Finished it (the main story and a few of every side content the game has). Random thoughts I picked up.
First the shocker: I didn't think the game's worst aspects are as bad as made out to be. Now maybe its because I went in with very low expectations, but even that MJ line I mentioned before ended up being the worst part of her for me. Perfectly fine to get through (for me).
THAT SAID
Fuck is this game half assed. It has an *ok* Spider-Man story, dragged down by some shit storytelling and lines. The interpretations of the characters are among the most meh imaginable. The most positive thing I can say about it is that Aunt May isn't too bad (Well, she almost never is with the exception of new MCU retardedness, so that's not an accomplishment). Otherwise, Peter MEH, MJ is turned into a budget Lois Lane without the positives or the competence, Miles MEH, Osborne MEH, Otto MEH (with glimpses).... and so on. The most compelling of the Sinister Six were the other 4 and that's only because they got straight up comic lines and characteristics.
The open world also, just bog standard Ubisoft+ stuff to do without any originality thrown in. It's not better than any other Spider Man game and a lot of those had more fun challenges. Ditto the web swinging. My god, the web swinging. Yes, there's clearly been work and thought put into it. But it's brought together in a half-assed way that prevents it from actually becoming fun. Momentum is half-assed, sense of speed is half-assed, flow is half-assed. At no point it's as natural as it was praised to be. And there's no fucking excuse for it: Spider-Man on a modern system should be the absolute king of fun open world traversal. Instead that title still belongs to Prototype from 13 years ago.
Also regarding those Stealth Missions: No, I'm not going to attack them for being shit, they are, they're also piss easy and relatively short. What I am attacking them is for being absolutely useless. There's no point to them, they add
nothing to story and charachters. All the while there being several points in the story were more context and a more natural charachter arc progression are missing. But thank fuck we now know how MJ walked through a military camp or how Miles went to get medicine.
THE IMPORTANCE.
Anyway. Rambling over.
In short was an ok experience for a game that was gifted to me (not interested in Miles Morles, because Miles was the worst/most boring character alongside MJ). It's just.... I have to go back on what I said earlier:
Duraframe300 said:
(If overrated, but that affects me less now than it would have on release)
Scratch that, because I didn't realize just how overrated this was.
EVERYTHING this game does, has been done better in Spider-Man games before. More fun story, more fun characters, more fun traversal, more fun web-slinging more fun combat, more fun abilities, more fun open world (not that that would even be a high bar to clear), more fun side content.
I do think that there are parts of the development team that was actually half-way competent, because a lot of what *could* make a fun Spider-Man game is there. It's just been mauled to death by what I assume are incompetent hires and *modern* sensibilities.
