PAX Prime 2011 Hands-On: Spider-Man: Edge of Time - Preview
by VGChartz Staff , posted on 28 August 2011 / 4,289 Views
Spider-Man has had a long and rather up-and-down love affair with video games. The property came to prominence on the PlayStation 2 with several movie tie-ins, then more and more sandbox games of varying quality. Finally last year, Activision tapped Beenox to create Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions; an action/adventure game crossing between four different parallel Spider-Man universes. It was met with decent review scores and sold nearly a million copies across all platforms.
It was enough that Activision is once again tapping Beenox for a new Spider-Man game this holiday season: Spider-Man: Edge of Time. This time, rather than four Spider-Men in a dimension-hopping adventure, Spidey is staying in one universe, though separated in time. A crisis has occurred in 2099, and that Spider-Man has reached back in time to seek the assistance of the present day (Amazing) Spider-Man. While it wasn't shown in the demo, Amazing Spider-Man's actions will have an immediate and dramatic effect in the world of Spider-Man 2099.
The demo was a level for that future Spider-Man. Starting down an impassable hallway, the corridor suddenly changed, likely an effect caused by present-day Spider-Man. Design elements for enemies and areas look to be liberally borrowed from Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions, but that's not a bad thing. It's a great reflection of the fictional 2099 created in the 1990's comics. However, the hyper-speed ability Spider-Man 2099 is gone, replaced by a holographic decoy. 2099's fighting mechanics were smooth and flashy, relying on that enhanced speed to bounce around from enemy to enemy with swift attacks and dodges.
After using the holographic decoy to lure a missile into blowing up a door and then disabling some forcefields through measured violence, a freefall section occurred. These were well-recieved portions of the Spider-Man 2099 levels in Shattered Dimensions and so will be used liberally in Edge of Time. This one was very much like those in Shattered Dimensions, but with more complexity and tighter controls. Simply flicking the left stick moved Spidey around on what seemed like an invisible grid, making for easy small adjustments when necessary. Full movement around the space could still be achieved by moving the left stick like normal.
Overall, fans of Shattered Dimensions should enjoy Edge of Time. While the Ultimate and Noir Spider-Men will be missed, Edge of Time will have a more cohesive story written by the brilliant Peter David (Hulk and X-Factor) and will have both Spider-Men actively communicating, including those famous Spider-Man quips. What I saw of the gameplay was solid and hopefully the time-bending aspects will give it a hint of Shadow of Destiny or even Chrono Trigger.
