there aren't very many games I can say have become less and less appealing the more time I've spent with them and thought about them, and in that short list is spider-man '18. I could not put this game down when I started playing it as the cliche held true: this really does make you feel like spider-man. you can use the webs in combat, swing around freely, climb up elevator shafts, and fly around in situations that really do feel straight out of a marvel movie. on an initial playthrough the cracks in the formula aren't quite as apparent especially if you don't bother to grind the optional content, and the twists to the story alone carry interest. the ending is excellent as well: the boss fight is very poor but they gave peter some touching moments that made it worth getting so far, with sequel hooks set up to boot.

once I dove in the grind for platinum is where everything fell apart. it's no secret that this game is a pretty obvious ripoff of rocksteady's arkham series, and it's immediately obvious from the first few hours of the game. each area of the game has some major flaws:

the combat is clunky and never gets any better, even after fully upgrading spidey's abilities. the game does a good-natured attempt to incorporate more of a character action-feel with launchers and juggling, but it's still a beat-em-up at its core, with mashing out melee attacks while dodging at opportune times being the name of the game. on normal brutes this isn't so bad, but as the game continues and more enemy types are introduced there are some very frustrating mechanics introduced. the heavy enemies especially are a chore... why do they literally slide across the ground during their attack wind-up when they aren't close to you? it looks sloppy and indicates insomniac was more concerned with adding challenge to the combat rather than fleshing it out in any meaningful way

there's an argument to be made that the arkham combat also isn't great, but I don't think there's really a question that arkham stealth is much much better than spider-man stealth. the game virtually plays these sections for you by telling you exactly when it's safe to take down an enemy, and there's so many vantage points that you will never run out of places to perform easy one-button takedowns from. they might as well be QTE sequences. the MJ/miles stealth sections also suck, though that was common knowledge even when the game released.

none of the boss battles in this game are particularly good, even later on when you get to fight some villain tag-teams. virtually all of them are some variation on "wait for an opening and stun them somehow, and then do an auto-combo" over and over again, which is especially tedious when the method of stunning is literally just to throw webs.

open-world manhattan is such a cool idea... and you end up basically just seeing the skyline as you swing around, as virtually no time is spent on the ground. I almost feel bad for the people who invested so much time into modeling this city, as there's no exploration to be had. the game might as well be a giant open box with markers telling you where collectables and missions are

the story... god the story. it's hard to view this outside of the lens of the trump era (this game released halfway through his term), as the landscape of superhero media had changed so drastically from the arkham era, where the stories were rooted in the glossy grit of mid-00s post-dark age comics. elements such as JJJ being an alex jones-esque podcaster after leaving the daily bugle are simply too tied to this era of american politics to view otherwise. the catalyst for many elements in the story is the avarice of norman osbourne, who is both mayor and business magnate in this universe. he drives the backstories of multiple key supervillains who seek to take revenge on him, and spider-man is left as a lapdog for osbourne and his police force to go around beating the shit out of terrorists while doing epic "if you hate osbourne so much, you should have voted him out!!" quips. the game also does its best to make NYC look like a war zone of constant shoot-outs, robberies, property destruction, and etc., which is thrown into stark relief by literally every non-criminal citizen of the city being a soy "I Fucking Love Science" millennial cariacture, including peter himself. it's a bizarre juxtaposition that makes the story feel like it doesn't explore the facets of spider-man's life and the constant strife in NYC both physically and politically in any meaningful way beyond setting up villains and moving the story forward.

the best part of this game by far is the traversal: the web-swinging feels so good and so many options are given as to make even just idly swinging around a joy. even the traversal and bomb challenges, which require insanely good execution to achieve top marks in, kept me coming back to improve my times. kudos to them on making this aspect so good as to make the rest of the game worth playing in comparison tbh.

I've been harsh on this game and for good reason: it's got a smug aura to it frankly that is entirely undeserved for a game that cribs this much from earlier titles and refuses to innovate in any meaningful way. what I will say is that the actual story missions are rather fun and are worth trying, it's just virtually everything else in the game that lacks any merit. can't recommend this one beyond an initial playthrough (and maybe a plat, this is a pretty easy plat overall)