calling your parents and your mom nudging you and giving you advice that's designed to prompt you into remembering something important or asking you a rhetorical question to remind you what you're doing, but then you can ask to put your dad on the phone and he will give you exact, explicit, step-by-step instructions to the next objective, is SO funny and inspired. i love that.

i did not love painting stuff or the puzzles or traversals that involved painting stuff and did not feel compelled to continue. but the parents thing, i can't get over.

absolutely one of the most fun games i've ever played. everything feels so good. the music is incredible and puts you in a trance to help you knock out repeated attempts at these levels. this is a game where level design is put front and center to the point where you NOTICE how good it is, because you have to. the game flaunts it - it wants to show you. this window? it's here because the fast way to do this is to not even enter this building but just fall past it, and shoot a rocket through the window to clip the two enemies in here. these enemies? skip them until the very end when a barrel explodes and destroys the platform they're standing on. and everything is so READABLE. even your first time through a level feels fast. you can play so much of the game on reflex, and you glide through the levels shooting enemies and using powers when it feels right, blasting through red barriers and scanning the screen for the next little miniobjective that you are always perfectly equipped to overcome. ultimate flow state game.

also the book of life is i think honestly the best-feeling button press in a videogame. it's so insanely powerful and the levels are still designed to accommodate it. the distances you cover in that chapter are absurd. and the music. thousand pound butterfly is perfect for getting you as wired as possible. i was giggling to myself between stages of that chapter. it's exhilarating.

very good and fun video game. some excessive flashback scenes with peter imo. damage feels low at first - recommend pumping upgrades into that to make it feel right. especially with the absurd amount of goons they throw at you. at times feels like chewing a big wad of flavorless gum. like alright can we stop, my jaw is getting tired. didn't like peter as much as in the first game but liked miles more than in miles morales.

venom peter is very fun to play especially when you go hulkmode. sounds and feels SUPER good. i wish they had made you a bit scarier when you're like that because everyone's so concerned about how the power is corrupting you but honestly you're only like 25% stronger than normal spiderman so it feels a little overblown. they gotta have you actually ripping people apart if they want to make it feel uncomfortable.

highlight of the game is easily the black cat sequence. for a second i thought "holy shit are they really going to let me unlock this portal wand as a tool i can use?" and no, they are not.