Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions (Eyes-On) (Wii) Preview

Shattered Dimensions takes place across four of the Spidey universes, two of which were previously announced, whilst the others remain clouded in secrecy. One of the two is the classic and most well-known Amazing Spider-Man, which features our trusty scientist Peter Parker setting off on his many endeavours to stop various villains. The other previously known theme is Spider-Man Noir. This takes place post-WWII and takes a more stealth orientated approach to gameplay with fast (but silent) hand-to-hand combat mixed with binding web attacks, all in the darkness.

Newly unveiled at the Activision event, however, was the third universe: the world of Spider-Man 2099, taking place well into the future. Featured here is a much more busy environment as you witness Spidey free fall in a futuristic enhanced suit that wouldn't look out of place in the Iron Man series, through the hustle and bustle of flying automobiles. Combat wise 2099's actions are much more feral, as opposed to the acrobatics of the Amazing universe. All of these universes are connected by one story, however, and that is that a tablet has broken and has been separated into each of the four universes �" and guess what? They've fallen into the villains' hands, of course! With the tablet scattered, the universes beging to bleed into one another, and it's up to the four heroes to save the day over the course of each world.

Speaking with a rather jet-lagged Kevin Umbricht, the associate producer for Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions, more information was gleaned on the new title. For starters, Spider-Man will be hitting all major platforms: Wii, DS, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Wii-wise, it will be exactly the same as its PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 counterparts, aside the expected graphical differences. However, the DS version will take a much more 'Metroidvania' approach to its gameplay, with the same story presented over four different acts. This is currently in development by Kryptonite Games.

Activision has worked exclusively with Hasbro and Marvel, using the comic books licence rather than that of the films to bring these universes to light. Within this jurisdiction, they have been relatively free to take the story in the direction that they have seen fit, with all-new villains that have been created especially for the games - which therefore allowed them to customise each level as they wanted to, not necessarily having to fit them around existing villains. However, by being able to work with Marvel and Hasbro, they have been able to keep the core of what Spider-Man is about to ensure that it is worthy of the fans' appreciation.

One of the main challenges for the studio was adapting each of the four characters' movesets to make the game as diverse as possible, whilst maintaining the same control scheme across the board as not to confuse players. Essentially each button will feature the same ‘theme' of attack, but the outcome will be slightly different for each of the four iterations of Spider-Man. Along with this, the balance between the challenge and Spider-Man's powers was also essential. Activision didn't want to create a game where players started off without abilities only to get them in later sequences, so it became crucial to the studio that gamers would be able to start off with all powers enabled without compromising the game's difficulty.