YMMV / Spider-Man (PS4)

YMMV page for the franchise in general
YMMV page for Spider-Man: Miles Morales
YMMV page for Marvel's Spider-Man 2

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• Accidental Aesop:
  • Considering how Peter being late indirectly caused the lab to be labeled a safety hazard that cut their funding, which also caused Octavius' descent into madness, the game indirectly teaches the player how important it is to be punctual or at least plan your activities in advance so they don't collide with work.
  • The game's writers probably didn't set out to tell a story about the importance of elected officials fully divesting from their pre-existing business interests, but considering how much of the story is driven by Mayor Osborn conflating his political duties with the financial interests of Oscorp, that moral is still there.
• Adorkable:
  • Aside from Peter's constant wisecracking, he takes great glee in acting as "Spider-Cop", narrates his own adventures, and is endearingly awkward around his loved ones and co-workers.
  • Miles' fanboying over Spider-Man and eagerness to train with him is very endearing.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • How much is Otto to blame for what he does during the second half of the game? While he shows some anger issues earlier in the game and understandably hates Norman, he doesn't seem like the kind of man to murder thousands. Peter mentions that the neural interface could have changed Otto's mental state and drove him insane but the first time Peter sees Otto with the interface on and gets him to turn it off, he turns it back on despite Peter telling him that it could damage his mind for the rest of his life. Was Otto always crazy and just looking for a reason to go on a rampage, or was he always a good man with some issues who was driven insane by the interface?. Muddling the issue is that once the lab re-opens after Osborn closes it, you can find equipment in it that clearly is used later in the game to empower the sinister six, and that equipment advances and changes as you revisit the lab. A "portable jet engine" blueprint for Vulture's jetpack, Electro's armor in the 3D printers. A "hypodermic injector" (later attached to an articulated arm) for Scorpion's Tail, and plans for The Raft, noting its weaknesses, particularly to a power outage. Now Otto lists those as various contracts he's taken to finance the lab, but the question is if that's true, and he simply later co-opted this research when he turned evil, or if even back then, long before he develops the cranial implant, he's already thinking of forming the Sinister Six and simply bluffing Peter whom he knows is Spider-Man about the true nature of his research. Similarly, Peter notes that the Demons are raising a lot of money through robbery. It's not clear if all that money went to the APC Tombstone built them, or if they are financing Otto.
    • For that matter, during the ending, is his sudden shift in attitude sincere? Or is it merely a Wounded Gazelle Gambit trying to appeal to whatever respect Peter might still have had left for him?
  • Martin Li has a lot of this. Does he have a Split Personality? Are he and Mr. Negative one and the same? Does Li have control over Negative or vice versa? Is it all the result of the childhood accident that killed his parents?
    • Does Li know Peter is Spider-Man? He gives him a couple Implied Death Threats, which seem like overreacting if he's just warning an inquisitive teenager not to look too deeply into the Demons, but make total sense if he knows Peter's secret identity. Plus, he comes across Peter just after he leaves the room under Li's hidden lair, and if he went to his office like he said he was, he certainly would have realized Peter was snooping around and was bound to wonder why. Considering others in the game figured out Peter's identity on their own, including Doctor Octopus, it's not implausible that Li figured it out as well, or was just told by Otto. In Spider-Man 2, Li eventually knows Peter is Spider-Man during a trip with Miles in his head.
  • How much of Norman's acknowledged "villainy" is him intentionally creating havoc like his comics counterpart, and how much is antipathy from the people he clashed with, like Otto, or from people he unintentionally hurt, like Li? On the one hand, accounts from Peter, MJ, and even Harry would seem to indicate that Norman is every bit the amoral, narcissistic failure of a father we know him to be from the comics. The final hours of the game, where Peter infiltrates Osborn Tower to find the cure for GR27, show a very different side of Norman, one of a grieving man determined to use all of his considerable resources to prevent more loss of life (namely, Harry's) from the same disease that took his wife.
  • J Jonah Jameson is the true hero of the story.
  • Is MJ correct that Peter was overprotective and she can handle herself? Or does she take unneeded risks and is blind to how close she has come to being killed and Peter is merely bailing her out of situations she created by being far too hasty?
• Angst? What Angst?: On account of Gameplay and Story Segregation, Peter lapses into a surprising quick and chipper mood despite the story putting him into huge amount of trauma. It can be jarring to see Spider-Man and Peter trade catchphrases and quips after the death of Miles' Dad, the horrible betrayal of Dr. Octopus, and the death of Aunt May. The greater violence committed by the supervillains such as the Demons cold-bloodedly executing civilians and the collateral damage, and intensity doesn't stop Peter from indulging in comic banter or flirting with MJ even when she is trying to single-handedly disarm a bomb while several civilians are being held hostage in fear of unleashing a bio-weapon. On this note, Photo Mode will have stuff like Miles Morales stop looking for his father in the site of a suicide bombing to take smiling selfies as people are being brutally murdered by terrorists in the background.
  • Even more so in the Turf Wars DLC, where almost no mention is made of Black Cat after her supposed death at the end of The Heist - and the only reference to her is made in a police report by Yuri, not Spider-Man.
• Anti-Climax Boss:
  • Scorpion is a complete pushover. While fighting him alongside Rhino can be hectic, Scorpion himself is, by far, the easiest boss in the game. He is not immune to the basic web gadgets (which will be fully or at least significantly upgraded by the time you fight him), he often stands still so you can web him and he has very little health compared to other bosses. It doesn't help that his attacks consist of an easily-dodged projectile and an annoying, but manageable, lunge combo. This is Lampshaded by Rhino, who calls him a hack during the fight and they spend all their time bickering at each other.
  • The subway fight with Mr. Negative is effectively a timing puzzle, a very simple one at that, that just requires you to dodge Mr. Negative's energy waves in a particular direction. They're easy to dodge and the fight is fairly short. The second fight with him, however, is MUCH tougher.
• Awesome Music:
  • The music, composed by John Paesano, is considered overall great. Especially noteworthy is the Main Theme, which pays homage to the iconic theme composed by Danny Elfman for the Sam Raimi's Spider-Man Trilogy while having its own identity. However, the best version of this theme, by far, is "Destroying Your Own Creation", the theme for the final boss' second phase. A perfect combination of epic and tragic, fitting for the final confrontation between Peter and Dr. Octopus.
  • The free-roaming music, "City of Hope", is a triumphant, hopeful, sweeping orchestral rearrangement of the main theme that truly makes web-swinging around New York City all the more epic.
  • Black Cat's leitmotif is not only beautiful, but has a mysterious mournfulness and turmoil to it (along with flashes of Spidey's theme) that contrasts sharply with the apparently shallow behaviour she shows throughout the game, and hints at much deeper characterisation and feelings for Spidey than the character herself will openly display.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • This version of Mary Jane has divided a lot of people. Some are annoyed by her poor decision making in-game or at least hate her stealth sections due to them being perceived as annoying, while others are fine with her personality and think it's a good way to not make her a Neutral Female in spite of not having either any powers or even any training. Another point of contention is her characterization as a journalist, particularly among fans of her in the original comics (See Older Than They Think below), who got annoyed at "yet another try to fix the character", which they think only further perpetuates the Audience-Coloring Adaptation created by the Sam Raimi films, which utterly changed the perception of Mary Jane as a character for the worse outside of comic fans. On the other hand, some people argue that her characterization is solid and well written on its own merits, particularly by depicting her relationship with Peter in a respectful, relatable and satisfying manner, and that it's an evolution of her characterization in the Ultimate Universe, so it still builds upon her comic book legacy.
  • The DLC's Big Bad Hammerhead is a point of contention with fans. There are some who like him thanks to the fact that like with Mr. Negative, he's another C-Lister in Spider-Man's rogue's gallery who was turned into a major villain and brutally effective threat, with his character arc of being an old-school baddie being forced to evolve and get with the times being viewed as interesting. Others however dislike him because they find said characterization a baffling take on the character due to it divorcing him from his unique prohibition era mobster aesthetics from the comics in favor of turning into a generic cyborg brute, and it doesn't help that he's a more simplistic "Evil for the sake of evil" character as opposed to the more complex and sympathetic Mr. Negative and Doc Ock from the base game.
• Broken Base: The game's take on Spider-Man's Iconic Outfit — The Advanced Suit — has become divisive due to the added giant white spiders. Some adore the suit and see it as a unique and striking take on the classic Spider-Man suit, while others find the giant spiders on the suit to be ugly, unnecessary, and out of place. This was mitigated once it was revealed that the game includes multiple suits (including the traditional classic suit), meaning those who dislike it can use another suit of their liking, but the Advanced Suit itself remains divisive amongst fans. Funnily enough, it seems like Insomniac knew this was coming, as it is shown on the social media posts and NPC dialogue that the suit is very divisive In-Universe as well, with citizens having wildly differing opinions on the suit.
• Can't Un-Hear It: Yuri Lowenthal's performance as Spider-Man/Peter Parker quickly made this impression on some people. Same with William Salyers as Dr. Octopus, Mark Rolston as Osborn, Nadji Jeter as Miles, Erica Lindbeck as Black Cat, Laura Bailey as Mary Jane, and Nancy Linari as Aunt May.
• Captain Obvious Reveal: The most basic knowledge of Spider-Man's rogues gallery and the Sinister Six pointed to Dr. Otto Octavius becoming a villain in this game. This is to the point where the marketing avoided showing anything to confirm that he would even be in it.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • With him being the absolute most unsympathetic member of the Sinister Six, beating up Scorpion is this. Especially if you manage to make Rhino do the job for you.
  • Get three full bars of Focus plus the two for one finisher skill, find group of minions, and proceed to totally wreck six guys in a matter of seconds. If you have the Focus generating suit power, there's nothing quite as satisfying as completely demolishing an entire group of mooks.
