After finishing The Last of Us, I was choosing between Control and Spider-Man. Spider-Man was on sale, so…Here we go with another giant open world game, like the Witcher, Assassin’s Creed, etc., which I sometimes find to be too much. This was definitely a lot. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the game overall. The web swinging traversal part of the game was really fun, and it does a great job of giving you a feeling of speed and exhilaration as you move from place to place. (By the way, I had no idea Spider-Man was that strong. Apparently, he can yank giant helicopters out of the sky and other feats of strength.) There are a few annoying features to the game, though. The number of gadget and suit upgrades, in addition to skill upgrades, gave me a flareup of my chronic acute FOMO. Am I going to be able to beat this boss without the eight bajillion gadget upgrades that are potential options? Should I be investing my upgrade points into new suits? Do I have to do all these damn side missions in order to get the upgrade points needed to upgrade all my gadgets and suits and skills so I can progress in the game? See where this is going? It feels like there are 10 different types of side missions that take you all over the city, and some of them are just plain annoying (chasing pigeons, anyone???).
One other thing I’ve been doing lately that I am not proud of is changing the difficulty settings when I get stumped. Somehow, it feels like cheating, but I just don’t have the patience anymore to spend an hour trying to beat a certain boss on the Amazing level. I just bump the difficulty down to Friendly and get on with my life. This reminds of when I didn’t even bothering finishing an Assassin’s Creed game, but watched a video playthrough of the last 10 minutes of the game on YouTube. Mission accomplished!
All in all, this was a solid and enjoyable game. It was also spectacular to look at. The game does a great job of capturing the look of New York, and giving you amazing vantage points to view the city.
Gen X Gamer Dad 