Pretty much every free moment this weekend, I was glued to my television, butt firmly planted in my couch as I swung my way through New York City, playing what might be my video game of the year - Spider-Man, just released this past Friday for the PlayStation 4.

In turn, I wanted to share some pretty much universally glowing thoughts on the game.

• Spider-Man is much in the vein of the Batman: Arkham series, both in terms of its brilliant action gameplay, and how it takes decades of comic book and feature-film storytelling and smashes it all together into a streamlined continuity, with some changes of its own. It kinda reminds me of the sadly short lived Kids WB! series The Spectacular Spider-Man in how clever it reinvents and changes certain characters (Mary Jane as an investigative reporter is a plus, as is J. Jonah Jameson as a crazed podcaster), and makes the canon comprehendible for mainstream audiences.
• I’m running just a basic PS4, and yes, I do have a 4K TV with HDR enabled, but while I don’t have the cutting edge silicon of a PlayStation 4 Pro, I can say that Spider-Man runs beautifully and is absolutely gorgeous.
• Webswinging through NYC is an absolute joy. It’s a shame that the fast-travel cut scenes are so amusing, as I really don’t mind swinging from point a to point b.
• Some have, appropriately, deemed Spider-Man as being a UbiSoft-style collectathon, and it’s true, there are a lot of things to collect - but the game does such a great job of focusing them into the quirks of the character (he has backpacks webbed up everywhere! He loves taking photos!) that you are compelled to knock them out as you make your way from story mission to story mission. In other, similar games, I normally find these unnecessary distractions, a way to pad out the run time. Here, it just feels right to the character.
• In that same regard, it’s very clear that Insomniac Games gets the character. From making you make decisions between moving to the next mission or stopping a crime in progress, you live the line between power and responsibility. Add an early level where you have to chase down your belongings in a garbage truck because Parker Luck lead to you being evicted, and you are getting the full, 360-degree Spider-Man and Peter Parker experience. Heck, they even made it so that if you try to do friendly fire versus citizens of New York, the standard "attack" button becomes a finger gun button - putting the friendly in Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man.
• Speaking of Parker, there are actually some really fun, really clever puzzles you get to do as Peter to represent his science work.
• And oh gosh, the unlockables! Much like Batman: Arkham, you get alternate costumes (with their own unique powers and stats), but you can swap them in and out at any time, and even use the powers of one suit with another.

I could gush on and on and on about this game, but in short, it’s some of the most fun I’ve ever had in a video game, and as a lifelong Spidey devotee, it’s exactly what I wanted an adaptation of the character to be.

I’ll be 100% this. I’ll be picking up the DLC. And I can’t wait for Spider-Man 2, whenever they can make one happen.