  • Mix and matching gadgets, especially with the Resupply suit power, can be a very cathartic thing trying out the many amusing ways you can ruin thugs' days.
  • Many of the boss Finishers are definitely this, but the most cathartic are probably Scorpion (where Spidey spikes his tail into the ground, swings around it, and lands a dropkick on Scorpion's head) and Hammerhead in the DLC (where Spider-Man doubles him over with a hard gut punch, then swings around and plants his spine. Given how utterly loathsome both are, it can be very satisfying to pull them off.
  • After having to carefully sneak around enemies in the various stealth missions of the game, MJ snagging a taser in the final stealth level will leave you wanting to takedown every enemy, no matter how unnecessary.
  • Finally being able to bring down Screwball in the Silver Lining DLC after her being a Karma Houdini from the main game and the previous DLC content so far definitely counts. This is especially more cathartic if you hate her annoying personality and her challenges in general. Being able to bring her down for good will make you feel pretty good afterwards.
  • At the end of Silver Lining, finally giving Hammerhead a beatdown he's had coming the entire expansion. And unlike the first time in Turf Wars, this time Hammerhead isn't able to keep his slimy, smug demeanor. Seeing the smug, sadistic psychopath finally have a Villainous Breakdown ending with him only able to impotently Death Glare the duo before collapsing is extremely satisfying.
• Character Rerailment:
  • Many feel that this game's incarnation of Peter Parker is far truer to the spirit of the character's mythos than his comic book counterpart has been since 2007-2008. Especially when it comes to a certain scene at the end of the game: in One More Day, Aunt May's life hangs in the balance thanks to her getting shot by a sniper aiming for Peter. To save her life, Peter sells his marriage to MJ to the Devil instead of owning up to his actions, even after May told him it was her time and to let her go. In the game, May tells him to let her go, and Peter, while distraught, ultimately sacrifices May's life in order to help produce enough of a cure for everyone else afflicted by the Devil's Breath, which many agree better fits the character's creed of With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility. Many also appreciated the older Spider-Man in the game and the potential for Character Development, especially when he becomes a Parental Substitute to Miles Morales by the end of the game and the DLC, since it allows Peter to finally mature and feel like he's written like an adult. Needless to say, he is a popular choice among fans in terms of determining the best incarnations of Spider-Man all throughout Marvel media.
  • This version of Norman is also somewhat more similar to his original Lee & Ditko/Romita characterization, instead of the super genius Lex Luthor Expy he became after he was brought back in the comics. Like in the original stories, he is corrupt but not cartoonishingly so, and his relationship with Harry is strained but only because Norman doesn't understand how to show affection. His attempt to save Harry from his illness resembles the original "Goblin loses his composure and Norman breaks down once Harry is mentioned" much more than it resembles the current "Actively trying to kill him for not being an extension of himself" system we see in the modern Spidey comics.
  • Rhino, after so many previous games depicted him as just a brainless American thug in a rhino suit, is correctly depicted as a Russian mobster, who, while no where near the smartest guy in the Sinister Six, isn't in danger of being Too Dumb to Live either.
• Complete Monster:
  • Main game & The City That Never Sleeps DLC: Screwball is a narcissistic, sadistic live streamer who will do anything for the sake of views. In the main game, she fakes a kidnapping in order to grab Spider-Man's attention. During Spider-Man's search for the "hostage", Screwball's followers place bombs around a city street that he has to disable. In The City That Never Sleeps, Screwball runs a series of challenges that involve setting up EMP transmitters around New York that can knock out the city's power, having her goons hold people hostage and sending out more goons to find "haters" and beat or even kill them. Screwball's final challenges involve her planting bombs around the city, which she says will blow up half the city if Spider-Man doesn't find them. When Spider-Man finally finds her, Screwball puts bombs on rooftops where her fans are throwing parties during the chase, showing she's willing to risk the lives of her fans just to get views.
  • The City That Never Sleeps only: Hammerhead, real name Joseph Martello, is a sadistic Maggia don who yearns for the "good old days" when mobsters like him ruled New York City with an iron fist, and the police knew to look the other way. When Sable International leaves their technology behind after the Devil's Breath incident, Hammerhead arms his men with as much as he can find—subsequently hoarding humanitarian supplies desperately needed by the war-torn country of Symkaria—and tears up the streets of New York with a brutal gang war against the other crime families so he can seize power, while attempting to have countless civilians killed through car bombings, assaults on witnesses and police escorts, and assassinations conducted by particularly brutal hitmen. When Spider-Man and Yuri Watanabe attempt to stop him, Hammerhead provokes Yuri into shooting him by massacring numerous cops before having other crime bosses slowly drowned in cement, trying to broadcast their deaths across the city. When that fails, he goes into hiding and has himself converted into a cyborg using the dangerous Project Olympus armor, forcing an Oscorp scientist to upgrade his men as well without care to the many that die from the procedure. When Hammerhead resurfaces, he tortures Silver Sable with a power drill until she gives him the most dangerous Sable Tech in her arsenal.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • If you so choose, you can take a selfie at Uncle Ben's grave... along with your underwear suit if needed. Ditto with Aunt May's gravestone in the postgame. You can do the same with the Town Hall terrorist attack... and with certain photo mode borders, turn the latter event into a holiday card.
  • Any of the Sinister Six's "jokes" could qualify. Scorpion is a repeat offender as most of his attempts at comedy come across as disturbingly comical. The best example is his response to Spidey's quip about the six not having a name yet where he says they'll name themselves the, "We-Killed-Spider-Man-and-Used-His-Corpse-for-a-Blanket Six."
  • Spidey apparently just forgot the vial containing Sandman in one of his backpacks, possibly for years. Of course, it's terrible for Sandman but damn.
  • At one point, Peter changes into his costume mid-conversation with MJ while cooking their dinner, with MJ playfully accosting him for leaving his clothes in her kitchen. A funny gag on its own, but made far more hilarious if the player has one of the many joke costumes in the game, making it even more ridiculous. And with the addition of New Game Plus, it's entirely possible to play this scene with the Undies outfit.
  • One of the story trophies for completing The Heist DLC is "Bye Felicia." Spider-Man also says this in Silver Lining when he awkwardly finds out that Black Cat is still alive.
  • One of the story missions in the Turf Wars DLC is titled "Yuri's Revenge". While the mission itself is very dark in nature, showing the aftermath of Yuri's rampage through the Maggia in retaliation for Hammerhead killing her men, one can't help but chuckle at the mission's title which is a Shout-Out to the expansion pack of Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2.
  • Jameson's reaction on his podcast to finding out that there are now two Spider-Men is to have a heart attack live on air, then furiously berate Jared for trying to call an ambulance, telling him to call a cab instead because it's less expensive.
• Demonic Spiders: There are quite a few bad guys outside of Spidey's rogues' gallery that can give him a hard time, namely:
  • Brutes. Their resistance to Spidey's regular attacks unless webbed up and their higher-than-average health are bad on their own already, but when given a chance, they attack fast enough that their single, hard-hitting punches rack up before you can use your healing factor. And due to their higher defense, this means they can't be dispatched with a Focus finisher unless they've been sufficiently damaged. Brute force alone won't be enough, so your Perfect Dodge timing had better be on point. There's a skill in the Innovator skill tree that makes them more susceptible to web attacks with the Triangle button, but regardless, always be on the lookout for these guys. The Demon version is even worse in this regard due to having a huge AoE shockwave attack that they love to spam.
  • The Heist DLC shows that the only thing worse than a Brute is a Brute with a minigun! In addition to being able to inflict massive damage at range, Minigun Brutes are immune to being webbed, disarmed, or thrown, eliminating most of the normal anti-Brute tactics.
  • Thugs with rocket launchers are aggravating. They don't pose much of a threat by themselves, but their shots can sneak in on you while you're swarmed by other mooks if you're not paying attention. And it will take off a chunk of your health until you're at one point left. Luckily, the combination of the Spider-Sense, a crosshair that locks onto Spidey and a repeated beeping sound helps clue you in to an oncoming rocket. Still and all, you can never be too careful.
  • Thugs with whips can really mess you up in the middle of any fight. You can't hit them head-on, nor can you web them up as they deflect all of them. But the reason they really get annoying is due to the fact that Spidey's main style of fighting is to knock enemies into the air when you get overwhelmed or surrounded. These guys will pull you back to the ground the second you get into the air and will continue to do this until you take them out. And they also hit like a truck.
  • Demon Swordsmen. Normal melee units, including the normal swordsmen, are just slightly more annoying than the unarmed mooks, but these bastards are on another level; they're much quicker and will predict almost any and every attempt to neutralize with the launch uppercut, on top of having significantly souped-up attacks of the normal swordsmen. Fittingly, Round 2 vs Mr. Negative is basically a souped up version of this mook.
  • The Sable goons with jetpacks will quickly become a serious headache. They constantly circle around you while you're dealing with foes on the ground, are hard to target with your attacks, and their grenades will shock you and disable your gadgets with infuriating efficiency. Fortunately, they're quite vulnerable to being webbed up and slammed into a wall.
  • The Turf Wars DLC decides to up the ante by introducing Thugs equipped with both shields and jet-packs. They'll charge and collide into you from your blind spots for massive damage, drop EMP attacks that chip away at your health and disable you from using your gadgets, and are immune from attacks from the front. With that said they're actually neutralized with ease if you are able to counter them with your gadgets correctly.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Both of the Optional Bosses Taskmaster and Tombstone ended up being really well received by the players: Taskmaster for being a really engaging Mirror Boss with a cool design, and Tombstone for the back-and-forth banter with Spider-Man during his fight that paints him as a likable and respectful Blood Knight.
