I recieved Spider-man as a Christmas gift from my girlfriend in 2020. I played a bit of it shortly after, but eventually put it down. I then picked it up again when I started University in 2021, but again put it down. Finally, I got around to playing it in its entirety in late March 2023 and got the platinum trophy for it along with 100 percenting all the DLC.

Story: 8/10. A standard hero story that ramps up the emotion and stakes drastically in the third and final act, I had a lot of fun with Spider-Man's main campaign. As mentioned the final act by far was the strongest of the three, which blew the other two acts completely out of the water, freeing all the main villains and having Peter face Octavius. This led to a cinematic final battle and a heart-throbbing final scene with Aunt May. Side note: I must say I will miss the PS4 Peter's face in the Upcoming Spider-Man 2 game (which I am very excited for). The old face had a very distinct, matured look about it and with the new one Peter just looks like Tom Holland.

Characters: 8.5/10. All the main characters in this game are great, Octavius, May, and Peter especially. I am a big fan of how they sprinkled in Osborn and Harry to mainly set them up for the second game, and how they did the same with Miles and his father for his eventual own game. They all feel like people with distinct personalities (see problems section for the exception), and the acting and motion capture was done excellently (shoutout to JJJ, each of his shows were always a joy to listen to).

Combat: 8/10. Pretty good! I'm shocked with how few buttons they use for the combat (mainly square and triangle) that they were able to create such a vast moveset. Stealth and gadgets are awesome to use in combat and provide great help (albeit sometimes are super overpowered). The suit powers as well were a great touch, and the focus and finisher system introduced a great risk/reward mechanic between healing or instant-KO'ing an enemy.

Gameplay/Content: 7.5/10. Most of the side missions are interesting, but really the thing I found more enjoyable were the collectables and photos. These were scattered all around the map and made exploring easily rewardable and fun. I understand what they were going for with the crimes system, but for completionists (and anyone else who really only focused on the main story), they got old and repetitive fast. This was most evident when you were trying to travel to a mission objective and you got taken way off track by multiple crimes in a row.

World: 8.5/10. The recreation of NYC in Spider-Man is fantastic; each district has it's own feel to it, and has a great deal of detail behind them.

Traversal: 10/10. This is the star of the show. Spider-Man has to be one of the only games that made traversal so much fun that I'd rather do it than fast travel. You have to admire that they made sure that Peter wasn't swinging from the sky and attached to actual buildings. The momentum and tricks system add to the fun! This was easily the most fun part of the game, and sometimes I would find myself mindlessly swinging around the districts doing tricks.

Problems: I was really not a fan of how much they oversexualized the character of Black Cat. It seemed that her entire character was based on her sexuality, and it took away from the overall experience I had with the DLC. This is made even more painful when you see how excellently they wrote the character of MJ for the story.

Favorite Part: The final Octavius confrontation / Aunt May's death.
Least Favorite Part: Anything Screwball related.