I'm not done playing this game, and I get the feeling I'm well on my way to making it one of my small handful of Platinums a second time, but I've gotta exhale a bit.
Where in my original review I found myself surprised that this wasn't my favorite game of 2018, on a 2nd replay I can see plenty of the things that less generous players might frown upon. From the intense level of focus some of the encampments and later story missions demand on the hardest difficulty to the simple joy of making my way around the 40th floors of Manhattan, Insomniac's concept of Spider-Man's experience feels about exacting as it possibly could. Obviously if it didn't tell the version of Peter Parker's story that it tells the copious side missions, side activities, side curiosities and side story moments would efficiently overwhelm the core story.
Fortunately, so much of this game's story hinges on what one may have to sacrifice to do what must be done that players are given an out if they'd rather experience what these interpretations of Peter, Miles and MJ are going through than fill out skill trees, complete aesthetic collections or even just level 'til levels no longer exist.
What I was trying to convey in my review, after a third replay, of the PS4 version of the game but truthfully barely touched on is that despite the many familiar designs that gird this game, and maybe it fully depends on the emotional trap you allow Peter's place in life to charm and deceive you...it is stunning to me how well Insomniac captured Spider-Man's capability in combat - as much as many want to make Batman comparisons, the web abilities allow for Peter to play God (of war?) in a way Bruce just can't - while softly, attentively addressing the ways in which his years as Spider-Man may not have dulled his core sweetness but have certainly diffused his charm. While this isn't a game about such a normal, human problem, it's interesting to see the ways this game questions how Peter sees himself in his world.
That said, I'm not equipped to properly address the two bigger social issues that this game approaches in extremely misguided fashion, but I can at least acknowledge that the Spider-Cop jokes, Patriot Act substory and, frankly, the entirety of the F.E.A.S.T. sub-sub-stories and how most characters seem to regard supporting the houseless as a burden is pretty lousy.
Speaking of lousy, like many I threw my hands up when this remaster was announced alongside a new face model for Peter Parker. But I also didn't want to be reactionary, and at the time I had no idea when I'd find the money or time for a PS5, so I also chose to forget about it.
In the wake of Across the Spider-Verse, I needed to keep indulging in Spider-content, so I'm finally playing this remaster and...first of all, if you read any of my other reviews, you'll find I'm the bastard that justifies modern consoles having both performance and frame rate modes. I love The Witcher 3, A Plague Tale, God of War, Horizon and GTAV at 30fps with the most graphics possible. I love Returnal, Death Stranding, Ratchet & Clank, Destiny 2 and all Street Fighters at 60fps. I've never felt dogmatic about performance, but perhaps because I spent over half of the PS3 generation on a 480i (yes, interlaced) CRT and all of the PS4 generation on a 720p 60", now that I'm finally playing on a TV meant for the console I'm attached to, I gotta say...let it chug, baby, so long as the image occasionally stuns.
Which is all to say that I have no strong thoughts about Ben Jordan. It was heavily implied that this motion capture performance didn't owe much to John Bubniak, and that greater fidelity demanded a facial structure that more closely matched the actor on the capture set. The most low effort Google search suggest most of the facial animations were based on Yuri Lowenthal, whose vocal portrayal of Peter is intensely enjoyable...
And sadly I just don't see it. I get re-casting, especially when it comes to these sort of immortal, unending, we'll all die before they do sorts of roles, but almost never do you see it happen retroactively to something that already exists, let alone received such praise for its portrayal of its main character. I've got absolutely no reason to believe that, behind the scenes, Jordan's face matches Lowenthal's expressions better than Bubniak's did...but if that's the case, the artists who tweaked Bubniak's face from cutscene to cutscene did a hell of a job, and that same attention was not paid to Jordan's mug.
There are a pair of superficial issues worth glossing over - primarily that Jordan is vividly cute in a way one needs to marinate with Bubniak to see, while the subtle haircut change makes Jordan's portrayal seem like a guy who always has time for a Great Clips visit while Bubniak's seems to put it off as long as he can - but the most striking issue is that, despite the animation reasoning, Jordan's Parker is lifeless.
