Every day is a new shit show, and it always feels like the world is on fire, with no end in sight. Wait, what happened on Twitter? Hey, did you read that infuriating article in The New York Times? No, no, not that one, the other one. What did he do today? Who got hurt, and is there anything I can do about it? Where should my time, money, and emotional energy be focused today? It's tiring, and can often feel hopeless. What can one person really do, and even if we had the power to make a difference, would we even know what to do with it?

There is a long list of bad superhero games, and fans have come to accept a never ending pool of mediocrity. It's a way for companies to extract money from fans wondering if maybe, just maybe, this time would be different. Cynicism was well-earned; often, such games were cashgrabs, given as much time and effort as a cheap toy on the shelf. It's why the release of Rocksteady's Batman: Arkham Asylum was so groundbreaking. Arkham Asylum was a good game, and a good Batman simulator. It was an experience that understood what makes Batman, Batman: he doesn't exist without the man in the mask, Bruce Wayne.

Spider-Man, the latest game from Ratchet & Clank developer Insomniac Games, understands this core tenet of its central character, and it's what makes the game sing. Spider-Man is touching, thrilling, and, at times, dark. (But not grimdark.) All the while, it never forgets Spider-Man's humanity, his capacity for empathy, and the stubborn ideological hangups constantly undermining his goals.

It's moments like this when we look for symbols and stories for direction—and, often, escape. This is a big reason Spider-Man, as an icon, has proven so endearing; Peter Parker represents the best possible version of us, an aspirational slice of humanity. Someone who, whatever the consequences, does the right thing for the greater good. A middle class nobody who became superhuman, and uses that power to help people. Parker is not perfect, and his desire to see the best in everybody is often his downfall, but he’s trying. And because he is overworked, underpaid, and struggling to make sense of his place in a world on fire, too, it’s easy to see ourselves in Spider-Man, or at least the version of ourselves we might wish to be.

Spider-Man eventually unlocks fast travel options, but it was only in the final hours, when the end was in sight and my writing deadline was nearing, that I ever used them. Even 20 hours in, it was more fun to trapeze across the map, snagging collectibles along the way. (There are a lot of collectibles. More on that later.) Barring something lovingly unexpected, I'll never know what it's like to actually be Spider-Man, but this game gets awfully close, and what more can you ask from a superhero game?

The former is, bar none, the most fun I've had exploring a game space since _Mirror's Edg_e. Insomniac's made it very easy to spot swingable points in the environment without overwhelming the screen with big, ugly icons, and as your skills improve, swinging becomes instinctual, and the cues melt away. It's overwhelming at first, but within an hour or so, you'll be soaring from rooftop to rooftop, diving off skyscrapers, running along walls, and squeezing between buildings, cackling the whole way.

Thankfully, Spider-Man manages to tackle those questions in an Arkham-like manner, while still carrying forward the focus on traversal that has made some past Spider-Man games so memorable. In fact, the two things that most carry Spider-Man are joyful swinging and its big heart.

Spider-Man's had better luck with video games than most, with 2004's Spider-Man 2 one of the better attempts largely due to how much fun it was to swing. But until now, no one's really grappled with Peter Parker, the character's human grounding. What does it mean to be a nobody with superpowers? How would that change your life? It'd probably screw things up, wouldn't it?

(A tip: It's possible to simply hold R2, which automatically swings Spider-Man from point to point, but time spent learning the advanced maneuvers is worth it, as they provide a deeply satisfying level of specificity to Spider-Man's aerial moves.)

If this is all Spider-Man accomplished, that'd be fine—better than expected, even. But what makes Spider-Man whole is how the mechanics go hand-in-hand with the story it's telling.

This version of Spider-Man picks up years into the job, and like Marvel's most recent cinematic outing, presumes you know the origin story. Warning: This contains some minor spoilers about the story setup, if you’re sensitive. It doesn't spent hours setting up Spider-Man, when Uncle Ben died, or why Mary Jane is an important person in Peter's life. This is an experienced superhero who knows how to fight, and has seen loss. It has some interesting wrinkles, too: Peter and Mary Jane have broken up, and his day job is no longer a photographer at The Daily Bugle. Instead, he's helping out Dr. Otto Octavius, the man who's become Peter's father figure since Ben passed, build some experimental new technology.

Me, a smarty pants, figured this meant Dr. Octavius was quickly going to become one of Spider-Man’s central foes. Spider-Man, an intellectual, counters with an early scene where it seems like everything's going wrong and a supervillain will be born, but nothing happens. It's one of many narrative head fakes Spider-Man deploys, moments that work because they betray our low expectations for stories in games, let alone superhero ones. Otto is a real character, not a plot device, and the audience's understanding of Otto's fate shades one of many close, well-developed relationships in the game. By spending meaningful time with him and the other people in Peter's life, it builds credible relationships—and credible stakes. The best superhero stories work because there's an emotional investment in the everyone's arc, even the villains. See: Killmonger in this year's Black Panther, a character who, by the end, you not only figured had a point, but might actually be right.