  • The copycat Spider-Man in one of the side missions also has a few fans due to being a Badass Normal who, rather than fleeing once Peter comes in and tells him to run, instead stays and is skilled enough to take on the unarmed thugs, on top of being a Nice Guy. Doesn't hurt that he could more or less be a Lighter and Softer Meme Acknowledgement of the dual 60s Spider-Man
  • J. Jonah Jameson. Thanks to his humorous accusations of Spider-Man, the fact that he actually raises some good points, and being genuinely concerned for the people of New York City, good ol' JJJ steals the show once again despite not actually ever showing up in person.
  • Captain Yuriko "Yuri" Watanabe, who has quite a number of fans thanks to her good chemistry with Spider-Man (especially their "Spider-Cop" banters) and being his genuine helpful ally through the entire game. Their voice actors being married in real life also adds to the popularity.
• Epileptic Trees: Encouraged by this tweet, where Marvel announces the game will receive some bonus content in honor of the "Fantastic Four week"^note  January 8-16, and asks people for their guesses. Theories range from mission(s) with FF, to simply the Amazing Bag-Man suit.
• Evil Is Cool:
  • Mr. Negative got this reaction, with many finding his aesthetic, design, gimmick, and story quite cool and impressive.
  • Tombstone and his surprisingly deep characterization made a major impression despite his small presence, and many enjoyed his affable, charismatic, and surprisingly deep turn.
  • Of course, Dr. Octopus is always cool, and many have heaped praise on the story and characterization as well as presentation of this classic villain in this game.
• Fandom Rivalry: There's also one with Marvel's Avengers despite both being Marvel games. Ever since the beta of Avengers, some have compared that game unfavorably to Spider-Man in both gameplay and aesthetics. While Insomniac's Spider-Man game has its share of commercialized tie-ins like costumes to promote Spider-Man movies, the game is still praised for being a self-contained earnest attempt at entertainment with engaging gameplay and a distinct art style. In contrast, Avengers has a less enjoyable gameplay and MCU-lite aesthetic, making it seem like a less enjoyable gaming experience. Not helping matters is that Avengers also has a live-service monetization model and its own version of Spider-Man exclusive to Playstation consoles, which made it seem like a naked cash grab.
• Fan Nickname:
  • The game itself is technically called Marvel's Spider-Man. But since it was initially a PlayStation-exclusive game, it's usually referred to as "Spider-Man PS4" in a fan-induced case of Super Title 64 Advance due to the generic name the game otherwise has; even the later remaster for PC didn't meaningfully change the name. Both Insomniac Games and Sony use the name in reference to it too, and even this very wiki uses the name for the URL and title of the work page to differentiate it from other Spider-Man media! Spider Man Across The Spiderverse would later give him the name "Insomniac Spider-Man".
  • Many fans have designated this version of Spidey as "The Advanced Spider-Man" due to what the main suit of the game is labelled (The Advanced Suit). This is likely a pun on Superior Spider-Man (2013), whose head writer (Dan Slott) was one of the co-writers (chief writers being Jon Paquette, Benjamin Arfmann, Kelsey Beachum with Spider-Man writers Christos Gage and Dan Slott also having credits). People seeing this Spidey in his appearance in Spider-Geddon instead refer to him as "PS4 Spider-Man"
  • The "Webbed Suit", the costume from the Spider-Man Trilogy, is often referred to as the "Maguire Attire" and "the Raimi suit".
• Game-Breaker:
  • Almost every suit power is either useless or this. The Spider-Bro suit power, unlocked when you craft the Stark Suit, is basically a rapid-fire electric web shooter that can take out entire groups of enemies in seconds. Any enemies left standing once its barrage is over (if there are any) will also be electrocuted, leaving them vulnerable to attack. The Web Blossom suit power results in Spider-Man firing off webbing in just about every direction, which not only immobilizes entire mobs of enemies, but can result in a ton of Web Takedowns depending on their positioning, turning normally scary mobs of enemies into a total non-issue. Despite claims that it would be nerfed, after several patches and expansions it never has been. A properly timed Quad Damage from the Fear Itself suit turns nearly every boss fight into a breeze by letting you take them out in as little as one or two cycles. Resupply is only available at the very end of the main campaign, but ensures you'll never start a fight with less than a full array of gadgets, lets you refill gadgets like Impact Webbing and Trip Mines in the middle of stealth sections, making them a breeze, and gives you all the Electric Webs you'll ever need in a mob fight to keep every enemy stunned, all of which are very useful in the DLC campaigns. Unrelenting Fury, which breaks through enemy guards (shields, batons, swords, etc), makes heavily-defensive bosses into helpless punching bags, to the point you can just turn it on at the start of Taskmaster's second fight and knock him out with impunity within seconds without giving him a chance to act. Iron Arms is arguably a stronger version of Unrelenting Fury for the cost of maybe having a slightly shorter duration - it bypasses all defenses and your melee attack range is almost doubled and able to strike multiple enemies at once, making it extremely effective against large groups of enemies trying to surround you - and to top it all off, you can get it at the start of the game if you preordered.
  • Impact Web, Tripwires and the Noir suit's takedown silencer turn Taskmaster's stealth challenges into jokes, as you can just zip around tossing gadgets at every enemy to thin the herd and pick off the remaining enemies with the zip kick to score the high combo you need to get Ultimate ranking.
  • Payback skill which lets you do an instant takedown on gun enemies by performing a Web Strike after a Perfect Dodge. While it doesn't apply to rocket launcher-using foes, it does apply to the Sable Jetpack goons in Demonic Spiders above, and perfect dodge timing isn't that difficult to get a hang of at all. The result is that many ranged foes can be one-shotted without much issue and gets them out of your hair a lot sooner. If you have Threat Sensors, you get a significantly larger window of opportunity to execute the takedown, too.
  • Threat Sensors, the suit mod which slows down time after you do a Perfect Dodge, basically gives you infinite bullet time with each trill of the spider-sense, and this skill works in every scenario, i.e. mook fights, sable fights, sniper battles, the rocket-launchers, the jetpack fighters, and boss fights. The double boss-fights with Electro-Vulture and Scorpion-Rhino become easy thanks to the extra breathing room you get, as does the final Dr. Octopus boss. A NG+ playthrough with this and some of these other mods makes Ultimate Difficulty a cakewalk.
  • Web Bomb and Rock Out combine to make taking down mobs incredibly easy. Even on the streets, there’s usually enough objects for the scattered goons to attach to.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • Car chase-related enemy encounters. If you just so happen to swing anywhere near the vicinity of an active car chase in progress, gun-wielding enemies will start sniping your health with effectively no way to dodge or defend against it so long as you're in line-of-sight, and if you have no Focus from swinging around, that's Scratch Damage that you can't immediately heal off. One could say it's meant to encourage a player to try to dive on in and get it done with, but if you've already completed that encounter before and aren't looking for more Crime Tokens, it gets really obnoxious.
    • Doubly so when the objective includes "take no damage", a frustrating near impossibility when your Spider-Sense doesn't seem to work right with vehicles, so as soon as the mission starts they get a shot off you didn't know was coming and you either abandon the mission or jump in just to get it over with.
  • Sable troops can randomly come in heavy armor (though more often than not, as pretty much every stun baton-wielding enforcer has it). It doesn't deflect your attacks like Brutes, however - instead it just makes them take upwards to triple the punishment compared to criminal enemy types, as well as shrugging off some of your Web gadgets. The result is while they distract you, their ranged units get to pepper you and make your life hell mid-combo. They don't even carry any new tricks, either.
  • Occasionally, unarmed Ryker Escapees will hang back and fling Molotov cocktails at you. Although your Spider Sense will warn you of the incoming projectile, it's an area-of-effect attack that can't be blocked, can't be webbed, has a large radius, sticks around, and interrupts any animation if you're caught in it. It's extremely easy to find yourself fighting a mob of inmates, interpret the Spider Sense as another inmate's punch or armed attack, and then suddenly have fire raining on you from above. Worse, they'll usually toss their Molotovs when you have little to no room to dodge even if you do see it coming. And since any unarmed inmate can do this at random, it can mess up your priorities about which enemies to deal with first.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • One of the Easter eggs is a marriage proposal added in at the request of a Vlogger. By the time the game came out, however, said person's significant other had already left him, citing irreconcilable relationship issues.
  • Starting New Game Plus and hearing Peter's Spider-Cop routine from the start of the game right after completing the DLC campaign puts a rather harsher spin on his Cowboy Cop antics.
  • JJJ once admits he'll get off Spidey's case if he officially joins the police, complete with a badge and legal oversight. Then the BLM protests in response to George Floyd's and Breonna Taylor's murders called into question how often the police are actually held accountable for their actions.
  • During the second act, MJ expresses frustration at not being allowed to save Peter for once. While cute, Marvel's Spider-Man 2 gives us a Black-Suited Peter bitterly saying "I'm the hero. I don't get saved." Fortunately, this does double as Heartwarming in Hindsight, as that game is more or less a nonstop succession of Harry, MJ, and Miles saving Peter over and over again, complete with Peter getting free of the symbiote and accepting help from them.
  • In the mainstream comics, Otto has a crush on Aunt May, and even paid his respects when he found out she had passed away in a later story. In the game, he both releases the bio-weapon that infects May and refuses to give up the antidote, resulting in her death.
  • The death of Stan Lee in November 2018, coupled with the June 2018 death of co-creator (Steve Ditko) makes his cameo in the game poignant. Likewise, the fact that the game ends with Peter Parker losing Aunt May, his last remaining family, alongside the off-screen death of his co-creators, adds to the sense that Peter and Spider-Man is really an orphan in every sense.
  • Aunt May dying in the game's ending is this to the main comics series now that it's revealed that May has contracted cancer just months after the game's release in Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man #1. It gets even worse with Spider-Man: No Way Home, which borrows from this game in killing off Aunt May, albeit at the hands of Willem Dafoe's Green Goblin from Sam Rami's trilogy; however, the Devil's Breath was made by Osborn, so in a way, both versions of Aunt May are killed by Osborn.