Luckily not in a fully bad way, thanks in large part to Lowenthal's vocal work and the remaining charismatic portrayals of all the other characters, but whenever the game leans on Parker for an emotional beat, and honestly I feel bad for this dude I don't know that was thrust into this position, this new Parker pretty much 100% of the time deflates the scene. His eyes are dead, his cheeks are flat, his hair and chin are perfect and, more than anything, he doesn't look like he belongs.
There's a brief series of side missions where you use your knowledge of the Manhattan island to locate some lost students - Jordan's "performance" (because, again, it must be emphasized that he has very little, if in fact nothing, to do with how he comes off in this game) would've fit better over one of these extremely minor characters than Peter. Primarily because no matter the reasoning for the change, Bubniak looked like a guy who'd use charm to make his way through life, who was wearied by the balancing act of being both Spider-Man and a broke man approaching 30 and dwelling toxically on a relationship he'd lost because of that struggle.
By contrast, the Jordan character often looks, and I'm deliberately choosing a boring description here, non-plussed by just about everything he experiences. He doesn't seem desperate to please Mary Jane, he doesn't appear despaired by his mentors' descents into madness, he just doesn't express much of anything at all. Which, again, was supposedly the entire point of this face/off exercise.
But I apologize for the tangent, because I also don't think it ruins the game, or even dulls the impact of it's most interesting and nuanced story beats. If you've been reading this and raging about the most obvious counter to this flaw, yeah, I know - this is a big game, with 20 to 60 hours of content, and Peter will be wearing a mask for nearly all of it! - and I agree.
Fundamentally, Insomniac has still done a fascinating job of allowing players to engage in the fantasy of Spider-Man. As I said in my original review (of my second replay), this game so acutely nails both how fun it would be to be Spider-Man, how sad it would be to be Peter Parker, how catastrophic it would be to realize your heroes are even more flawed than the obvious villains no matter your identity, then again just how fun it'd be to be Spider-Man.
Also the ray tracing is neat in this remaster and you 60fps boys can kick rocks.
Where in my original review I found myself surprised that this wasn't my favorite game of 2018, on a 2nd replay I can see plenty of the things that less generous players might frown upon. From the intense level of focus some of the encampments and later story missions demand on the hardest difficulty to the simple joy of making my way around the 40th floors of Manhattan, Insomniac's concept of Spider-Man's experience feels about exacting as it possibly could. Obviously if it didn't tell the version of Peter Parker's story that it tells the copious side missions, side activities, side curiosities and side story moments would efficiently overwhelm the core story.
Fortunately, so much of this game's story hinges on what one may have to sacrifice to do what must be done that players are given an out if they'd rather experience what these interpretations of Peter, Miles and MJ are going through than fill out skill trees, complete aesthetic collections or even just level 'til levels no longer exist.
What I was trying to convey in my review, after a third replay, of the PS4 version of the game but truthfully barely touched on is that despite the many familiar designs that gird this game, and maybe it fully depends on the emotional trap you allow Peter's place in life to charm and deceive you...it is stunning to me how well Insomniac captured Spider-Man's capability in combat - as much as many want to make Batman comparisons, the web abilities allow for Peter to play God (of war?) in a way Bruce just can't - while softly, attentively addressing the ways in which his years as Spider-Man may not have dulled his core sweetness but have certainly diffused his charm. While this isn't a game about such a normal, human problem, it's interesting to see the ways this game questions how Peter sees himself in his world.
That said, I'm not equipped to properly address the two bigger social issues that this game approaches in extremely misguided fashion, but I can at least acknowledge that the Spider-Cop jokes, Patriot Act substory and, frankly, the entirety of the F.E.A.S.T. sub-sub-stories and how most characters seem to regard supporting the houseless as a burden is pretty lousy.
Speaking of lousy, like many I threw my hands up when this remaster was announced alongside a new face model for Peter Parker. But I also didn't want to be reactionary, and at the time I had no idea when I'd find the money or time for a PS5, so I also chose to forget about it.
