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.

Almost every aspect of this game can be praised for its ambition, for what it has set out to achieve, before being equally chided for middling implementation.

No aspect of the game is more guilty of this than the multidimensional premise itself. Throughout you’ll be controlling four different takes on Spider-Man. First is the Amazing Spider-Man, or vanilla Spidey; Ultimate Spider-Man, his modernised re-imagining; Spider-Man 2099, a futuristic take on the web-slinger; and Spider-Man Noir, a pulp noir spin set during the prohibition era.

By digging through Marvel’s back-catalogue of Spider-Man spin-offs Beenox afforded themselves the opportunity to create a game that never becomes staid or routine. Transitioning from one visual mode and play-style to the next should have ensured Shattered Dimensions remained fresh throughout. And while it does allow the developer to feature a long roster sheet of villains that Marvel’s “true believers” will certainly appreciate, in practice only one continuity has enough character and variation to be truly distinguished from its peers.

The Amazing Spider-Man is the default. Ultimate Spider-Man has a Rage mode that enhances his attacks as long as he can keep his meter filled, and 2099 features an underwhelming bullet time mechanic. But for their settings and costumes these iterations quickly boil down to the same web-slinging, button mashing essence, each hardly discernable from the last.

The exception is Spider-Man Noir, a dimension featuring a pared back vigilante who must use stealth to disable powerful adversaries in a highly contrasted greyscale world of yesteryear. But even here, initial enchantment soon gives way to disillusionment as Noir’s play-style often feels as though it has been cribbed from Rocksteady’s Batman: Arkham Asylum.

The linear level design also initially appears to be at odds with the unrestrained acrobatics that define the super hero. Open worlds are Spider-Man’s natural habitat, something that both Neversoft and Treyarch capitalised on in the games Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2, and something that ensured both were inducted into that exclusive club of successful movie tie-ins.

But why Beenox have cramped the web-slinger becomes immediately clear. Each level plays out like a self-contained comic, moving from one panel or sequence to the next and featuring frequent exchanges with villains in order to imbue it with the kind of action worthy of a super hero.

Unfortunately, the composition of each level fast becomes formulaic. Typically, a villain will make their introduction and identify themselves as the keeper of a shattered fragment before Spider-Man makes a campy quip. The villain then descends deeper into the level with Spider-Man in pursuit. Each level is a series of set pieces in which you’ll need to either dispatch cronies or rescue held civilians while the villain taunts you from afar. You’ll have your first physical encounter with the boss halfway through. Thereafter you’ll deal with more cronies and hostage situations before engaging in the final boss fight wherein the villain uses the power of fragment to augment his abilities.

The game’s insistence on using the environment to your advantage in these final encounters ensures that each is unique and storied. Then again, an unnecessary quick-time brawler mode appended to each is extremely unwelcome. This mode sees you going first-person as Spider-Man to put some hurt on your foe up close while dodging incoming blows. Heroic perhaps, but the tetchy response window will often see you humiliatingly check-pointed back to an earlier phase in the fight.

It’s not just here that control response can let you down. Spider-Man’s web-moving abilities are all bound to the right trigger. A quick tap will see Spidey zip to a highlighted perch while holding the trigger will send him swinging as if from vine to vine. The difference between the two is fractional and more than once you’ll intend to zip only to find yourself unheroically swinging into the ground like a meteor before coming to a grinding halt amid a mob of minions.

On quips and banter, the game is penned by Amazing Spider-Man scribe Dan Slott. To that end, Spider-Man can be at his light-hearted, humorous best, armed with more than a few snappy one-liners and pop culture references sure to get a private titter out of anyone who has turned on a television in the last ten years. Balance that against the larger yield of jibes that will bring memories of the preschool yard flooding back – such gems as “See ya, wouldn’t wanna be ya!” And who could forget that nineties classic, “Take a chill pill!”? Worse still, they’re repeated with abandon, sometimes within seconds of a previous utterance.

In keeping with the comic aesthetic, Shattered Dimensions employs a variety of graphical techniques including cel-shading in order to mimic the block inking of the source material. Fight combos put the camera to great effect using quick tracking and slow motion to replicate comic panelling. Throughout any level you’ll also be treated to cut scenes that skilfully recreate comic frame composition.

All of these can look spectacular and all are let down by irregularities. There’s usually more than a few graphical infidelities appearing on your screen at any one time and the construction of the cut scenes is jarringly inconsistent. One may be a partial animation, static 2D artwork moving against a background – again, as if to nod to the source material – the next may be fully animated. There’s little discernable rhyme or reason as to which gets which treatment, something that will leave you wondering whether there just wasn’t enough time – which is, of course, the criticism at large.

Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions is an opportunity missed. For all its ambition, wit and comic aesthetic, it feels rushed out the door. The unfortunate result is a game that could have been spectacular but is now merely perfectly tolerable. Perhaps more importantly, Shattered Dimensions demonstrates what minnow developer Beenox should be capable of if given enough time and resources. Watch that space very closely.