  • In the Turf Wars DLC, after Spider-Man damages the Harlem Sanctuary in pursuit of Hammerhead at the beginning of the DLC, Jameson goes on a rant about Spider-Man destroying a piece of New York history, despite acknowledging that the doctors there probably did commit atrocities against their patients, and says that New York should honor the more difficult parts of their history. This rant is already supposed to paint Jameson in an unfavorable light, but with the debate over historical figures that occurred after the killing of George Floyd, this can be more difficult to listen to or find funny.
  • The whole Devil's Breath arc becomes even darker in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic where large sections in New York were quarantined to contain the virus.
  • The game came out in 2018 with a subplot between Peter and MJ about them slowly rekindling their romance after an Offscreen Breakup and confirmation in the DLCs they were back together; the same year Nick Spencer took over as lead writer for the Amazing Spider-Man comic and his first act was finally getting them back together. Fast forward to 2023 where the sequel is released in the months following Zeb Wells taking over and his first order of business being to torpedo the ship in such a way that many actually see it as worse than One More Day and received much backlash.
  • In his boss fight in the game, Vulture tells Spider-Man that their rivalry ends that night. Outside of the hologram cameo in Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Vulture's right; it's revealed in Marvel's Spider-Man 2 that Vulture is one of several villains to be killed off by Kraven.
  • MJ comes across a katana previously owned by Kingpin in the museum and remembers how he nearly killed Peter with it during a previous fight. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which came out only a few months after this game's release, sees Kingpin actually kill the Peter of Miles' universe.
  • After the reveal that Detective Mackey is actually the first Black Cat, Walter Hardy in a side mission of The Heist DLC, Peter notes that he has to learn to be heartless and cynical after being played with. Once he gets the Symbiote suit in the sequel, he progressively becomes this. As a result, he stops contacting Miles, becomes meaner towards MJ and Harry, and takes a more brutal approach in combat to the point he nearly kills Kraven had Miles not intervened.

• Heartwarming in Hindsight:
  • The game and DLC were developed at the same time as Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, and the finale of The City that Never Sleeps becomes this after the film came out. It shows Peter and Miles developing a surrogate father-son relationship, down to Peter using a "dad voice" when reminding him to not skimp physics, and slowly taking on duties to train him, which Blond Peter from Into the Spider-Verse never got to do, and with Miles' spiraling in loneliness in dealing with his Spider-Powers. It's pretty uplifting that there's at least one version where Peter actually gets to mentor Miles for real and ensure that his early days as a superhero are not as stressful as Peter's teenage days are.
  • During the second act, MJ expresses frustration at not being allowed to save Peter for once. Marvel's Spider-Man 2 does give us a Black-Suited Peter bitterly saying "I'm the hero. I don't get saved," but that game is more or less a nonstop succession of Harry, MJ, and Miles saving Peter over and over again, complete with Peter getting free of the symbiote and accepting help from them.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • We can disturb pigeons on rooftops.
  • Josh Keaton previously played Spider-Man in The Spectacular Spider-Man. The Spider-Man from that series fought Electro, who joined Doc Ock's Sinister Six because Octavius promised to return him to normal from his Energy Being form. In this game, Josh Keaton voices Electro - who joins Doc Ock's Sinister Six because Octavius promised to turn him into an Energy Being. Talk about the grass always being greener on the other side.
    • Also, Josh isn't the first voice actor for the titular Spider-Man to then voice Electro, as Chris Daniel Barnes, voice of the 90s animated series' Spider-Man and Josh's costar in Shattered Dimensions and Edge of Time, voiced the character in the Ultimate Spider-Man (2012) animated series 6 years prior to this game. Amusingly, the next time Yuri Lowenthal played Spidey, he'd encounter Barnes' Electro. Josh would be involved as well, but in a full 180 this time around he'd be playing a hero.
  • The premise is the exact opposite of that of Batman: Arkham Knight. After 8 years, the hero's arch-enemy is out of the picture. Here everyone expects peace, but crime goes up. In Arkham, everyone expected total anarchy, yet crime dramatically dropped.
  • Mark Rolston previously played DC's own famous Corrupt Corporate Executive Lex Luthor in Young Justice (2010). Now, in this game, he portrays Marvel's (or at the very least, Spidey's) most popular evil businessman, Norman Osborn. They even both happen to be nicer versions of these characters.
  • The addition of the Raimi films' suit (the Webbed Suit) makes aspects of the game come full circle, especially on a replaythrough. The scene where they clearly referenced Spider-Man 2's train scene with Spider-Man saying, "That totally worked last time" becomes more funny with that suit equipped and the plot with Doc Ock being inspired by the same film.
  • The addition of The Amazing Spider-Man 1's suit just brings about how this game partly feels like it takes a lot of cues from the game based on that movie's plot and gameplay.
  • Similarly, one of the suits wore by Peter is the 2099 Version, or Miguel O'Hara's suit. Come Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, Peter ends up working for him in order to stabilize the multiverse, meaning he was inadvertently copying his future boss all this time!
  • The game teases both Venom and Green Goblin appearing in a sequel. Yuri Lowenthal, William Salyers, and Nadji Jeter would all reprise their respective roles from this game just a year later in Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order, and guess who happen to be two of the many villains Spider-Man's fighting off during the prison breakout in the second chapter are?
• Hype Backlash: The praise of the game got so high, particularly when it outsold even God of War (PS4), that it eventually started to receive a bit of flak for being completely derivative as an open-world game.
• I Knew It!:
  • When a mystery villain was teased at the end of the E3 2018 Raft trailer, many guessed that it was going to be Doc Ock. Especially since Dan Slott helped write the game and Doc Ock is considered his signature character.
  • Fans were pretty quickly able to figure two of the twists of The Heist DLC: In the main quest, Black Cat lies about the Maggia having her son (who might also be Peter's) captive in order to manipulate Peter. In a side-quest, the police detective who asks for your help recovering paintings stolen by The Cat (Felicia's criminal father Walter Hardy) turns out to be Walter himself, who was likewise taking advantage of Peter's selfless nature.
• Inferred Holocaust: It’s not discussed, but the final death toll from Devil’s Breath must have been brutal. May died almost within a day or so of having it and outside of being somewhat elderly, was in good shape. And she wasn’t even infected from the initial outbreak at Time Square. That combined with how long it would take to mass produce and distribute a vaccine….the final death count must have been in the hundreds if not thousands.
  • Some people guessed the final DLC pack would contain a Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse suit to tie into the movie.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: The DLCs have drawn criticism due to taking place on the same map with the same gameplay elements while not adding any new skills or abilities to Spider-Man's arsenal.
• Jerkass Woobie: Norman is the man responsible for why the events of the game ever happened in the first place but you can't help but feel bad for the man. He lost his wife due to a disease she had and his son also has his mother's illness. This wasn't the monstrous Green Goblin we know and hate but a man just so desperate to save what was left of his family.
• Magnificent Bastard:
  • Felicia Hardy, the current Black Cat, is a brilliant master thief that steals for the thrill of it – but only choosing to rob those who can afford it or those that "deserve" it. In the main game proper, Cat leads Spidey on a hunt for her Cat Dolls challenging him to stop her from stealing $50 million dollars worth of loot. This was all a ruse, with the loot being a lure to distract Spidey while her Dolls shut down the police department’s security systems, allowing Cat to recover her confiscated equipment. In The Heist DLC, Black Cat is working to steal Maggia drives that contain financial information for Hammerhead, telling Spidey that he has her son hostage and letting Spidey believe he might be the father. This was a lie so that she could recruit Spidey’s help in stealing the drives for herself and she promptly fakes her own death, only resurfacing one last time to save Spidey from Hammerhead and give him information on how to take down the Mob boss for good. A thief at heart, Felicia nonetheless has a strong conscience while still loving Spider-Man, while fully using this to her ruthless advantage.
  • Taskmaster has been hired by a mysterious organization to evaluate Spider-Man, choosing if he's worthy of being recruited. He does this by setting up challenges all over Manhattan to be completed, even in places where he didn't start a conflict. After Spider-Man completes some of these challenges, Taskmaster ambushes him for a surprise fight, attempting to kill him with the techniques he's memorized. Upon realizing his opponent still has some tricks left, he quits early to gain more data for a second fight. After being defeated again, he tells Spider-Man that his client pays six figures, taking his refusal to join in stride. In the end, Taskmaster departs with a smoke bomb, escaping without facing justice.
  • Lonnie Lincoln, known to all as "Tombstone", is a soft-spoken, ruthless chop shop operator and mobster. Tombstone has plagued New York for years as one of Spider-Man's most persistent foes, and despite their long history as enemies, Tombstone holds a mutual respect for the wallcrawler no matter how many times the hero foils him. Tricking out vehicles and tech to better serve the Inner Demons gang in exchange for profit, Tombstone brutally kills one of his minions as punishment for a sloppy job, taking too much pride in the work of his gang to allow laziness. On the side, Tombstone concocts a temporary inhalant that grants the users his power of invulnerability, using bribery and thefts to create the concoction while planning to become the city's sole supplier. Even when his powers are stripped, his arm busted and his plan ruined by Spider-Man, Tombstone cheerfully reiterates that he'll be back for more "thrills" against the hero in no time.
  • "The Heist" DLC chapter: Walter Hardy, the former Black Cat, whom is just as devious as his daughter. Faking his death years ago to protect himself and his daughter from the Maggia, Hardy manages to get a hold of Spider-Man’s phone number and disguises himself as a cop right on top of a police station. Calling himself Detective Mackey, Hardy tricks Spider-Man into uncovering loot he hid years ago. When Spider-Man finishes up, Hardy leaves with his loot, knowing Spider-Man won’t tell his daughter the truth because Spider-Man is a "decent guy." He also asks Spider-Man to look after Felicia. While only featured in a simple side-mission, Hardy more than lives up to his anecdotes as a brilliant criminal.
