The honeymoon phase i had with this game is absolutely incredible.

Let me just say, the gameplay is good, its the best this trilogy had so far, aswell as the swinging being more fluid and faster than the original.
The performances are great, especially Yuri Lowenthal's, who's giving it his all with his screams and showcasing his more emotional take on Peter Parker this time around.

.....But, i can't ignore the flaws this game has that almost make me reconsider ever pre-ordering a video game:

Firstly, while the pacing is pretty good for like, the start of the main conflict until the black suit, and then everything goes to shit.

Peter has the suit on for a maximum of either 2 days or at most a week and he's already acting like in spectacular spider-man, who bonded with the symbiote for like, a month?

This then leads to the whole symbiote invasion bullshit, which feels less like a grand event but more like the devs wanting to copy Web Of Shadows to get those nostalgia points from the fans while not understanding what made WOS's invasion arc so good.

Secondly, while i appreciate the change to MJ's missions, making them more last of us-like and letting the side characters actually do something, they traded that for some of the most boring, pointless missions i have ever played, possibly will ever play unless i ever buy a game about watching fucking paint dry.

Who in their right mind thought it was good to have not 1, not 2, hell, not even 3 missions in which you either play as a young peter parker in a scene that basically amounts to NOTHING the two times you do it, BUT 6 DIFFERENT TIMES in which you walk around, do a wack ass minigame and walk around waiting for an npc to text you.
Why yes Insomniac, i want to play "what remains of edith finch" while enjoying my 70$ video game.

It's astounding how they left these missions in, after almost balancing it in miles morales.

Lastly, i want to talk about Venom.

Where do i even start?

Let it be clear, i knew Harry was gonna be Venom, i loathed the idea of Harry being Venom but i said "hey, it's insomniac, they know what they're doing, and kraven is pretty good so venom might be good too"

COLOR ME SURPRISED, they straight up missed everything that could've made venom good.

Venom himself has little to no personality of his own, he's just a big blockbuster slop monster who wants to invade the world, negating nearly everything interesting about venom that even the fucking movie got right.

Not to say i didn't enjoy playing as him for that 10 minute level reminding me of ultimate spiderman, i feel like it's a huge waste to make a venom moveset like this,

And then never using it again, not even in a small section afterwards.

Im certain that i only liked him back in day 1 because of Tony Todd's immaculate performance, which saddens me because Venom has like 15 minutes of screentime, and Tony Todd never really gets to do anything venomy(if that makes sense) by the time you get used to his voice. Hope the venom game does him justice.

Overall, i think this game needed alot more time to cook in the metaphorical oven compared to what we got.
Not that we didn't get something of quality, but when comparing it to games that came out during and after its release, its hard to shake off the thought that we could've gotten something even better.
Not a bad game, but certainly not goty materiel.

so, I finally got around to finishing new game plus. my thoughts? still an excellent game with spectacular gameplay and story, my two biggest gripes are the golden gadgets and the ultimate levels.

the golden gadgets are completely useless, doing nothing but adding a few golden squares to the firing animation, and they should've just went with the model both the first game and miles morales have for NG+ levels where your level count just goes higher than max level naturally as opposed to needing to farm enough xp that would get you halfway to max level in a normal save to get up by one level and get a new suit style for the symbiote suits, which are good by the way I'm not denying that, but the way to get them is incredibly tedious. how about all suit styles are locked behind one level up, like ultimate level 1 you get the styles for the black suit, ultimate level 2 you get all the styles for the ribbed for her pleasure suit, and ultimate level 3 you get all the styles for cum man?

other than those gripes, this update turns the game from amazing to spectacular and is absolutely welcome in my book. almost forgot to mention that since the ability to wear any suit in any mission was added in NG+, some cutscenes are a little screwed up like the introduction of the black suit or the removal of the black suit. like for all the parts where I was in the red and blue I was wearing the no way home ending suit while for parts in the black suit, you know I was wearing the red and black style of the insomniac black suit, and it was kinda janky having to switch them in between missions because when I was wearing the ribbed for her pleasure suit for the boss fight with kraven it didn't switch to like the advanced suit 2.0 or something.

these are just tiny little things I didn't like because I'm a sonic fan and a spider-man fan so I naturally find every single flaw in an otherwise great game and complain about them online for internet clout.

Still highly recommend this game and IT SHOULD'VE WON GAME OF THE YEAR DAMMIT, OR AT LEAST TEARS OF THE KINGDOM. YOU'RE TELLING ME A TURN BASD RPG AND A SHITTY HORROR GAME GOT SEVERAL AWARDS AND THIS GAME GOT NONE???? Joking of course because I know the technical achievements baldur's gate 3 made, I am a little mad about Alan Wake 2 though. now back on topic, just play this if you own a ps5 okay?