par with the graphical quality, for the most part, with funny dialog and the proper '' im evil and I laugh alone '' super-vilain tone. The music is forgettable and you probably won't even recall the main title's theme in your short memory. I can't even.
Bottom line, is this the Arkham Asylum version of Marvel? No, it's not. Shattered Dimensions is a very good first effort, but the same old problems that crippled every single Spider-Man games up to date are still there.
Still, the project could have turned much, much worse, and for 60 dollars, you'll have a 7-8 hour long game that'll give you plenty of reason to retry your missions for alternate objectives and collectibles. If you're that into the game, of course.