Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions review

Fri, 01 Oct 2010 12:12:00 +1300

I’ve tried to start this review perhaps eight times. If this were a movie, my writing process would be a montage composed of me pacing behind my desk, taking far too much interest in a colleague’s Guitar Hero review, exhaling and spinning in my chair, shooting hoops with a novelty-sized basketball kit, and, naturally, pouring increasingly stiff drinks. In each sequence my wastepaper bin is filled that much higher with more crumpled false starts.

It’s not that Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions is a particularly thought-provoking game by design – far from it. In every sense of the phrase it’s a comic caper: The villainous Mysterio has shattered the Tablet of Order and Chaos, and now four distinct iterations of Spider-Man must gather the fragments scattered across their own uniquely stylised parallel realities in order to restore balance to the universe.

No problem. What’s caused me to decelerate to a standstill is pondering what might have been. There is so much potential here, so many good ideas, and that makes the pangs of disappointment sting all the more. Developer Beenox has come to within an inch of greatness, so close that you’ll feel you can almost reach out and brush it with your fingertips. But this is a bun that has been taken from the oven too soon, and in doing so, the game makes a heartbreaking freefall descent toward mediocrity.

Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions launch trailer

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:43:00 +1200

Developed by Beenox, Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions will allow players to travel through four different worlds as distinctly different versions of Spider-Man from four universes across Marvel lore. The game is due for release in New Zealand on October 1.

Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions at Gameplanet NZ

Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions review

Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions launch trailer