• Memetic Loser: The Sable International overall is often derided as dim-witted and incompetent, despite being a supposedly elite mercenary group, they are barely better than the common thugs Spider-Man encounters. Their leader’s overall immature behavior for most of the main game and DLC just makes them look even less threatening.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • #Puddlegate^note  A fan on Reddit posted a screenshot of one of the gameplay videos which showed an updated version of the E3 2017 demo, accusing Insomniac of downgrading the graphics. Screenshots of many buildings appearing altered from demo footage, as well as Spider-Man's suit, may or may not be perceived to be of lower quality, but the main focus is a fight scene with a lack of puddles on the floor. This quickly spread across social media. Digital Foundry's analysis of the game revealed that it, in fact, runs at a higher resolution than the E3 demo and suggests the puddles were removed because the way the game handles reflections produced severely inaccurate results in that particular location... and then a later GDC talk by one of the developers revealed that the actual reason was even more mundane: the random number seed that was used to generate the puddles changed in-between the E3 and final builds just because no one thought it was important to keep it consistent.
    • Became something of an Ascended Meme when Insomniac included a puddle sticker decal for the photo mode, so that players could have as many puddles as their hearts content.
  • #Carrotgate^note  Jim Sterling of Jimquisition spoofed the aforementioned #puddlegate with #carrotgate, which refers to a scene in which Aunt May's knife doesn't actually cut up carrots even though the blade passes through each one.
  • "Spider-Man is a murderer!"^note  Many Let's Players have commented on the amount of supposedly "non-lethal" takedowns that Spider-Man uses which would almost certainly cripple the recipient for life if not outright kill them, such as swinging an iron manhole covering full force into their skull, kicking them off the side of a skyscraper, webbing them to a burning car, or power bombing them onto solid concrete from at least three meters in the air. It acts as Spider-Man's take on the "Kiryu has never killed anyone" meme.
  • "It Makes Me Feel Like Spider-Man" ^note An IGN review had this statement thrown around a lot, along with the general overuse of the word, "feels like". Fans were quite ruthless in their mockery. It effectively became the Sony equivalent to "Too much water", also from an IGN review.
  • PlayStation Avengers ^note Having started on twitter with Spider-Man meeting some fellow exclusive Playstation 4 characters, a movement started of uniting said characters with Spider-Man into their own Avengers-style team. The suggested team members include: Kratos and Atreus, Aloy, Nathan Drake, Delson Rowe and Abigail "Fetch" Walker, the Hunter, and Connor.
  • Peter putting his hand over an emergency stop button has become a popular reaction GIF.
  • "Where's the Raimi suit?" ^note  Fans have been clamoring for the Tobey Maguire movie suit to be included in the game since the very beginning, to the point that numerous clickbait videos with fake footage of it are extremely common to find online to this day. It's become so overblown that many fans not only don't care if it shows up anymore, but see the whole thing as nothing but a punchline now.
    • This got so bad that when the suit finally showed up on December 20, 2018 as a free download, some fan reaction was more along the lines of "I should apologize to Insomniac for pestering them" rather than excitement.
    • Also, the replays of the game with the Raimi Suit made everyone joke the game as the "Spider-Man 4 we deserved".
  • I have nothing left. Except Spider-Man. ^Explanation Due to some games absolutely eating up the PlayStation 4's storage space (Red Dead Redemption 2 is notorious for this), fans will use this particular scene in Spider-Man 2.
  • Here's what Spider Man would look like running on a Game Boy Color!^note A video of gameplay from this game posted by IGN, downscaled and edited to be framed by a Game Boy Color screen. This video is infamously cursed within Retraux and Retro Gaming fans alike for the minimal attempt to actually try to fit the Game Boy Color's graphical limitations, from the 3D visuals to that it doesn't use the GBC's pallette, juxtaposed against music that comes from the actual Spider Man game on the Game Boy Color.
• Misaimed Fandom: A case for Double Standard. Certain players of The Heist DLC came away feeling that Peter should genuinely be in a relationship with Black Cat instead of Mary Jane feeling that she's a much better fit for him. This is spite of the fact that the DLC presents Felicia as lying to Peter, manipulating him and (like her earlier history in the comics) either not knowing or caring about his civilian identity, while Mary Jane, for all her impulsiveness on wanting to be the one to do the saving genuinely cares for Peter, willing to admit her faults and knows his hero alias. Felicia's Form-Fitting Wardrobe probably had something to do with it...
• Misblamed:
  • Sony's ownership of Spider-Man's film rights has nothing to do with the game being PS4 exclusive. Not only has Spider-Man appeared in mobile and multiplatform games released during the ongoing MCU-Sony Pictures cinematic deal, but it was Marvel's decision to make this game exclusive as their collaboration with Sony. Others also note that Marvel and Disney have never had any experience making a AAA game, unlike Sony whose Playstation exclusives are among the best and most successful games of the last ten years. If anything, Marvel originally approached Microsoft to make the game as an Xbox exclusive only for the publisher to decline, resulting in Sony making the game instead.
  • The marketing of the Expansion Pack, The City Never Sleeps, as a Season Pass prior to the release of the game itself led to accusations that Insomniac was carving up portions of the game and paywalling it. The fact that Black Cat's side mission in the base-game served as a Sequel Hook for it only intensified that feeling. Come the release of the first part, The Heist it turns out the DLC does indeed take place after the events of the game's story and are actually largely self-contained and tied into one another.
  • Some people blamed Marvel and Sony for making Peter's remodeled PS5 face resemble Tom Holland, who played Peter in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In actuality, the new face is based on Ben Jordan's, not Tom Holland's, likeness and Insomniac made the change to better mesh with Yuri Lowenthal's facial capture.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Martin Li/Mr. Negative knows that what he has planned would sully his good reputation, but launches a rapid-fire series of suicide bombings at City Hall in an attempt to kill Norman Osborn anyway, which murders Miles' father and knocks out and severely wounds Peter in the process, followed by trying to find a deadly bioweapon that Oscorp intended to be a cure for genetic diseases, so that he can spread it across the city and wipe out as many people as possible. All out of pure spite for Norman.
  • Otto passes it right after becoming Doctor Octopus by unleashing Devil's Breath on Manhattan, killing hundreds if not thousands including Aunt May and almost starting a worldwide pandemic.
  • Hammerhead crosses this in his first scene by blowing up the apartment where Black Cat lives once she got back in the conclusion of The Heist, and it only goes worse from there. His proper introduction scene in Turf Wars has him brutally and sadistically executing Yuri's men, and clearly drawing it out just to try and make her scared and suffer. If somehow neither of those was this, then stealing humanitarian aid supplies thousands of innocent people will explicitly die without purely out of Greed certainly does, especially given the game highlights how it has nothing to do with Hammerhead's main goal and was purely because he could.
  • Yuri Watanabe crosses this when she puts Revenge Before Reason and shoots Hammerhead in cold blood in front of Spider-Man and other police officers. This, doubled with her one-woman assault on the Bar With No Name that resulted in a lot of dead Maggia mobsters, shows that Yuri has finally gone off the deep end in her vengeance against the mob.
• Most Wonderful Sound:
  • The various noises Otto's robotic arms make.
  • The slow-motion boom that comes with Perfect Dodge with the mode that slows down time.
  • The mechanical drone Scorpion's armor makes when he does his lunge attack. Too bad you won't hear it very often.
• Narm Charm:
  • Although Otto's appearance can be Narm to some, it does add to his Face–Heel Turn, as seeing Otto slowly lose his mind and become a horrifying threat despite looking like an Adorkable old man is surprisingly effective.
  • The way Octavius delivers his scream of fury when he drops Norman Osborn from a skyscraper after the latter gives him a scathing "The Reason You Suck" Speech is so high-pitched that he comes across as extremely dorky but it also demonstrates just how deeply his former friend's speech cut into him.
• No Problem with Licensed Games: The game has gotten rave reviews from numerous sources, praising just about every aspect of it. This picture pretty much sums it up.
• Older Than They Think:
  • A lot of people compare the fighting style to the Batman: Arkham Series, but Spider-Man 2 had a very similar combat system, not to mention other action games with combo meter and chain attacks such as Devil May Cry which preceded the Arkham Series and inspired them and Insomniac. Even then, The Amazing Spider-Man games had an even closer match of the combat system, being inspired by the Arkham games themselves. It's to the point where, minus some control changes, the devs clearly took a page out of those games' books.
  • Some commentators argue the web swinging as being the best in the series, citing past games that have you latch onto the sky. That said, while the swinging is good, it was previously done, and in a more Difficult, but Awesome, complex way, in Spider-Man 2.
  • Fans loved how you could mix and match Spidey's suit with exclusive powers, so you could wear any outfit you wanted without drawbacks. It's not a completely original idea though, as Spider-Man and its sequel Spider-Man 2 – Enter: Electro had collectible and unlockable costumes with special abilities (such as the Symbiote Suit giving you unlimited organic webbing which is based on the actual comics lore) and the sequel had something similar with its "Create-a-Spider" mode 17 years prior.
  • In terms of characterization, some have taken to praising the game for "fixing" MJ by making her no longer a Damsel Scrappy. This seems to be a case of Audience-Coloring Adaptation concerning the Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies and Ultimate Spider-Man comic series, where MJ suffered a major case of Adaptational Wimp, while in the original comics she's long been depicted as both competent and useful in Peter's Spider-Man activities, both before and after the Raimi films. Even turning her into a reporter, besides the fact it essentially copies Lois Lane, was something previously done in Ultimate Spider-Man, both cartoon and the comic (specially the former). Likewise, this isn't the first game to give MJ an active role. Spider-Man: Web of Shadows had MJ as a shotgun wielding NPC who staves off zombie-like symbiotes while partnering, not only with Spidey, but also with none other than Luke Cage, all while retaining a lot of her original comics' characterization.
