365//365: Day 252 – Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions (360)

(unfortunately, the sound is way out of sync with the video, which was totally out of my hands)

When creating a Spider-Man video game, certain gameplay fundamentals should be adhered to. Silky smooth web swinging from point A to point B, ease of initiation with regards to your wall crawling powers, and a camera that can contain the action, without much, or any fuss to it. The last two titles featuring our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, one based loosely on the exploits of the third Spider-Man film, and Web of Shadows, which became a convoluted web of mess in terms of story and gratification, didn’t have the lasting power gamers had hoped for. They both featured an ease of web swinging, as well as a simplicity to wall crawling, however neither had the most functional camera work. Nearly two years after Web of Shadows, Activision releases Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions. As with Web of Shadows, Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions (SM:SD) isn’t related in any way to the film franchise, but rather its own unique storyline. While the plausibility of that storyline is the least of the players worries, the identity crisis with the gameplay elements, as well as some nagging control issues will make you feel as if you got a shot of web to the face.

Mysterio, one of the oldest adversaries of Spider-Man, as well as one of the least intriguing,  is attempting to steal some kind of tablet from a museum in New York. Spidey comes swinging in to thwart Mysterio’s attempts at escaping with this tablet. After a brief scuffle in which Spider-Man owns the upper hand in, Mysterio staggers towards the tablet and holds it up just as Spider-Man delivers one of his powerful punches. The tablet completely shatters, with Mysterio disappearing moments later. Madame Web, a supporting character in the Spider-Man universe, alerts him that the tablet he shattered has torn the fabrics of time and reality, and that he must locate each piece throughout four different realities.

The storyline, while pretty much nonsensical, holds together the four realities in which you must venture through in order for you to retrieve the broken pieces of the tablet. You will control four different Spider-Man characters from four different universes: the red and black Spider-Man we’ve all come to love, the “Ultimate” Spider-Man donned in his symbiote suit, Miguel O’Hara aka Spider-Man 2099, and finally Noir Spider-Man, an alternate take to the Spider-Man character, set in the 1930′s.

Each of the alternate universe web heads all share several common bonds — they all walk with a hunchback, the camera has some major spazzing issues, and it’s next to impossible to walk near a wall without auto sticking to it. With the camera, you’re run into major issues if you’re hanging upside down or are propped onto a wall. It becomes a massive undertaking to get the camera to follow you without it turning a whole other direction, quick turning or just not following the path you want it to go. Ceiling controls in general are as abhorrent as one of the best Spider-Man games out there, Spider-Man on the Sony PlayStation. There’s no consistency with it, leading to random changes in how you navigate the ceilings. Standing too close to most any wall and tapping into it will send you clinging onto it, intentionally or unintentionally. It’s a bit too touchy, and ends up being a hindrance more often than not.

With each version of Spider-Man, you’ll encounter slight tweaks in how they play. While Spider-Man, Ultimate and 2099 share mostly the same attributes, the latter two have their own type of special toggles. Ultimate goes into a Rage mode, where all of his attacks become even stronger. 2099 has Accelerated Vision, which enables you to slow down the world around you, while you maneuver about in real time. Spider-Man is left with his usual powers we’ve all come to love, with nothing more outside random skills you can purchase to augment his powers.

Noir Spider-Man is a rather unique addition to the fold. His theme is stealth, relying upon hiding in the shadows and striking your enemies when they least expect it. If you step into the light at the wrong time, you’ll get pointed out and hunted down until you successfully evade your enemies within the shadows you’ll be calling home. In some ways, Noir Spider-Man’s levels become the highlight of SM:SD. The visual style is black and white in the shadows, with a yellow tinting to the color when you’re in the light for too long. Major enemies such as Hammerhead, will glow with certain colors at focal points to the arc you’re playing through. Think Sin City, though not as masterfully done. Each of the Noir levels have the fitting 1930′s looks, and the black and white style sets it apart from the rest of the game, with a look that’s well appreciated.

The other three worlds have quite an attractive look to them. Spider-Man and his environments look a bit like they were ripped from a Saturday Morning cartoon show. The animation is fluid, without any sort of choppy frame rates to distort the flow. Ultimate’s world shares the same lush, animated-like features as Spider-Man’s world, though with a darker tone to it. 2099′s world is based off a futuristic take of Earth in the distant future. Developer Beenox did a fantastic job bringing the world of Spider-Man 2099 to life, with the neon lights, flying vehicles and tons of other futuristic looking figures. One questionable animation quirk has Spider-Man through all four dimensions not only walking like the Hunchback of Notre Dam, but running around like he just emptied his bowels in his suit. It can be quite distracting, not to mention quite hilarious, but for all the wrong reasons.

Anyone that knows the Spider-Man character enough, whether it’s through the comics, cartoons, movie adaptations or video game titles, knows that he love to crack jokes while getting under the skin of his adversaries. SM:SD is no different, as Spidey will be poking fun at various enemies and situations throughout all four dimensions, with a lesser emphasis in the Noir world. Unlike Web of Shadows highly aggravating Spider-Man voice actor, Spider-Man and Ultimate sound the part, with no real deviance to their delivery. There are two auditory annoyances however — it seems like Spider-Man constantly spews one liners, more than he’s ever had before, whether it be in a video game or a movie, with constant repeats. Then there’s Miguel O’Hara, who’s voice sounds like a slightly higher pitched Stan Lee. It’s hard to fault 2099′s voice, as this is his first appearance as a playable, unique character. His line delivery quickly becomes stale, as his voice actor delivers more of a grating annoyance than an actual performance. The rest of the audio is no frills, standard fare pieces of work. The music can sound engaging at times, fitting together quite commendably with the action on screen.

