daydreaming until my brain hurts

• You can play in the damn goblin suit. It’s not voiced by Willem when you’re the goblin, but it looks cool as hell.

• Willem Dafoe voices the goblin for the entirety of the game. Who wouldn’t want this?

•The Goblin blows up the balcony in the game, where you see Harry and MJ as well as the board members standing. You never see Harry for the rest of the game, so if you never watched the movies you could totally assume he just killed his own son with no remorse.

•The goblin sets MJ on top of a huge panda float and she dies if you don’t get to her in a timed period.

•At the end of the game, Norman unmasks himself in front of everyone on the bridge, then impales himself with the glider. He says “tell Harry I’m sorry” instead of “don’t tell Harry”. In the game version, Harry knows apparently at the end that his father was the Green Goblin. And just does not care. Still defends him endlessly. Harry wears the goblin suit when you play as the goblin. He is not voiced by James Franco.

•The best part? The goblin is terrifying. He looks like a tiny green elf and Spider-Man even makes several Christmas jokes about him while they’re fighting. In combat, though, as soon as he’s off the glider he’s deadly as hell. He gets Spider-Man into a chokehold and you’re done. I spent quite a few hours replaying those levels just to feel immense fear as this tiny Green Goblin makes it his life mission to kill me. 10/10, I loved every moment.

•They actually give you an open world, where you can help and interact with civilians asking for your help. Spider-Man starts the convo with a phrase. My favorite one? “Give it to me straight… do I look fat in these tights?” This wouldn’t be as funny as it is on it’s own, but when it’s proceeded by “Spider-Man! Thank god you’re here! A man is about to fall off that building!” Or another task “Spider-Man! That man needs to go to the hospital immediately! Can you take him?” It’s perfect. All of it.

•There’s a random event where a kid cries because they’ve lost their balloon. Spider-Man’s response? Well, you could just swing over and grab the balloon, and deliver it to the kid, where you are met with a happy mother/father and happy child… but you can also shoot a web at the balloon, which immediately destroys it, met with immediate crying. The game doesn’t exactly force you to give it back either, so you can just take it and swing around with it for as long as you like, until it breaks (also met with crying) or, as I liked to do, just ignore it. So when you’re trying to help a civilian who is getting robbed, there will be a kid in the background sobbing because you didn’t get their balloon back.

•There’s another random event where you can hop onto a “raging” driver’s car, just to smash and destroy it. The funny part is that these people say mostly completely normal things. They complain about other drivers and traffic, and somehow that warrants Spider-Man to smash their car. I’d add some quotes but I can’t find any examples online. Usually something like “learn how to drive!” In a really angry voice. But that’s literally it, and you total their car over just a slight bit of anger. “You destroyed my car!” “Sorry, my sympathy meter is running low.” Or “Don’t drive angry!” As if that justifies it.

•Doc Ock is just pissed because he thinks you’ve killed his wife. And while you’re trying to shut down the reactors, you’ll be flung across the damn building every time you’re hit by a blast. Octavius is flat on the floor unconscious, unaffected by these blasts entirely. He will proceed to blame you for Rosie’s death the entire game and threaten to kill MJ. That’s his only motivation. He will chase you down and curse you for killing his wife even though Spider-Man was never near her in the first place.

•Harry returns! So he’s not dead after all! He’s pretty much exactly the same as he was in the second movie but slightly less bitter towards Peter, maybe. Again with the “don’t hurt Peter!” quote when Doc Ock goes to him for more tritium. The game doesn’t really expand on his character and kinda ignores his existence the whole time, but it’s fine. The best part with him in the game is when the demonstration with Octavius starts. Otto is explaining the fusion reaction, Harry is crossing his arms like the proud idiot he is, when Otto brings up the tritium. As soon as the tritium is mentioned, Harry announces very happily, “provided EXCLUSIVELY by Oscorp” to which Otto very unhappily responds, “Yes, of course. As I was SAYING,” it’s basically the relationship between Harry and Otto that I can’t get enough of. I love how much Otto can’t stand him.

•The fights with Mysterio are actually referenced quite a few times in Spider-Man: Far From Home, but I won’t elaborate on that here. He’s not a villain I’m particularly fond of, but one level I particularly enjoyed was Mysterio’s Fun House, where Spider-Man is led into a room full of wacky mirrors. His reflection in the mirrors causes oddly shaped versions of himself to chase him and proceed to try and kill him. This in itself is pretty fun, but the best part is when he’s punching and kicking them and he says “stop hitting yourself! Stop hitting yourself!” Clearly unbothered by Mysterio’s illusions every time they have a battle.

