Here’s my initial impressions:

Graphics: The game looks great! The characters look awesome in their respective art styles and animate really well. So far the framerate has been stable, but I’m really not that far into the game. Love the look of all of them and they incorporate film grain into some of the worlds which make for a nice touch (in Amazing, it almost gives it a printed comic book page look and in Noir they add a scratched film effect when you go into spider-sense mode which is cool)

Sound: Music is pretty good although nothing spectacular at this point. Voice acting for all of the Spider-Men is great so far. Love the quips and one liners.

Spidey 2099′s voice is good although a bit more wimzy than I initially expected.

Gameplay: I honestly haven’t gotten far enough to give detailed opinions, but it plays good from what I played. You have the typical Spidey type of combat that you’ve come to expect with a few new wrinkles added.

I love that standard attacks are automatically blocked if you go into your defensive stance (LT). It just makes the combat look cool when Spidey does a bunch of dodges back and forth when people try to attack you from behind. I honestly haven’t really gotten far enough to comment further, but so far so good.

One thing I should note is that it’s kind of weird playing a Spider-Man game with actual level design. I’m so used to playing open world Spider-Man games that the level design really gives the game a different feel when compared to Spider-Man: Web of Shadows or previous Spider-man games.

Spider-Man Noir basically plays like the stealth rooms in Batman Arkham Asylum….hey if you’re going to rip stuff from a game, might as well be a great one! Still a lot of fun since it gives it a Spider-Man twist to it.  I really love the art style chosen for this universe and the boss fight in the first Noir level was a lot of fun.

I thought the first person fighting would come off as gimmicky but it really doesn’t. It feels fairly visceral and it’s a really fun little bonus while you are fighting a boss. It’s even used as a finisher at times. I loved the way the game plays around with the perspective.

One thing of note is, if you play Spider-Man games for the web slinging, you may be disappointed to hear that there’s no free roaming. Although web slinging is a necessity, it isn’t in the forefront anymore since there is no longer a city to use it in. I really don’t see this as a bad thing though because the game seems to have different strengths.

The one sour point so far is the camera system.  It’s by no means unplayable, but it can get a bit unwieldy at times.  This issue plagues all Spider-Man games.  It’s one of those things that if you want the game to let you do whatever a Spider can, you’ll have to give them some leeway considering how hard it is to track a video game character like Spider-man.  If you’ve played earlier Spider-Man games, it’s no worse than those games and doesn’t take away from the fun I’ve been having with Shattered Dimensions.

Overall: This game is pretty good so far. I don’t want to get too ahead of myself, but it’s already better than Web of Shadows as far as I’m concerned.

I really don't have to wait very long for stuff I'm looking forward to this year.  Street Figher IV and Killzone 2 anyone?