  • A lot of people have noted that Peter and MJ being "on a break" seems to be based on the current comics situation after the One More Day fiasco. In both the Classic and Ultimate era, Peter and MJ had phases of them being on-and-off-again, and even their relationship in the Spider-Man Trilogy in the little loved Spider-Man 3 shows them having tensions even after they started dating (where the first two films showed their better-remembered courtship).
  • MJ's Adaptational Job Change from model and actress to reporter got cries of They Changed It, Now It Sucks! for some fans. The Amazing Spider-Man (1978) and Spider-Man (Japan), both TV show adaptations from The '70s, have Spidey's Love Interest (though both are not MJ) working as a journalist.
  • Similarly, the idea of Miles Morales existing in the same universe as Peter Parker, and being a protege, has been called an interesting twist, but its something the comics did first, as of the All-New, All-Different Marvel relaunch.
  • To a lesser extent, this isn't the first time Spidey has been voiced by Yuri Lowenthal, but it is the most high-profile installment in which he has.
  • A number of fans have praised Spider-Man PS4 for showing an adult postgraduate Spider-Man after nearly every cartoon and live-action version featuring him in high school and college. Except this is more or less default for the games, since Activision's first 3D Spider-Man games Spider-Man (2000) and Enter Electro both featured an adult Experienced Protagonist Spider-Man, and two of the three Raimi movie-tie in games didn't really deal with Peter's student life at all. Only the Ultimate Spider-Man game features Peter as a high school student. To be fair, it is the first game to actually deal with his adult life as Peter Parker, rather than just have it there as a reminder that he has an alter ego or a barely there side story.
  • The DLC The Heist has a plot of Felicia Hardy potentially being Peter's baby mama which turns out to be a con she's pulling. As it happens, such a plot was once very nearly considered for Spider-Man in the main titles. The writer Bill Mantlo who covered the Peter-Felicia romance in The Spectacular Spider-Man (and famously wrote the issue where Peter reveals his identity to Black Cat only for her to reject his Peter Parker identity upon reveal) once considered and pitched a plotline of Felicia giving birth to Peter's illegitimate child out of wedlock. He made a serious pitch but was given the Executive Veto by EIC Jim Shooter who cited the can of worms and political controversy that would unleash were it to happen for real.
  • Fans of the comics were rather shocked that the story saw that death of Miles Morales' dad instead of his mom. Notably since his mother dying in the Ultimate Comics was a major turning point for the character. Ultimate Spider-Man (2012) actually had Rio Morales as Miles' sole living parent prior.
• One-Scene Wonder:
  • Venom's brief cameo as Harry's life support.
  • Stan Lee makes a cameo as a short order cook.
• Player Punch:
  • The deaths of Miles' father Jefferson and especially Aunt May hit the player like a sack of hammers.
  • Likewise, seeing Yuri Watanabe slowly undergoing a Sanity Slippage and deteriorating her friendship with Spider-Man throughout the Turf Wars DLC, which culminates in her crossing a Moral Event Horizon and shooting Hammerhead dead in front of her fellow officers, will punch you so hard it'll feel like it came from Hammerhead himself, especially if Yuri is your favorite character in the game.
  • An unintentional Meta-example for new players comes with Stan Lee's cameo as the short order cook, as it was one of his final cameos before his death a few short months later.
• Polished Port: The PS5 remaster is this, with improvements to textures, ray-traced reflections, a 60fps mode, redone hair and skin textures, letting them look more realistic, character models were touched up to be less uncanny valley (fixing problems with the original game's models at points), the lighting in general is way more realistic, and small glitches were patched for the rerelease on top of including all of the previously-released DLCs and updates, as well as 3 extra suits being added to the game.
  • Despite some initial bugs, most of which have been patched, the remaster is very good and now they've since added a dynamic resolution 60 FPS ray tracing mode, so it can really be the definitive version of the game.
  • The PC version is also an excellent port, with basically all of the features one should expect from a proper PC release. The raytracing is even better than the Playstation 5 version, and with the graphics options the graphics menu actively shows the changes that occur when you're adjusting the settings. As well, there are only a small number of minor bugs at best.
• Realism-Induced Horror: The game has its fair share of darker moments, but the City Hall bombing sequence is often cited as the most horrific, as the entire sequence was noted to be heavily reminiscent of the 9/11 World Trade Center attack. As if to hammer the parallels further, the Demons (the gang responsible for the bombing) act more and more like a terrorist organization from that point on, and are outright treated and labelled as such in-universe.
• Retroactive Recognition: John Bentley provided voice work for several Hammerhead thugs in the final DLC using the same voice he'd use for Barret in the English dub of Final Fantasy VII Remake.
• The Scrappy: While her appearance in one of the main game's side missions was considered amusing, Screwball entered this territory in the game's DLC chapters. Along with her obnoxious in-your-face attitude and rude, condescending remarks during her challenges, she attracts a lot of ire due to her side missions basically being tougher reskinned Taskmaster challenges that are made even more annoying due to her constant commentary. Her increasing prominence in the DLC at the expense of other villains like the aforementioned Taskmaster has led to a lot of players feeling that she has long since worn out her welcome. Though it's also not hard to imagine finally defeating her in Silver Lining as being the Take That, Scrappy! moment that it was all leading up to. The lines that she has and her voice actress' voice acting doesn't help, as she was clearly directed to make the character sound as annoying as possible. The lines she has accentuate that as well, as she's written as though the script writer really hates internet culture amongst young people and wants people to agree with them.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Before Fast Traveling is unlocked, it can get rather annoying to stop what you're doing to go stop a crime. Even with Fast Travel unlocked, crime skyrockets late in the game, making going anywhere very difficult without having this happen.
  • The towers that block the map screen add some Padding to an otherwise well done overworld.
  • While Taskmaster's challenges are difficult, they are still fair and your performance is what determines your score. Screwball's, not so much. Since her combat challenges have high point requirements, you have to "photobomb" and defeat enemies at certain sections of the area that appear at certain times in certain locations, which appear to be randomized. In practice, this means that in combat challenges not only will you often be nowhere near the area you need to be at, the much slower enemies don't enter these areas without you and if firearms are involved, will likely never enter the spot to begin with. The end result is a challenge where even the most skilled players can fail just because of bad luck with enemy placements. Her other challenges are much easier however, since the photobomb spots are not random and you can learn the pattern.
  • The game has 4 distinct weather/day combinations that are used in the story; Midday, Sunset, Midnight and Rain. Unfortunately the rain option is not part of the options you unlock upon beating the game, and thus cannot be used in free-roam outside a few story segments. Many players find this disappointing, as it's just as visually stunning as the other settings. Not helped by the fact that Insomniac has claimed the game was to have a weather selector at launch and later implied it was coming with a patch, yet 9 months later it has yet to materialize.
  • If you try to focus on using only stealth tactics to take down an enemy base, at some point the game will arbitrarily decide to make you get caught at no fault of your own to force directly combating the rest of the enemy forces. This practically defeats the purpose of having a stealth option in the first place, which is especially odd since enemy bases feel like they were designed to encourage it.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike: Not an actual sequel, but City That Never Sleeps DLC pack is noticeably harder than most of the main game. The enemies are in larger mobs and love to swarm you all at once, new enemies are tougher, faster, and hit harder, the sidequests are more challenging to complete. Even with fully-upgraded gadgets and all skills purchased, you're still going to face a rather tough time beating City That Never Sleeps.
• Ship-to-Ship Combat: While Peter and MJ are easily the most popular pairing in the game, both because of their shared history in the franchise and because of their characterizations in the game itself, there is still a significant amount of people who would prefer if Peter were to hook up with Silver Sable, Black Cat or Yuri.
• Signature Scene:
  • The Final Boss fight against Doctor Octopus is by far the most memorable part of the game, due to being an emotionally heavy and visually gorgeous climax.
  • The scene where Peter's evicted from his apartment is also seen as the embodiment of the game capturing Spider-Man's hard luck double life and doing justice to both.
  • The cutscene where Peter and MJ text to each other while Spider-Man is swinging, is seen as the perfect moment of the developers capturing and updating Spider-Man's romantic woes to a contemporary setting while also being hilarious at the same time.
• Special Effect Failure:
  • Stop and examine any window in the game; chances are that the room inside (if it's visible) will be a copy-and-paste of the room right next to it, and in corner rooms the room will change completely depending on which window you look through (and smaller windows also tend to be the exact same room only stretched/resized, often in a manner that doesn't make sense). When it's not, it's because the windows are instead reflecting the city skyline... just not the skyline that's actually facing them, with some displaying a full skyline even though they should be obscured by a landing pad or rooftop right next to them.
    • The game has other problems with reflections, but one of the worst examples of this is a sequence where you go into a hall of mirrors during the Halloween mission. Despite the fact that the game has dozens of mirrors surrounding you, none of them reflect anything at all, making it questionable as to why this sequence was even developed in the first place.
    • This problem is, thankfully, fixed if you choose either of the ray-tracing modes in the remaster, as it lets reflective surfaces properly show reflections rather than having the screen space reflections it originally had.
  • An intentional example: Examining the boat NPCs shows that they're low-poly models that look like they came from a game in the early 2000's. This is actually a nod to Spider-Man 2's boat missions.
  • To save on processing power, far-off pedestrians default to a motionless A-Pose. Normally you can never see this, but they didn't tell the people who programmed the Black Cat side mission, since the telephoto lens is strong enough to let you see crowds of pedestrians standing stock-still with their arms hovering at their sides. It's most evident when you're at the Battery Park stakeout spot.
