The week we launch an issue of Thirteen1 there is little time to spare for browsing news sites. So you will forgive me for the fact that this news is a few days old now, but I’ve only just caught up with it.
So this week Activision made an announcement about the future of the Spider-man gaming franchise. The news was good, they have put the makers of Spider-man: Shattered Dimensions, Beenox Studio, in charge of the licence from here on in.
Personally I couldn’t be happier about this, as Shattered Dimensions was a bloody good game in my opinion. One element I particularly enjoyed was the brief wanderings into the ‘Marvel Noir’ universe.
This stealth section of the game was a great way to break up the near constant combat of the other three universes in the game.
I have since gone on to buy several of the Noir comics, and really love how they manage to be completely different while still remaining true to their original source.
The Spider-man Noir however has not been one of them as its out of print, so the cheapest I’ve seen it before tonight is £35. However while writing this post I decided to look again and managed to find it for £10 – Bargain! I’ll let you know my opinion on it once it arrives.
What makes it better is that back at GamesCom in august of last year, Thomas Wilson the Creative Director at Beenox said that he would love to focus on just one Spider-man universe. He also said that if it were up to him, he would want it to be either the Noir or 2099 Universe.
I hope he gets his way, I would love to see a full game based in the Noir universe. Obviously the camera glitches would have to be fixed and the combat bulked out a little, but this universe has the potential to make an incredible stealth/investigation game.
I will certainly be watching for more news on this front.
