Game Informer Releases First Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions Review

Don’t you just love review embargoes/exclusivity?  I bet you that the fine folk over at Lazy Gamer absolutely adore them.

Personally, I’ve never given any stock into GI’s reviews due to some downright nutty decisions by their staff (Castlevania: Harmony of Despair an 8.5?!), but they are the first to actually openly dissect the new superhero title that has had an amazing online media presence in the past few days.  Banner ads and unavoidable streaming commercials have been everywhere, but it’s quite understandable given the attention this particular game has had. 

The developer of Shattered Dimensions, Beenox, is a relatively unknown studio that has only handled ports and movie-licensed games.  It seems that gamers who were interested in the world of Spider-Man have been more-than curious as to whether or not Beenox could actually create a worthwhile original title.

Game Informer’s Ben Reeves writes:

“Creating a game with four different main characters, four different worlds, four different art styles, and four different game types sounds overly ambitious, but any smart developer knows that it needs to change things up to keep the action fresh. Shattered Dimensions works that need for variety into its fiction. One level had me running through a jungle using Spider-Man’s spider sense to dodge sniper fire. In the next I was falling past mile-high skyscrapers, dodging hover cars in a future version of New York. Next I was web-zipping between crates as they twirled through the eye of a giant sand tornado. Then a series of spotlights hunted me across the skyline as I quietly knocked out a mob of thugs. The action in Shattered Dimensions is almost schizophrenic, but it’s never boring.”

“Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions lands just shy of being the full package, but it delivers a non-stop action ride with something new around every corner. Though its story leaves something to be desired, it’s one of the best Spider-Man titles in recent memory, if not the best Spider-Man title to date.”

It’s not a review I trust (mostly due to the poor writing style, lack of knowledge of Reeve’s personality, and the paragraph discussing his disappointment with the story), but it’s better than nothing.  Like I mentioned earlier, Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions appears to be something made by pure fans of the Marvel superhero, true-blue Spider-Geeks who were trying to make something reminiscent of the PSX classic, Spider-Man.

I’m all in.  Day one purchase.

Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions will be released next Tuesday, but there are no reviews of the game to be found anywhere online yet.  In fact, the only thing I found was this on LazyGamer who HAD a review up but was asked to take it down:

“A miscommunication between Megarom and Activision has led to Lazygamer getting the permission from Megarom to release our review of Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions review earlier than normal. As a result, we have been asked to take the review down until next week.”

Checking around online, it seems that LazyGamer ended up giving Spidey an 8.3, but it’s all moot to me without having words to back-up the number. 

Lowering my expectations now, lowering my expectations.