Really cute and sad game. I enjoyed the experience for most of it. How the two brothers interacted differently with various characters and objects in the world was a cool way of showing their differences. There was lots of great environmental storytelling, this is a really fucked up world. I loved the valley of dead giants and frozen village in particular. I liked that it was more of an experience, and touches like the spider getting weaker as the fight progressed was a nice way of showing that.

What I want to talk about most though is the ending. I played this over a day and didn't take many breaks in between, so I got used to the unconventional controls. When the older brother died, my left hand felt useless. I'm not sure if that was intentional or not, but it was a very cool felling when I recognised that. Performing actions like swimming and pulling a lever that the younger brother needed help on earlier was a little cheesy, but I liked it. I found my left thumb moving in the same way as my right after the swimming, sort of like controlling a katamari, which was another great realisation, that made the story being told more impactful in a way only a video game can be. I think the griffin being alive at the end after being seemingly dead was a nice way of showing that the mother and older brother would live on through the father and younger brother.

Also the director commentary included was really cool.

Wow I really loved this game. It felt great to progress and get better at the game not by getting powerups but instead having a character difficult to control and get better at controlling noodle. I had so much trouble wrapping around bamboo and constantly fell off, but I kept trying and by the end of the game I had no trouble.

I liked the level design. I got most of the coins and bubbles?, and the challenges around them were pretty fun. It's great that they were optional though, having as far as I can see no actual impact on the game, so they are just there to get if you want to. The additions to gameplay like water, fire and wind were all interesting.

I also really enjoyed the extra creatures and their animations, even though they had no actual impact on the game, it just made the world feel alive.

The only real complaints I have is the camera is kind of shit, though that was never much of a problem because of the slower pace, and that it was too short, which isn't really a bad thing in my mind.

This is probably going to be very messy and incoherent but oh well.

The most interesting part of the game is how the story and gameplay are interwoven, where it works and doesn't work. After completing the Prowler stashes, Aaron moves closer to Miles' home and gives you a suit upgrade. Idk why but I was pretty disappointed. The moment sort of felt undermined. I feel like it was given as a reward to you, the player. It's not like it was useless to Miles, but I don't think this would have been given if it had been a different medium. This didn't really impact my enjoyment of the game, I just brought it up because it got me thinking about video game stories. There are parts of the story that I think are benefitted by it being a video game. When you first get the symbiote there is such a rush I felt that the characters also felt, connecting you to them in a way other mediums can't. And while a bit silly, when Peter had the symbiote, the suit kept changing back to the symbiote, and I thought the other suits looked much cooler, so I wanted it gone as soon as possible. Other parts were worse. Peter has a hard time balancing his life between being Spiderman and Peter. When Harry comes back, he is relieved and reminisces over past memories. He is enjoying it, while I thought it was incredibly boring. I wanted to play as Spiderman, which was a pretty big disconnect between me and the game.

The gameplay was pretty enjoyable, though it didn't do much to surprise me. All of the bosses were fun to fight, none of them were that distinct. Yeah, not much too say, just that its good, but nothing special.

My favourite part of the game was New York. One sidequest was taking pictures of people in New York and I would have done it even if there was no reward because there was a reward in seeing these people. Around halfway through the game it's night and you have to infiltrate a hunter party. It felt like the hunters had taken oven and the atmosphere was great. And then at the end of the game the symbiote has taken over and it infects the entire city and it was great. The setting just constantly impressed me. It was great