Not exactly your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.
Activision's big announcement at Comic-Con this week is the fourth Spider-Man universe in the game, which is (drum roll) Ultimate Spider-Man. That one joins Amazing, Noir, and 2099, if you haven't been keeping up. The game's got what an Activision rep referred to as an almost Mega Man-like structure, where you're presented with a list of levels from each of the four universes and allowed to tackle them in any order.
All four dimensions will revolve around a basic, common fighting model, but each one has a different focus. Noir is all about stealth, naturally, while Ultimate puts Spidey permanently in the black suit and gives him a bunch of wide, bombastic tentacle attacks not so different from Kratos and his flaming chain weapons. I didn't get to play 2099, but...
...why not watch some footage of those anyway? I am far from an expert on comic books, so I grabbed Ryan to sit down and look at some footage from all four sections of the game. Please view the fruit of that endeavor.
It seems like Beenox is putting some effort into delivering a healthy amount of fan service with Shattered Dimensions. All four of the spider men have unique voice actors, including Christopher Daniel Barnes and Dan Galvezan, both of whom have portrayed Spidey in past animated series. And there will be a raft of familiar villains; in the Noir section I played, I was chasing after Hammerhead, played by none other than Marcus Fenix himself, John DiMaggio.
Shattered Dimensions is out in September, so we'll find out soon if the action measures up to the game's comprehensive coverage of the Spider-Man franchise. Hey, in the meantime, head over to our sister sites Comic Vine and Screened for a whole bunch of Comic-Con coverage through the end of the week.
But Ultimate Spider-man wore the suit for like 5 issues.....
Im looking forward to this game. Ive gone on a weird superhero overhaul at the minute. It doesnt really take much to top some of the recent spiderman games *cough* web of shadows
Nothing against Ultimate Spiderman but would've been interesting to go with something a bit more out there.
The rest of the game is straight up ripping everything out of God of War 3. The super-fast 360 spin attack, the animations for grappling and the air grapple to ground smash, even the little pauses before you let loose a heavier, overhead attack - all GoW3. The first person bits are choreographed exactly like the ending of God of War 3. The 2099 Spidey falling down is exactly like Kratos going along the Chains of Balance in GoW 3.
It's not a bad thing since I really enjoyed GoW3 but damn, this is almost shameless. I'm most interested in the Noir Spiderman since I like Batman:Arkham Asylum even more.
Somehow, I should've seen the Ultimate universe coming. I guess I just thought that they'd use another version of Spiderman I had never heard of (I sure as hell didn't know about Noir Spiderman before).
Still, pretty cool.