  • As good as the swinging looks, the swinging mechanic starts moving Spidey forwards almost as soon as you hit R2 while airborne - it's especially noticeable if you're standing still before starting the swing, as Spidey visibly floats for a few milliseconds before the web connects to a building. Likewise, the game doesn't allow Spidey to go below a certain height during a swing, which means trying to swing between cars is impossible and sometimes slightly lifts Spidey to keep him above the limit. While neither really affects the swinging mechanic, this becomes noticeable after a while.
    • Speaking of swinging, having Spidey perch on a ledge during phone calls makes it obvious that you're meant to be flying through the city when on the phone as you can hear Peter grunting and straining his voice to speak, even if he's perfectly still on a rooftop.
  • Peter's new face facial expressions can fall flat in several scenes, especially in comparison to the old face. It's rather reminiscent of bad acting and it makes it obvious that they just changed his face and the graphics and not much else.
  • The mission where you play as MJ in Grand Central Station as she helps direct Spidey in what Demons to take out is pretty cool, until you look up and see Spider-Man disappear into thin air when he is done webbing someone up to the ceiling.
• Spiritual Successor:
  • There is a rather remarkable amount of cues that this game's story and status quo takes from The Amazing Spider-Man Series, particularly The Amazing Spider-Man 2. Spider-Man's popularity among New Yorkers is a major factor, Peter and Mary Jane's chemistry is similar to Peter and Gwen's, Oscorp is somewhat of a Greater-Scope Villain behind most of the problems that plague Spider-Man, Peter's mentor turns evil and becomes the Big Bad that he has to fight atop Oscorp tower, and finally a major point of motivation and plot concerns Harry Osborn's genetic illness that is slowly killing him. Overall, the game seems to be somewhat of a remake of those movies.
    • After the first movie's suit got added to the game in the remaster, it only brings it into more focus. Especially since Sony was trying to use the second movie to set up potential sequels with the Sinister Six, who appear in the game as villains.
  • As mentioned above, players seem to really enjoy putting on the Raimi suit and pretend that the whole game is Spider-Man 4.
• Strawman Has a Point: Jameson may be an egotistical sleaze bag yet he does raise some valid criticism about Spider-Man's effect on the city. Most notably, Jameson points out that the NYPD surveillance towers, which Spider-Man helped repair, would intrude on civil liberties and violate the privacy of New Yorkers.
• Tainted by the Preview: Although excited fans had some concerns with the pre-release material, these complaints died down quickly after the game (and the DLC) came out.
  • For some, the mere announcement of Dan Slott having some involvement in writing the game's story had this effect. It turned out in the end that his involvement amounted to being involved in the early stages as a creative consultant and thus certain fans were relieved he wasn't the lead writer.
  • While the initial gameplay footage was well-received, the amount of QTEs and the web-swinging animations were considered to be its weakest point. Later changes to the latter implies that at least the animations were/are still WIP. In the final game, the QTEs can be turned off and the swinging mechanics and animations have received several improvements.
  • The reveal that the game will receive paid-DLC barely a month after release has turned many people extremely sour on the product. Insomniac Games came out to state that the DLC was not content cut from the base game so it could be sold later as many were fearing but original content created by a subsidiary team that wouldn't be finished by the time of the game's launch, but many are still angry that DLC was not just planned, but being worked on before the game was even released. Even this complaint was largely abandoned when people found out the DLC chapters were a 3-part standalone story that clearly takes place after the main game.
• That One Achievement: Some of the bonus objectives set by the random crime encounters are quite difficult:
  • The no-damage objective is overall not too difficult once you've mastered the dodge mechanic, but the one case that will make you rip your hair out is the stolen car crime. The game is terrible at telegraphing the criminals' gunshots and the dodge-timing in this sole instance, so you can easily fail the challenge as soon as it's started. Even if you dodge all the shots and get on top of the car, if you're not mindful about which side the criminal will poke out of the car, then you can still fail the objective. And after all that, you have to successfully stop the car without injuring yourself in a button-mashing event. And still afterwards, there may sometimes be nearby criminals to beat up.
  • The 'kick enemies into the air' or 'perform air attacks' aren't so bad at the beginning of the game, but if you wait until near the end, those whip-wielding convicts and Sable jetpack soldiers will make your life a living hell trying to achieve those objectives. The former can pull you out of the air without warning and are hard to kill, and the latter can actually interrupt your mid-air combos and push you back, leaving you vulnerable to other enemies.
• That One Boss:
  • Round 2 vs Mr. Negative is a pain. As mentioned above, Phase 1 of the fight is Mr. Negative as a souped-up version of the Demon Swordsmen with even stricter timing to hit him and a few more attacks. Phase 2 features said boss creating a HUGE demon that uses claw swipes and a giant sword, while he himself becomes far more aggressive and begins spawning enemies to swarm you, including the aforementioned Demon Swordsmen.
  • The fight against Hammerhead in the Project Olympus armor during the Turf Wars DLC, for the simple reason that his attack pattern was seemingly designed for the express purpose of cheesing the hell out of the game's complete lack of any Mercy Invincibility. Basically, he'll launch three to four attacks at you in quick succession, each one capable of knocking away about a third of your health. Fail to dodge even one of them, and he'll lay the hurt big-time. Oh, and it's set in a building site and the camera is zoomed-in on Spidey, meaning that even if you successfully dodge but a wall or obstacle gets in your way, the dodge doesn't count.
  • SCREWBALL in the Silver Lining DLC. After a series of progressively more difficult (and borderline That One Level) challenges, you finally engage the live-streaming villain one on one... in an extended Chasing Your Tail boss sequence that doubles as a Final-Exam Boss as she utilizes every tactic you learned in her challenges to follow her whims. She uses multiple Photobombs during her chase sequence that you must complete or you lose the mission and start over. On top of that, she's still running away while you're stuck landing the Photobomb sequences and if she gets too far away, you lose. Screwball also brings drones into the mix that detonate EMP spheres along the chase path, which often slow you down enough to miss a Photobomb or let her escape. Needless to say, there's a major Catharsis Factor in finally taking her down.
• That One Level:
  • The stealth levels as MJ and Miles can be somewhat tougher than the Spidey levels for those not used to stealth games, but one that can actually be difficult is Miles' last mission, the one where you have to avoid an angry Rhino, who knows that you're somewhere due to dropping a loud steel toolbox. This is mostly because said character moves around a lot more than the average mook, is a lot easier to alert, and you only have just enough time to move to the next safe area. Worse yet, if you fail your opportunity, this character will eventually just find you due to being smart enough to move around in an enclosed area.
  • Just traversing the overworld becomes this in the aftermath of the prison break and Devil's Breath outbreak. The streets and rooftops become overwhelmed with huge numbers of escaped convicts and Sable troops, some of them armed with rocket launchers and sniper rifles that they will use to take pot shots at you as swing through the city.
  • The mission in The Heist DLC where you chase Black Cat through a subway tunnel is a pain because, while the game wants you to Web-Zip through the tunnel, this is actually a not-very-effective way of traveling through the tunnel and it's easy to lose Black Cat. Add on the random columns of electricity and debris falling from the tunnel, and the only positive of this section is how mercifully short it is.
• That One Sidequest:
  • Getting the highest rating in Taskmaster's challenges, especially the races. Stealth challenges are easy as you can just abuse the hell out of gadgets, and combat challenges may take a few tries but are rather easy overall. However, the drone races require extreme precision as missing even one ring usually means a fatal loss of points, and the bomb challenges require you to get a good time bonus, which are tight enough that even the smallest misstep means you lose the best rating.
  • Screwball's challenges as well in The Heist DLC. The hardest of them all is the Gadgets challenge, where Screwball hacks your web shooters and leaves you with only Trip Mines and Suspension Matrixes, and you need to use both of them together to get the most points and earn the best rating. Worst of all, the Gadget challenge has "Photobomb" locations that will pop up from time to time in which you can earn extra points through a mini-game by defeating enemies inside them. Problem is one of the locations is on the suspended billboard with a very small area, which requires you to precisely time your suspension attacks only when the enemies are exactly below the billboard, then shoot the trip wires onto the billboard while the enemies are suspended in the air so they can be pulled toward it and count as extra points. Screwball's annoying "commentary" that pops up constantly, even mocking you if you don't do your very best, isn't helping things easier at all.
  • And Screwball's challenges in the Turf Wars DLC get even harder with the introduction of stealth missions. Like with Taskmaster's, you have to clear out a group of enemies quickly and quietly without being seen lest you fail the mission. Unlike Taskmaster, however, Screwball's stealth challenges introduce a new hazard in the form of motion sensors, sweeping spotlights that will make you fail the challenge if they catch you. While you can stop them by webbing them up, it doesn't take long for them to get up and running again meaning that you constantly have to keep webbing them and manage your time wisely so they don't blow your cover in the middle of a stealth takedown. Having to balance time management, making sure you kill enemies at the right opportunity, nailing every photobomb opportunity, and disable those lights on top of all of that can be more than a little overwhelming.
  • In general, the Hammerhead hideouts introduced in the Turf Wars DLC are a real pain thanks to the fact they are infested with almost every Demonic Spider in the game: rocket launcher-wielding goons, brutes with mini-guns, whip goons, and shielded jetpack goons... later waves become an absolute clusterfuck thanks to all these enemies fighting you together, and their ridiculous damage output and durability make for one hell of an uphill battle even with gadget spam on your side. And if you die at any point during the hideout level, even if it's the last wave of enemies, you have to do it all over again from the beginning. Good luck trying to complete those extra objectives.
  • Chase missions are already kind of a pain, but one sidequest involves trying to catch pigeons — twelve of them, all over the city. They're pretty fast and capable of suddenly changing altitude - including sometimes flying above the buildings Spider-Man needs to web-sling.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • Many fans' reaction to the costume's new white spider symbol, though Word of God claims the white areas are carbon-fiber armor and striking surfaces. Also not really a big issue in the larger scheme of things since there are multiple costumes and players can switch back to the classic suit with no repercussion. Others weren't fans of some of the changes to the characters, such as rehashing Peter's mentor dynamic with Dr. Octopus from the second Raimi movie mostly because it's less fitting for an older Peter Parker than the still young character of Spider-Man 2, or nerfing Norman Osborn by giving him sympathetic turns when fans insist that he's more entertaining and dangerous when he's the "bad man turned worse" of the comics.
