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A fun game with no story - A Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions review by pofigster |
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Alright - I know this game is getting old pretty fast but for anyone sitting on the fence out there I thought I'd contribute a few thoughts on the game.
First the good about the game.
I’ve never played any other Spider-Man games, so I can’t comment on the controls relative to other games, but I found movement to be fairly intuitive and easy to control. Fighting, while simple, was enjoyable. I’m not a huge fan of super complicated combos that you need a reference manual to use. Visually fights were fun and fairly dynamic. Visually, the game pulled off three, maybe four distinct looks for the different universes and generally the graphics were fine and the world fairly beautiful. Amazing and Ultimate universe played fairly similarly – standard baddies for bosses in both. Noir and 2099 had fun twists on traditional villains. Amazing was the most ho-hum of the universes because Amazing Spider-Man doesn’t have any special powers above and beyond the other three but he was still fun to play because he was the most familiar. Dialogue in the game can get repetitive but was generally fun and witty to listen to.
Now some frustrating elements.
Wall crawling was occasionally odd as the camera angle would change and I’d be moving backward suddenly and the camera angle would change again, etc…
There was no reason to play without spider-sense turned on, and every time you recover from a fall or do a finishing move the game turns off spider-sense. It would have been better to incorporate spider-sense into the normal view.
Dialogue in the game can get VERY repetitive.
During some boss battles it’s not clear at all what you need to do to damage them or trigger their ‘exhausted’ state to beat on them. This was frustrating only because each boss has a specific mechanic that you need to leverage.
The Bad!
My biggest gripe with the game is that there is no story. Ok, well, there is a story, but the overarching story doesn’t affect gameplay and gameplay doesn’t contribute to the story. The tablet has been broken so go fight 12 bosses to recover fragments. Done? Ok, now fight another boss. That’s it – there wasn’t any kind of real effect in each level relating to progress through the story. Noir and 2099 had a very loose, very poorly connected story across the three acts but there wasn’t even dialogue to really make it feel like you’d accomplished anything. A couple of examples of blatant ‘levels’ in the game. Amazing Spider-Man has been kidnapped by someone and is on a desert island where he fights a bunch of guys, beats up the boss and suddenly ends up…back home? Ultimate Spider-Man is suddenly on an oil-rig type structure in the middle of the ocean where he fights a bunch of guys, beats up the boss and suddenly ends up…back home? No overarching story going on here.
Was the game fun? Absolutely – I’m glad I bought it (for as cheap as I did). I played through, got some achievements, had fun and sold it because without a real story I don’t feel like there’s any replayability. Would I recommend it? Sure. Buying over renting only to support the developers and try and convince them to keep making good playing Spider-Man games and then add story to them (like it seems they are with Edge of Time).
First the good about the game.
I’ve never played any other Spider-Man games, so I can’t comment on the controls relative to other games, but I found movement to be fairly intuitive and easy to control. Fighting, while simple, was enjoyable. I’m not a huge fan of super complicated combos that you need a reference manual to use. Visually fights were fun and fairly dynamic. Visually, the game pulled off three, maybe four distinct looks for the different universes and generally the graphics were fine and the world fairly beautiful. Amazing and Ultimate universe played fairly similarly – standard baddies for bosses in both. Noir and 2099 had fun twists on traditional villains. Amazing was the most ho-hum of the universes because Amazing Spider-Man doesn’t have any special powers above and beyond the other three but he was still fun to play because he was the most familiar. Dialogue in the game can get repetitive but was generally fun and witty to listen to.
Now some frustrating elements.
Wall crawling was occasionally odd as the camera angle would change and I’d be moving backward suddenly and the camera angle would change again, etc…
There was no reason to play without spider-sense turned on, and every time you recover from a fall or do a finishing move the game turns off spider-sense. It would have been better to incorporate spider-sense into the normal view.
Dialogue in the game can get VERY repetitive.
During some boss battles it’s not clear at all what you need to do to damage them or trigger their ‘exhausted’ state to beat on them. This was frustrating only because each boss has a specific mechanic that you need to leverage.
The Bad!
My biggest gripe with the game is that there is no story. Ok, well, there is a story, but the overarching story doesn’t affect gameplay and gameplay doesn’t contribute to the story. The tablet has been broken so go fight 12 bosses to recover fragments. Done? Ok, now fight another boss. That’s it – there wasn’t any kind of real effect in each level relating to progress through the story. Noir and 2099 had a very loose, very poorly connected story across the three acts but there wasn’t even dialogue to really make it feel like you’d accomplished anything. A couple of examples of blatant ‘levels’ in the game. Amazing Spider-Man has been kidnapped by someone and is on a desert island where he fights a bunch of guys, beats up the boss and suddenly ends up…back home? Ultimate Spider-Man is suddenly on an oil-rig type structure in the middle of the ocean where he fights a bunch of guys, beats up the boss and suddenly ends up…back home? No overarching story going on here.
Was the game fun? Absolutely – I’m glad I bought it (for as cheap as I did). I played through, got some achievements, had fun and sold it because without a real story I don’t feel like there’s any replayability. Would I recommend it? Sure. Buying over renting only to support the developers and try and convince them to keep making good playing Spider-Man games and then add story to them (like it seems they are with Edge of Time).
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