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F Top 21 in 2010 - 5) Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions

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2010 was a busy year and it saw the release of a bunch of great games. Staff and regular freelance contributors at Gameroni had the opportunity to play a wide variety of titles over the past 12 months and together we've compiled a list of 21 of our favorite games from the period. These are the ones that had the biggest impact on us, not necessarily the industry as a whole. We're sharing that list with you now, one title per day over a period of three weeks. Though there's only a loose order to this list, in general you can know that we liked games more as we work toward the number one selection. ----- 5. Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions (Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii, PC) I remember watching Spider-Man cartoons in the morning while a young lad. There would be two (or maybe three) adventures in a half-hour show, with each one featuring Spider-Man taking on one villain or another from his vast encyclopedia of adversaries. They were all stand-alone episodes, so I didn't have to worry about missing any major plot development if I didn't catch the show. Shattered Dimensions reminds me of those cartoons. Each of the dozen-plus levels is designed around one specific Spider-villain. While there is a paper-thin plot concerning you having to prevent Mysterio from collecting the shards of a magical tablet to become a god, I found this game most enjoyable taking each level as its own separate "show". You control four different versions of Spider-Man, as the magic of the tablet apparently is able to transcend time and space to be present in multiple dimensions. Three versions (Amazing, Ultimate and 2099) are combat-intensive, while the Noir levels focus more on stealth. Though the camera angles can be a bit wacky at times, the overall charm of the game outweighed that fault by far. Amazing Spider-Man finds himself web-slinging from one piece of debris to another in an effort to reach a water tower and dump its contents on Sandman, causing him to revert from a sand tornado to a more controllable form. Ultimate Spider-Man finds that dealing with Carnage is tough enough, but when he also has to face off against about a million zombified S.H.I.E.L.D. operatives, things get brutal. The Noir version has to keep to the shadows against Hammerhead...or risk getting quickly riddled by gunfire; while 2099 will engage in free-falling boxing matches with a futuristic version of Hobgoblin. Controlling the Spider-Men is intuitive and there are rewards for exploring the battle system beyond the typical "punch, punch, throw" button mashing that brawler-type games can devolve into. By using various techniques throughout the levels, you can meet objectives which deliver a lot of points to be used in purchasing new moves, character upgrades and additional costumes for each character. While I didn't play many new releases in 2010, this is the one that stood out most in my mind as a purely fun game worth revisiting from time to time. ----- Each of the posts that we make as we reveal our list of the Top 21 games of 2010 is written by one of the people on our staff and freelance team who advocated most aggressively for an individual title's inclusion. Check back tomorrow to see if one of your favorite games made our list, and be sure to leave your comments if you have any to share!

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