I think this is one of those games where the initial hype was so overwhelming that no one will take a step back and reconsider what has been served. I have no stake in the everlasting struggle for fans wanting the idealized superhero video game, especially for the wall-crawler, so I can’t go into this regarding how previous attempts have, more or less, botched the concept. I can say that while it seems to solidly fulfill that gameplay experience of web-slinging from building to building, gathering momentum to perform aerial sweeps across the skylines, and using gadgetry to take down baddies in mildly inventive ways in combat, it never truly amazed me as it had for so many because of how bogged for it is by the most generic 8th Gen design tropes and probably the most imaginatively dimmed take on Spider-Man I’ve seen in a while.

New York City is a sprawling open world to casually web-sling around and take in the adrenaline feeling of “oh??… it feels like… I'm… Spider-Man?!”, but like so many of its kind during this generation, the content within lacks substance and is a pure monotonous routine. Aimlessly collecting collectibles that just aren’t worth it half the time, cracking down on the same three or four randomly generated crimes that happen when you sling passed through the city, boring data collection that boggles my mind on who in the dev team thought was ‘fun’, and friendly neighborhood side missions that felt like I was reading a mediocre Spider-Man comic from the ‘70s. The Spider-Man gameplay, unashamedly taking cues from the Arkham games, which, oh boy, we’ll get into later, believe me, never truly expands from the first few hours. It gets the free-flowing combo setup from the Arkham games right, using it as a good framework for a character like Spider-Man, but misses the beat with how much of it relies on dodging as a crutch. The stealth isn’t anything to write home about either; it just feels like you’re playing those sections from Arkham Asylum/City but with a Spider-Man skin. It's not as interesting or tense as it can be in those games because the difficulty is on autopilot. There's nothing here that feels like it's taking full advantage of Spider-Man's unique gameplay. Alright, getting the elephant out of the room here, the Mary Jane and Miles Morales sections are real stinkers. They’re BAD. A total disruption of the game’s flow and already very poor pacing with a misguided attempt to make these two characters have more agency by just shamelessly copying Naughty Dog down even more with pointless stealth sections that belonged in The Last of Us. The worst part is that you can’t even skip these segments like you could with these weird tech-related mini-games. Tangent: If you, a video game designer, include a mini-game mechanic that would be used a fair amount throughout an average playthrough, but decide to include an option for players to “skip content” (popping up for barely 10 seconds if you do nothing) of what you’ve spent hours of your time working on because you had little confidence in what was being done in the first place -- you have done something completely wrong.

Then there’s the story, this entire take on Spider-Man, which is just amazingly mid if I’m being generous. It’s so predictable, but it meanders around with no engaging momentum that was set until the final hours. None of the story threads picked up where the others fell short. The Doctor Octopus thread is unbelievable because it spends so many hours of your playthrough dangling around “woah… whats gonna happen to doctor octavius?!... wonder who's gonna be the bad guy… “ even though it’s presented so front-loaded from the first scene he showed up. I kept thinking that with how obvious this is dragged out every time you check up with him, how he inches closer and closer to unsurprising villainy, there must’ve been some twist in the writer’s sleeve. Like how Far From Home played around with our understanding that Mysterio is a villain and his whole ‘superhero’ image is an obvious facade, but we still don’t quite get why or for what purpose. This never happens in the game. He gets brain damage which makes him more evil I guess wow what a surprise it's not like we’ve never seen this happen before right? Someone who wrote this part of the story must’ve thought he was genuinely bold with his oh-so-elaborate foreshadowing. Mary Jane is... well, we have Lois Lane at home, and we somehow misunderstood the appeal for that character too, and she’s from a different publisher’s universe.

We’re going to segue into my grand statement about this game by first mentioning one of the bigger red flags that made me realize Insomniac’s Spider-Man wasn’t gonna cut it for me. I was aware of this being a thing when the game first came out so many years ago, but I didn’t think too much of it and thought it must’ve just been overblown from a few lines of cringe dialogue, but no, it’s all true -- Spider-Man is like super best friends with cops. I almost feel like I shouldn’t even need to delve deep into this because I think everyone agrees that Spider-Man, Peter Parker, is a character defined by his social class struggles that we identify personally with because he really do be like me fr. There’s a political cadence to him and how he views the world, which his colorful cast of rogues embodies. Some are blue-collar guys like him who use their superpowers irresponsibly to punch up against the world, some are in high positions of political power, which they use irresponsibly as well to put down the little guy. It only makes sense, going by this, that he’d naturally be opposed to the police force, even if he shares a complicated personal relationship with a select few. This even then boils down to an ideological difference in how they need to use their respective powers responsibly to help people by either sticking with these corrupted laws or going beyond them. Insomniac didn’t understand the vision at all. Spider-Man is naive to the fact that there are people in the New York City Police Department who are on a crime lord’s payroll. He fixes their radio towers. His Oracle is a police officer. He has an entire mission dedicated to bonding with a police officer like best friends. You hear random lines of throwaway dialogue that give away the impression that Spider-Man is not on the best terms with the police even after eight years of doing his thing, but instead of mutual indifference, he’s treated as part of the team. I bring this up because I believe it highlights how Insomniac largely fumbled the bag with this interpretation of Spider-Man, who feels barely conceptualized compared to the standard Rocksteady landed with Batman they took heavy notes from.