•Peter “breaks up” with Black Cat even though they were never officially dating anyway. He’s just totally entranced by this thief for the entire game. He decides to break things off and asks her if they can still be friends before he rushes to go see MJ and tells her to be with him. She refuses, and he immediately goes “what was I thinking?” And never makes up his mind on what he wants to do about his relationship with her.

•Doc Ock dies at the end, so you think, “damn, the game is over”. It’s not. They give you two more chapters that have nothing to do with the rest of the game. It’s never done.

•You don’t see Sandman until the game is about to end. It’s pretty disappointing, but it is what it is. When Sandman does come around it’s right after he swears not to use the black suit again, but he uses the black suit to fight Sandman anyway.

•He’s damn well aware that the black suit is bad news. He just doesn’t care. He’s constantly rude to MJ when he has it on. He switches between them interchangeably during battles (don’t ask me how) and the game will freeze time just to let you take the black suit off.

•We all know how the nonsense with Eddie goes. Eddie turns in fake photos to the Bugle to get the job. The game version takes an even WORSE idea of this. Instead of faking photos… Eddie gets the bright idea to get his own black Spider-Man suit and starts MUGGING people, and as soon as you punch him, he falls to the ground. His career is ruined after this. The conversation goes like this. Eddie: “You ruined my chance at becoming a success” Spider-Man: “A success at what? Mugging people while wearing tights?” Eddie: “You’re one to talk”

•Spider-Man actually saves J Jonah Jameson and he ends up thanking him. Only to proceed to try to take Spider-Man down later.

•Spider-Man fights Morbius… they fight almost to the point of Morbius dying. Dr Connors looks after Morbius as a “favor” to Spider-Man for saving his life. He takes Morbius to Shriek, who is his wife in the game, apparently. This was a great idea on Spider-Man’s behalf (sarcasm)! Shriek revives Morbius and they both attempt to kill him, so then he has to save them both at the end. He continues to save Shriek’s life anyway after they both try to kill him.

•In the final battle with Shriek. Four fake versions of the people in his life surround Spider-Man and insult him, Harry bringing up his father, MJ angry with him for putting her life in danger just by being with her, and Dr Connors saying various things to him as well. All various upsetting things. The last person? J Jonah Jameson. What does he do? Constantly yells “YOU’RE FIRED!”

•VENOM IS BUFF. HE’S SO MUCH THICKER THAN HE WAS IN THE MOVIE. He’s voiced by Topher Grace, but his Venom is WAY better in the game version. He forces Sandman to help by kidnapping his daughter, Sandman initially refuses to fight Spider-Man. Eddie doesn’t give him a choice.

•“You don’t have to go to the beach… THE BEACH IS COMING TO YOU!” -Sandman, in their first battle

•Mary Jane repeatedly screaming and complaining about Peter’s swinging after an argument caused by the black suit. “I figured you were talking enough for the both of us.” He continuously comments about how annoying he thinks she is.

•I maybe cried because I thought Dr Connors died. Kraven the hunter stabs him in the back after Spider-Man stops the Lizard from turning Kraven into a lizard. I was very distraught about that because I never thought Dr Connors could ever matter that much to me. He was in fact not dead, and turned himself into a much larger lizard who I then had to slam into large electrical generators. Good times.

•At the end battle, he has to fight Venom and Sandman. Twice each. Harry comes back before the first Venom fight starts, apologizes, and says he knows that Peter didn’t kill his father. And he says Peter has always been there for him (which isn’t so true, but whatever, Harry). After the second Sandman fight, the goal is to explode Sandman. Venom swings Harry off his glider into the enlarged Sandman, where he blows up and is never seen again. You’d think everyone would be devastated, right? No. Peter just yells “Harry!” in a nonchalant voice and Harry is never mentioned again. Not even at the ending, nothing is said about Harry. He gave up his life and doesn’t even get mentioned in Peter’s little end of game speech.

•Adding onto the Harry nonsense. In the PS3/Xbox 360 versions, there’s a more difficult fight with Harry. The PS2 version? Nope. You just hang off of Harry’s glider while he runs straight into traffic. Harry is flying right into traffic and your job is to stop him from crashing into cars, you have to knock him off his glider. Remember the previous game where he’s around somewhat and doesn’t appear until it’s nearing the end? Yeah. You have a New Goblin fight at the beginning and he just disappears after. He’s not even mentioned until the end where he’s in the hospital by himself. RIP Harry. You deserved better.