Game berg: CONSOLE GAME - Wii: SPIDERMAN SHATTERED DIMENSIONS

Game Info:

Your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man is back. In fact, four Spider-Men are back for Shattered Dimensions, a game that celebrates the wallcrawler's various incarnations. These four Spider-Men inhabit different worlds with different gameplay styles and unexpected variations on well-known villains. If you think you've seen it all with Spider-Man games, think again. (Go ahead, think. I'll be here waiting.) Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensionshas some incredible Spider-Man moments, but plenty of familiar issues that prevent it from being the Arkham Asylum of the Spider-Man universe. And on Wii, some added camera issues that hurt the overall experience.

Mysterio is after a powerful tablet that will make him more than just a lame illusionist. But the pieces of the tablet have been spread out across four dimensions. Fortunately, each dimension has its own version of Spider-Man. There's the Amazing Spider-Man, Ultimate Spider-Man, Noir Spidey and Spider-Man 2099. Each has unique abilities, a different visual style, and even different voice actors pulled from Spidey's long television history (including Dan Gilvezan of Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends fame).
As you hunt down the pieces of the tablet, you'll get a first-hand look at Spidey's notorious Rogue's Gallery. What's cool about Shattered Dimensions is that each world can bring drastic changes to familiar foes. The Noir Green Goblin is a circus freak, 2099's Doctor Octopus is a chick, Ultimate Electro is living electricity sans lame green and yellow costume. The intros for each boss, which come at the start of the level, are handled brilliantly. There's a sense of drama in Shattered Dimensions that has been missing from Spidey games for years.

But that drama is all in the way the villains are presented (along with some truly epic boss battles). The story itself is weak. I mean, Spider-Man goes from level to level chasing and then beating a boss to collect a piece of the tablet… that is the plot. Spoilers.

The story has no pull to it, but there are plenty of good things that kept me playing, even as the plot fell completely flat. Each level has 15 challenges to tackle and those challenges unlock upgrades to your character and a slew of cool bonus costumes. Who wouldn't want to play as Bag-Man Spidey of Fantastic Four fame or the Scarlet Spider? The challenges are sensibly constructed and pretty much always stuff that doesn't force you to break from the main game. You might disarm five mercenaries instead of smacking them with your fists to win a challenge, earn some Spidey points to spend on upgrades, and reveal more of the level's available tasks. These challenges were a big help in keeping the naturally repetitive nature of an action game like this from feeling tedious.

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