As previously mentioned, there are control quirks throughout the game, with wall and ceiling crawling becoming a haphazard affair, to say the least. Camera manipulation can become wonky as well, especially in wall crawling form. Some battles, such as a battle with Sandman, has you dangling precariously, slinging from debris to debris, throwing barrels of water at his huge mug. After a while, your LT targeting becomes useless, picking up anything and everything in your path, and no Sandman himself. This distorts your view as well, as it becomes next to impossible to fully focus on where Sandman is and how you can hit him. When you manage to hit him with the barrel to expose his weakness, you can only manage a hit or two before his form returns. Control oddities and camera issues continue even with random battles throughout the game. Bouncing between enemies doesn’t pitch the camera into the right position, and changing it manually while in the middle of a multi-thug battle is useless, as you’ll change it to the right position for a split second, and then lose it.

Web of Shadow had some variety to it in regards to its combat system. You could chain together some wicked combination of hits, throws, webbing and whatnot. SM:SD lacks that style of offense. This boils the game down to more of a generic third person title than a superhero bolstered game. You can “purchase” new skills, combo extensions and extra time with your Rage and Accelerated Vision meters, but there’s nothing innovative, nor thrilling about the combat engine present. There are features such as shooting web at a stationary item and heaving it towards the opposition, but that’s hardly groundbreaking. The concept of holding LT down to lock onto an enemy, as well act as a means of dodging elementary attacks is a sound concept in theory, but when most enemies require you to press A in conjunction with LT in order for you to evade their attacks, the novelty wears thin. It doesn’t help matters much when even if you dodge at the right time, the enemy manages to peg a hit on you, rendering dodging and evasion a literal hit or miss affair.

Then you have a somewhat baffling addition to the gameplay, which thankfully doesn’t pop up overly much — first person fighting. During certain boss battles at certain points, you will initiate a first person view in which pressing certain directions on either analog will throw out one of three types of punches. Pressing down on both analog sticks when prompted to (and sometimes when you’re not) enables an evasive maneuver, in which you can respond to by throwing another punch or two. It’s a rather useless gimmick, one that had good intentions, and does manage to show off some of the facial detail on each of the bosses you’ll come to blows with. Probably the biggest crime to this first person fisticuffs fluff is the lack of power to your blows. Maybe if each jab or cross looked and felt like the impact of a truck hitting a brick wall, this would work, however each blow that lands feels relatively harmless, with no power to them whatsoever.

The stealth portion adds a bit of spice to the gameplay, though for all intended purposes, you can still take down a foe within a relatively close proximity to a light source and come away without alerting the masses. In some instances, you can even pull an enemy towards you with your web, who’s in the middle of a light source, with a fellow guard next to him, and no alert a single person. You’ll even come across an instance or two where you’ll web zip to a higher ledge, and have a guard witness this, with no clear distinction as to how he saw you zip by in the dark, while he himself is within those shadows.

Throughout each level with each alternate universe Spider-Man, you’re chasing one of the members of Spider-Man’s rogue gallery, battling them several times on your way to the usually anti-climatic final battle. Most of these battles are a test of patience, as you’ll have to fight waves of no named thugs in-between life bar segments, and the fights in general rarely ever cross the line of frantic, exciting or worthwhile. The first Noir Spider-Man level presents Hammerhead, one of the R-list villains in the Marvel Universe as a whole, but manages to take control of the light and shadows aspect in order for you to defeat him each time he’s encountered. Ultimate, 2099 and Spider-Man boss battles are more of an endurance round, with maybe one clever gimmick thrown in to mask the fact that there’s nothing intelligent about these battles.

The fact that Noir Spider-Man stages are easily the most involving, strategic and all around replayable of the four, especially with the flaws to the stealth mechanics, says a lot about the overall product. While the ability to web up enemies within close proximity to a light source and to each other, as well as rare instances of an enemy pointing you out while both Noir and that foe are cloaked by the shadows, begs to have been worked on some more by the developers. However the art style, quality of lighting and shadows, brutal stealth takedowns and the grittier tone all around really shines a light on this dark horse character. The fact that it’s so much more different than the other three worlds you play in makes it seem misplaced, however upon closer examination, it seems Noir Spider-Man’s portions are the only segments that feel in place, as flawed as they can be at times.

But the thing that really hurts SM:SD is repetition. Even with each character having a different look to their attacks, they are the same “spam X and Y” affair. Each of the four characters share the generic set of thugs, with a new coat of paint. There’s very little exclusive to each characters stage, to each characters rogue gallery and to each character themselves. Each stage is a glorfied segmented boss battle, some with severe issues thanks to the poor camera controls (the final Sandman battle comes to mind). It’s copy and paste, with a minor smudge tool to just slightly give the illusion that there’s much different.

Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions is a flawed superhero title with an occasional identity crisis. The only aspect to Shattered Dimensions that seems to try hard enough to be something worth playing, ends up being the lesser known of the four (Noir Spider-Man). There’s nothing innovative to be found in the gameplay, your combos are limited, the plethora of unlockables are not worth your time, the camera and control issues are prevalent throughout, and there’s little reason to even complete the game from beginning to end. The occasionally captivating Noir Spider-Man levels are not enough to outweigh the tons of other issues that pins down the overall package towards mediocrity. Wait for this to drop below $30 before taking a swing by it.

Rating: 4.5