  • The decision to update Peter Parker's character model's face in the PS5 remaster with a new face model not based on previous reference John Bubniak proved to be a contentious decision. Although some accused Insomniac of forcing the redesign to more closely resemble Tom Holland to tie in with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Ben Jordan, the person they cast to be the new Peter, was said to be changed to get a closer physical match to voice actor Yuri Lowenthal's appearance to better mesh with his facial capture. Although Jordan does look a bit like Holland, there are a number of differences between them. Even still, the fact that the new face is so radically different from the original is definitely a shock to those who got used to it.
• They Copied It, So It Sucks!: Several reviews have noted that while the game is excellent, as an open world game it really sticks to the formula. For a few examples, the in-game map is covered in fog that's removed by interacting with towers a la Ubisoft. There's a bunch of collectibles and a skill tree like most recent open-world game. All three of these things have been in use for almost a decade before the game came out, and are seen as overused by professional critics.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: While all four of them get time to shine, Electro, Rhino, Vulture, and Scorpion don't get nearly as much characterization as Mr. Negative or Doc Ock. Vulture in particular is sidelined in favor of the rest of the story villains. While each other villain is encountered at least once in gameplay before their boss battle, Vulture has to share his one and only appearance with Electro.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • The prison breakout shown in the RAFT gameplay trailer happens at the last third of the game- rather than say, have the Sinister Six all break out early and the plot being that Spidey must spend the whole game tracking them down and defeating them one by one, instead the game mostly focuses on the fight against the Demons and how the escalation of the conflict drives New York into becoming a Crapsack World. While it's nice to give Mr. Negative and his goons some focus (considering his relative newness as a villain), it's still a missed opportunity.
  • With one of Mr. Negative's power being corrupting people, you would expect at least one of the three playable characters to be brainwashed by him at some point. It would have been nice for the heroes to successfully bring someone back from villainy in the game, given how neither Negative nor Otto pull a Heel–Face Turn despite Spidey's best effort.
  • A minor one, but during the mission where Mary Jane sneaks into Osborn's secret lab inside his penthouse, she accidentally releases a group of mutated spiders, one of which would hitch a ride with her back to the F.E.A.S.T. compound and goes on to bite Miles Morales, giving him his powers. While this goes in line with the comics, where Miles would eventually become the new Spider-Man, it would make things even more interesting for the sequel if Mary Jane herself is bitten as well in addition to Miles, so there could be a possibility of her becoming a new Spider-Woman, especially since this incarnation of Mary Jane is a very proactive Action Girl who's always eager to get in the middle of the action.
  • At the beginning of the game it's revealed that some of the police are on Fisk's payroll... and then it's dropped entirely after that first mission. One could argue that the evidence used to lock away Fisk could've also revealed what cops were under his thumb but regardless having Spidey have to deal with corrupt cops throughout the game could've been interesting,
  • From The Heist, Spider-Man having a son with Black Cat could have been interesting, however at the end of the DLC, Cat reveals that she lied about having a son to manipulate him.
  • For a DLC titled Turf Wars, the turf war itself is mostly just in the background, with none of the Maggia crime bosses have any meaningful role in the plot, and the main, most dangerous threat is still Hammerhead and his faction. With some exceptions of Enemy Civil War here and there, the story itself is mainly about Yuri Watanabe's Start of Darkness.
  • Even though Turf Wars, as stated above, is all about Yuri Watanabe's crusade against Hammerhead and the Maggia, and her subsequent Start of Darkness, she plays no part in the main plot of the final DLC, Silver Lining. You'd think that a character who's been built up as Jumping Off the Slippery Slope in her vendetta against the Maggia would at least play some part in Hammerhead's ultimate defeat, but instead he's taken out by Spider-Man and Silver Sable. The only closure you get on Yuri is in one side mission where she confirms she's become a murderous vigilante, all but confirming she's become Wraith offscreen.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley:
  • The main characters, especially Peter and MJ, can look awkward to some. Their faces are extremely detailed but at the same time there is something cartoony about them, with some subtle facial movements that go for realism, but aren't fully convincing. Plus, the hair in this game is extremely rigid and static, which doesn't look too bad on short haired characters, but kinda does on long haired characters. Particularly MJ and Yuri, who have prominent fringes falling down their faces, creating a weird effect. Thus, there is some awkwardness here and there that, while doesn't detract from the experience, it's hard to at least not notice it. Also, characters in photographs often look very realistic which clashes with the rest of the game a little.
  • Particularly, John Bubniak's face didn't transition too well to the game. He mainly comes off looking older and the developers themselves even said his face didn't blend well with Yuri Lowenthal's facial capture, so it also didn't animate that well either. Some compared the results to the puppetry in Thunderbirds.
  • In the remaster, Peter has a new facial model provided by Ben Jordan, which looks a lot like Tom Holland and looks far younger than Jordan does in real life, which makes it look just off enough that it ends up looking odd.
• Unexpected Character:
  • Mr. Negative, a fairly minor and somewhat newer villain in the Spider-Man comics, appears in this game as a major antagonist.
  • Captain Yuri Watanabe, a lesser known Spider-Man ally, also makes an appearance. She's also known as the vigilante Wraith.
  • Miles Morales appearance at the end of the 2017 E3 trailer was a shock to many.
  • Screwball, a minor Spider-Man villain, makes a cameo in a side mission to everyone's surprise. She later becomes a minor villain in the game's DLC.
  • Taskmaster is typically an Avengers foe rather than a Spider-Man villain (though they have fought before, Tasky is hardly a "rogue" to Spidey), so his appearance here where the Avengers aren't present is quite surprising.
  • Some people did not expect Stan Lee to make a cameo in this game in a similar vein to many Marvel films.
  • While an original suit was expected and Kaine Parker's Scarlet Spider suit was heavily requested, the announcement of Spider-Man UK as the third DLC suit in The Heist took many people off guard.
  • Due to fans requesting heavily for it since the game's announcement, no less, and Insomniac saying nothing about it for over two years, many people were pleasantly surprised that the Raimi suit eventually did show up.
  • The suit◊ from The Amazing Spider-Man was included as new content for the PS5 remaster after a lot of fans of those movies requested it too. However, many people expected The Amazing Spider-Man 2 suit to be added instead, as it was considered a better, more faithful rendition of the outfit.
• Visual Effects of Awesome:
  • Even before release, the E3 2016 trailer showed off awe-inspiring shots of Spider-Man web-swinging through the city, which were taken from actual gameplay, not pre-rendered cutscenes. And the final game itself, as evidenced by Photo Mode, features the same quality. One particular screenshot showed just how much detail there is on the Scarlet Spider suit mask alone!
  • Even the rooms through windows on buildings are detailed and visible through them. Everything about the game is just beautiful.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: Spider-Man (PS4) is not a game for little children, and even a few older children may be shocked at some of the stuff in the game. While the game is still very colorful and has a T-rating and isn't anywhere close to the Batman: Arkham Series (which had a borderline nihilistic attitude to superheroics), it is much darker and has more realistic violence compared to all the previous Spider-Man games, and the most recent movies and cartoons. There's a city hall meeting ambushed by suicide bombers with a fairly grim portrayal of the aftermath complete with terrorists summarily executing helpless citizens as a small child searches for his father's body. There's an endgame plot centered around releasing a poisonous bioweapon, swearing, illegal drug deals, and an onscreen suicide by gunshot with no Gory Discretion Shot. Yes, a Spider-Man game with an uncensored suicide. Needless to say, there's quite a few dark moments in this one. The DLC likewise is a kind of adult romantic comedy with a lot of teasing jokes about Peter's love-life and specifically his sex-life, which is still mild but certainly meant for the age-group old enough to have relationships.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: The game possesses themes of Terrorism enacted in New York, poverty, safety over liberty, the rich and powerful bullying the lower classes with violence and legal loopholes, all lampshaded by a loud, Alex Jones-ish JJJ. What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?
  • On Spidey's Social Media feed, Fisk's lawyer will use the term "Fake News" (in all caps no less) to try and discredit the patently obvious. In this case that the guys attacking cops from Fisk's tower while wearing Fisk-branded Uniforms are, in fact, working for Wilson Fisk.
  • David Obademi, a minor character in the Silver Lining DLC seems to be Insomniac's take on the then-current USA's immigration debate. He's a member of a minority group whose motives and loyalties are not immediately clear, and as it turns out he's in the country illegally. However, he is a perfectly good fellow who acts shady because he knows he would get in trouble if anyone found out about his status. In the end he is an altruistic fellow in a bad situation, and Spidey manages to find him a job in the US.
• Win Back the Crowd: The game's success with critics and gamers alike easily made it an example of this in regards to major console games based on Marvel Comics properties, considering that the last such game — The Amazing Spider-Man 2 — had met with lukewarm reception at best.
  • To a lesser extent, it was also one for the game's creator, Insomniac Games, who had been going through a rough patch since their split from second-party work with Sony several years prior (while never outright bad, the games tended to be of decidedly more mixed reception than previous efforts, and were often financial failures). For many longtime fans, Spider-Man was a return to form.
• The Woobie: Peter has to deal with Martin Li and Dr. Otto Octavius as major antagonists, having one of his best friends Yuri Watanabe lose faith in him and go off the deep end, as well as the death of Aunt May. When you think about it, he looses pretty much every relationship he had at the start of the game, save for his romance with MJ, as well as his budding mentorship of Miles. All in all, it's hard not to feel bad for him.

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