In the wake of Across the Spider-Verse, I needed to keep indulging in Spider-content, so I'm finally playing this remaster and...first of all, if you read any of my other reviews, you'll find I'm the bastard that justifies modern consoles having both performance and frame rate modes. I love The Witcher 3, A Plague Tale, God of War, Horizon and GTAV at 30fps with the most graphics possible. I love Returnal, Death Stranding, Ratchet & Clank, Destiny 2 and all Street Fighters at 60fps. I've never felt dogmatic about performance, but perhaps because I spent over half of the PS3 generation on a 480i (yes, interlaced) CRT and all of the PS4 generation on a 720p 60", now that I'm finally playing on a TV meant for the console I'm attached to, I gotta say...let it chug, baby, so long as the image occasionally stuns.
Which is all to say that I have no strong thoughts about Ben Jordan. It was heavily implied that this motion capture performance didn't owe much to John Bubniak, and that greater fidelity demanded a facial structure that more closely matched the actor on the capture set. The most low effort Google search suggest most of the facial animations were based on Yuri Lowenthal, whose vocal portrayal of Peter is intensely enjoyable...
And sadly I just don't see it. I get re-casting, especially when it comes to these sort of immortal, unending, we'll all die before they do sorts of roles, but almost never do you see it happen retroactively to something that already exists, let alone received such praise for its portrayal of its main character. I've got absolutely no reason to believe that, behind the scenes, Jordan's face matches Lowenthal's expressions better than Bubniak's did...but if that's the case, the artists who tweaked Bubniak's face from cutscene to cutscene did a hell of a job, and that same attention was not paid to Jordan's mug.
There are a pair of superficial issues worth glossing over - primarily that Jordan is vividly cute in a way one needs to marinate with Bubniak to see, while the subtle haircut change makes Jordan's portrayal seem like a guy who always has time for a Great Clips visit while Bubniak's seems to put it off as long as he can - but the most striking issue is that, despite the animation reasoning, Jordan's Parker is lifeless.
Luckily not in a fully bad way, thanks in large part to Lowenthal's vocal work and the remaining charismatic portrayals of all the other characters, but whenever the game leans on Parker for an emotional beat, and honestly I feel bad for this dude I don't know that was thrust into this position, this new Parker pretty much 100% of the time deflates the scene. His eyes are dead, his cheeks are flat, his hair and chin are perfect and, more than anything, he doesn't look like he belongs.
There's a brief series of side missions where you use your knowledge of the Manhattan island to locate some lost students - Jordan's "performance" (because, again, it must be emphasized that he has very little, if in fact nothing, to do with how he comes off in this game) would've fit better over one of these extremely minor characters than Peter. Primarily because no matter the reasoning for the change, Bubniak looked like a guy who'd use charm to make his way through life, who was wearied by the balancing act of being both Spider-Man and a broke man approaching 30 and dwelling toxically on a relationship he'd lost because of that struggle.
By contrast, the Jordan character often looks, and I'm deliberately choosing a boring description here, non-plussed by just about everything he experiences. He doesn't seem desperate to please Mary Jane, he doesn't appear despaired by his mentors' descents into madness, he just doesn't express much of anything at all. Which, again, was supposedly the entire point of this face/off exercise.
But I apologize for the tangent, because I also don't think it ruins the game, or even dulls the impact of it's most interesting and nuanced story beats. If you've been reading this and raging about the most obvious counter to this flaw, yeah, I know - this is a big game, with 20 to 60 hours of content, and Peter will be wearing a mask for nearly all of it! - and I agree.
Fundamentally, Insomniac has still done a fascinating job of allowing players to engage in the fantasy of Spider-Man. As I said in my original review (of my second replay), this game so acutely nails both how fun it would be to be Spider-Man, how sad it would be to be Peter Parker, how catastrophic it would be to realize your heroes are even more flawed than the obvious villains no matter your identity, then again just how fun it'd be to be Spider-Man.
Also the ray tracing is neat in this remaster and you 60fps boys can kick rocks.