It took me nearly until the very end of the game to realize just how often I should've been using gadgets and zip-to-point/point launches while web swinging, so once I got to the grindy bit after Act 2 I spent about half of that time just going through the motions when I arguably could've been having the most fun of the game. I've seen a lot of comments about the length of the game being an issue but I played it basically non-stop Monday, Wednesday, a couple hours both Thursday and Friday and then all evening Saturday...I got at least 30 hours out of the thing and I still have a few events left to complete for 100% (this will be my first non-Telltale Platinum ever).


But I was blown away by the level of earnestness, gravitas and attention to detail in the story. There are so many small, human moments in this game. Insomniac one upped every bit of nuance Naughty Dog's cinematic team has become known for; I said elsewhere that if God of War was so impressive due to the amount of emotion they wrung solely from Kratos' eye animations and shading, Insomniac pulled the same trick here with Peter's lips, Doc Ock's cheeks, Aunt May's jawline, Miles' pout, MJ's hesitant smiles. There was something about the facial animation in this game that I was just fascinated by from beginning to end, and it really helped sell what was a semi-original but mostly predictable take on the Peter/Osborne/Octavius love triangle.


There's rough stuff - I'm an obsessive, check boxy sort of guy, so for me I'm less prone to labeling something repetitive as a problem, but there is definitely not a lot of variety to the side content in this game. There are four enemy factions in the end, and they don't open up new types of side activities so much as just give you a handful of the same trials you've been completing with new offensive and defensive strategies. By the same token, I loved how open the boss battle arenas were and how clearly Spider-Man tended to have an upper hand due to his mobility, but I could also understand how the fact that every single one of them boils down to the same basic strategy could bother more mechanics driven players.


The game's also really light on incidental dialogue, which isn't an issue if you just want to mainline the story and do a couple of side activities, but since Parker is a character defined in part by his affinity for quips and sarcasm they really needed more than one or two lines punctuating the completion of side activities. For completionists like me, you hear so few quips so many times that, like they always do in games where this happens, they become your worst enemy and start to convince you the game is less polished than it otherwise is.


Anyway, TL;DR: Spider-Man is a total must play if you're a fan of the character, and runs side by side with God of War for the narrative experience of the year. The graphical polish is maybe the most impressive all year as well, and while the game can sometimes feel like it's both asking too much of the player and not nearly enough, as character action games go it's just as good as any of the best of those and as licensed superhero games go makes a strong case for being the best one yet.

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"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
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