Recent reviews by Herson

The game's "Borderless windowed mode" does not function properly. It behaves identically to full-screen mode, causing your computer to free up briefly whenever you try to alt-tab from it and preventing you from accessing other monitors while the game is active.

I was surprised by how childish this game's politics are, as well as how sloppy its construction is. A slice of my time with this game to illustrate this point went as follows:

I decide to intervene in one of the procedurally-generated crimes occurring throughout town, when Spiderman says "Drug-related crimes are in my top 5 least favorite crimes", a hilariously out-of-touch quote from a superhero who is supposedly known for his youth and relatability.

After this, I pursue the main story and end up in a scene where a police officer passing by offers to help Spiderman inspect a warehouse belonging to a large criminal organization. When dozens of goons armed with assault rifles storm the scene, the officer fights along side you using a stun-gun instead of his handgun - a comical white-washing of the horrific police brutality the NYPD is actually known for. It's clear that this change came later in production, since there's a scene where the officer shoots a hole in a car window as it's speeding away using his taser - In an earlier draft of the game, he was obviously holding a handgun, which would've made way more sense. Literally every scene featuring the NYPD in this game paints them as brave and heroic as possible.

After the fight, Mary Jane arrives to the scene to ask the police officer what happened. She says something along the lines of "Their (the criminals') story will get out no matter what, and I want at least someone to hear the truth." The officer seems shocked he's even being asked for his side of the story, and genuinely appreciative that she's listening to him. In this scenario, the game paints a picture where reporters choosing to uncritically publish unedited police reports makes them brave - despite the reality being that this is the common practice in America, and that it leads to police brutality often being covered up and ignored by the media. This is the opposite of good journalism, completely lacking in curiosity and research while supporting the status quo. This is especially appalling because it takes place in New York City specifically, which has one of the most corrupt police unions in America, and a long history of lying to cover their tracks in their reports.

After a frustratingly long series of sequences where I play not as Spiderman, but as Peter Parker or Mary Jane doing mundane, boring tasks, I get into a mission which requires me to chase down a trash collector to retrieve an important item that Peter's landlord had thrown out during his eviction. Upon retrieval, it informs me it's a new gadget, and I follow the prompts on screen to craft it. However, when it tells me to equip it, the gadget isn't there, and time refuses to pass. My game had become completely soft-locked, forcing me to quit out and load an earlier save.

Between all of these issues and the fact that most of the content is copy-pasted Ubisoft-style radio towers and collectibles, it's baffling to me that this game has "overwhelmingly positive" reviews on Steam. It's creatively bankrupt and lazy across the board.

pretty colors

The camera is god-awful and constantly gets caught on walls, uneven terrain creates invisible walls because of the game not allowing you to ascend/descend during many animations, grappling hook is very clunky and inconsistent. Not worth it.

Unplayably garbage-tier console port. Doesn't support directional audio and has the FOV locked headache-inducingly low. The game is technically terrible enough to not warrant mentioning the rest of the gameplay.