Rocksteady’s Batman is ingenious. Well, before they fired Paul Dini, and forgot these games originally had style by the time of Arkham Knight. They drew from a wide variety of Batman media, his greatest hits, and forged this universal playground to get immersed in. Hiring the writer responsible for the most beloved take on the character put into animated serialized form, even bringing in the most iconic voices from that series, pulling from the more acclaimed comics around the time (Hush, Long Halloween, Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth, Year One, The Killing Joke, Dennis O’ Neil’s work, etcetera..), maybe tapping a bit into the cinematic realism Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies were achieving, and setting it all in this almost timeless continuity. The marketing behind this slogan is an utter meme, I know, but it really feels like you’re Batman. Like you just dropped right in the middle of his all-encompassing 80-year lifespan. I don’t get any of this from Insomniac’s Spider-Man. I remember there was an article from someone closely affiliated with Insomniac about the seven storylines that influenced their take on Spider-Man. I wasn’t surprised that half of the stories cited were all by the same middling writer -- Dan Slott. Yeah, they referenced, like, two Lee/Ditko stories, but those are obviously given. Maybe it’s because Bendis/Bagley’s Ultimate Spider-Man has such widespread influence upon modern Spider-Man stories that it’s practically invisible now, but I noticed nothing other than including Miles Morales. Other than those… that’s it? No J.M. DeMatteis? No JMS/RomitaJr? No Conway/Romita? You built us a Spider-Man playground with a toy box mostly full of Dan Slott toys like Doc Ock, Peter/MJ’s strained relationship, Mr. Negative, Screwball, and F.E.A.S.T? I guess it’s neat how Peter Parker/Spider-Man looks like they took the three cinematic portrayals of the character and threw them into a blender. Look, this is the problem. For a game that’s trying to measure up to what Rocksteady accomplished with the Arkham franchise, providing a definitive experience for the characters showcasing their widest appeal that transcends mediums, it’s only cherry-picking that for you. Going beyond that, what Insomniac tries to build upon this faulty foundation is just really damn lame?

They copied Rocksteady’s homework by making Spider-Man someone far past the starting point of being a superhero. Only they completely missed why this worked for Batman. Rocksteady’s Batman is a veteran of his crime-fighting career. He already went through multiple Robins. He had a Batgirl. He has a rich history with his entire rogue gallery, going through personal chapters with villains like Ra’s Al Ghul or the Joker. He acts, feels, and plays like the idealized composite Batman we mentally associate with that Rocksteady is representing. Insomniac’s Spider-Man is, I guess, long past his high school days. Acting on the level of significant experience gained wall-crawling around New York City. He’s even ready to pass the torch to a new Spider-Man soon. If you know superhero stories, that’s a pretty big deal. There’s an awkward tension between him and Mary Jane because of a rather difficult fork in the road from their past relationship. He’s been going at this for eight years, which, in case you have an abysmal understanding of passing time, is quite a long time, and has already developed a shared history with his more classic villains like the Kingpin. But now he’s finally tackling the real big ones, like… Doctor Octopus? Uh. Okay, well… he’s friends with Harry, you do his open-world busy work for him, so that must mean he knows his most personal longstanding enemy, Norman Osborn- …wait, he’s not even Green Goblin yet? Uh… that’s okay, I think. Different takes, different directions. I get it. Spider-Man has a bigger rogue’s gallery than people think, this one’s been in the web-slinging game for a while, and he must’ve dealt with other seriously dramatic threats to his life- …you’re telling me it took eight years to finally fight the Sinister Six for the first time?!?

You see what’s not adding up here? This isn’t Spider-Man at his prime. Not even close. Who’s been around the block more times he cares to count. Who’s had this implied history with his supporting cast and villains we’re familiar with. Where, in the broadest strokes, many of his most iconic stories have happened to some degree to shape who he is today. Instead, this is a Spider-Man who had the most uneventful superhero life until now. Imagine if Arkham Asylum opened up with Batman finally taking down Carmine Falcone after eight long years since he donned the cowl. Then suddenly he meets, I dunno… Two-Face? Someone personal, I guess, for the first time. And he’s barely gone through one sidekick, hasn’t met Ra’s Al Ghul, and the Joker just flat out doesn’t exist because some failed comedian didn’t get dumped into toxic chemicals yet. None of this sounds like the Batman we always dreamed of wanting to play. None of it especially sounds like the Spider-Man we always imagined him to be. Insomniac wanted to take notes by jotting down the homework of Rocksteady’s Arkham Asylum/City but what they ended up copying instead was Arkham Knight.