I don't know the writings so I can't compare them. Ready Player One the movie is a very standard and predictable story. It is imo also almost zero sci-fi but just fantasy. I guess it works for the young - because the movie/story is well constructed giving them the impression, the hero etc. that one could be me etc. and it "fakes" that the movie is about them and their lifestyle etc. pp. I was once (in my younger days) a hardcore gamer and spend many hours per day and year to master ONE game - to a certain degree. The notion that some super kids are best in many different style of games in a virtual reality is one of the more obvious things a real gamer can detect that both the writer and the guys making the movie have no idea about pro gaming at all.

Steven Spielberg plays the card of zeitgeist, like his last movie The Post. One could say it is a safe bet to get some applause in the media and from the millennials and such kind of an audience. The last movie of Mr. Spielberg I really like(d) is War of the Worlds from 2005. Since then 13 years have passed...

Like Ridley Scott Spielberg is another formerly titan of movie making lost in mediocrity, and he seems even not to be able to choose interesting stories anymore. Even the last Indiana Jones was just okayish and way from good. Another synchronicity with Ridley Scott who blasted his great Alien franchise with the last output into pieces (I liked Prometheus but Covenant is by far the weakest of all movies about our beloved alien and was a big disappointment to me).

Ready Player One - a fake on gaming, a fake on sci-fi, a fake on virtual reality (we won't jump around in our bedrooms playing in vr but sit laid back in a couch or lay on our beds and just do everything with our thoughts in a not so distant future. I take any bet.) Also from the technical point of view I wasn't very impressed by the CGI.

Okayish, if you got nothing else to do.