I think the issue with discourse around games like Spidey is that yes, generally the game is very impressive but there are some elements that when subpar stick out like a sore thumb relative to all those other high quality elements. Folks will come to defend it because it's mostly good and use that as an argument to try and nullify those more specific criticisms; as if there's any logic to that approach.
It's like having a nice big roast dinner and saying I loved everything on the plate except the carrots and then someone comes along to say, "well the rest of the dinner was great, therefore the carrots are great and your criticism of them is irrelevant". Which makes no sense of course.
There's also the generation argument. Most people criticising elements of the game are doing so from the perspective of this being exclusive to new hardware versus previous games being last/cross-gen, therefore expectations will be higher, and rightfully so. While most people praising it are coming from the perspective that it's very good looking in general and at least somewhat of an improvement over previous games; therefore any criticisms are mute.
I can concede that the game looks very good in general, that it is impressive overall. I can concede that it looks better than previous games in almost all parts. I can concede there are functional parts of the game that wouldn't be possible on previous generations. I can concede that this presentation is much better than the first one and has won me back over enough to likely pick it up.
What I can't concede is that there aren't some glaring flaws in the visuals that undermine the better elements. Elements that are surprising given the full move to the current gen only and the technical prowess of the team/s working on it and the budgets involved; and that being a current gen only title it's not quite blowing me away to the degree I'd hoped.
Whereas -- for the most part -- those staunchly praising it tend not to concede anything, the game looks good therefore it must not be criticised and that is that.
There are some really poor textures and some rudimentary geometry edges that can really rob the image. There is sometimes a lack of cohesion between assets that just looks,
"off"... Some of the buildings especially,
can look quite awful. I think they're just re-using higher LOD or touched up versions of many of the environmental assets from the first game/s; and have focused their time and effort on hero assets; and on the surrounding systems such as lighting etc. I hope that Spidey 3 onwards sees some new higher quality assets for these parts of the game/s.
Just take this shot from the new showcase for eg. plenty of nice stuff going on the shot itself and some good stuff proceeding it. Then you get that awfully flat, dull texture. Spidey isn't making any contact with the surface. And, once again the edge of the building is tack sharp and straight with no roughness, no embellishments. Just a plain straight line. These small things massively undermine the impact and believability of the overall image.
You see a similar thing with curbs and where buildings meet, perfect straight lines intersecting with no shading or shadowing. It makes things look rudimentary and robs the image of depth.
Hard edges rarely look good.
