3.5/5 ★ – FoofDeckman's review of Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales.

I'm on the record as saying Spider-Man (2018) wasn't really my cup of tea. A lot of people consider that game a masterpiece and I'd imagine me even saying it isn't a masterpiece is sacrilege to some people. Now that's not to say I don't like that game or don't see the aspects people love about it, It's still a fun game, but it didn't engage me in the same way it did a lot of other people. I found it incredibly cliched and repetitive, but replaying it recently however gave me a new perspective, enough for me to want to revisit it's spin-off/dlc/sequel or whatever the hell Miles Morales is referenced as. And in all honestly, Spider-Man Miles Morales is a far better game than it's predecessor. Miles Morales takes almost everything I disliked about the original and reworks it in a way that actually... works. The combat in the previous game felt incredibly dull, It tried to make a balance between cool Spider-Man moves and Arkham combat and it never really found that balance in my eyes. This game feels a lot more unapologetically Spider-Man in nature, while still keeping that flow that worked about it. The new venom abilities for Miles are a welcome edition to the combat meta and add that extra layer the original lacked. You can chain combos for more damage, you can go invisible mid combat and pick stealthy. On top of this, the new types of enemies are fun to encounter too, you have a big guy with a hammer, you got guys with giant fists, all of it just feels a lot better and more thought out than the previous game. Miles Morales is a pretty game, and that's not to say Spider-Man 2018 isn't pretty too, but this game is gorgeous. I don't know if it's the excess of Neon, the snow or the Christmas lights lighting up the city, but this game looks amazing. I had originally played this game on my PS4 that barely functions, so seeing what the game is meant to look like on my suped on PC really made the extra difference in showing how beautiful this game is. I'm running out of adjectives to describe it, but I feel like you get the point. One of my biggest issues with the first game was the Ubisoft level copy and pasted activities found in the open world. It feels like almost every open world game has a generic set of tasks you can do that are just copy and pasted all across this giant space. It's usually something super simple like finding an item or fighting guys in a certain area, and this game is no exception to that unfortunately. Although its open world objectives aren't as repetitive as those found in the first game, a lot of them still feel like an annoying chore to complete. There are a good amount of tasks like the scavenger hunt or spider trials with major story significance that feel like you're actively progressing instead of just getting sidetracked with unimportant tasks, and luckily those types of tasks are more common than those that aren't, but it's annoying none the less. Nothing is more annoying than the story however, I won't get into spoilers, but this game's script is incredibly messy. Between it's characters with motivations that don't make sense and failing to communicate with each other to villains that are completely forgotten because the script didn't know what to do with them, all hurt this game significantly. At least the first game's story was serviceable, the dialogue was still bad, but it was in a Saturday Morning Cartoon way that still felt like Spider-Man at the end of the day. You got Troy Baker in this game as one of your main villains! USE HIM! He's completely wasted and is in the game for not even 5 minutes! Why is he even here other than to give the other villain a motivation? A lot of this game's story feels like it was rushed or held back for one reason or another and it's frustrating, because the parts are all here, but nothing works. I'm not good a video games, sure I play a lot games, but I can't say I'm someone who particularly excels at any of them. So when I'm able to beat this game on the highest difficulty with only a handful of deaths, I can confidently say this game is way too easy. You can beat any combat encounter with 2-3 buttons, spam square to punch and hit circle dodge when you need to. Even on the hardest difficulty, the window this game gives you to dodge is absurd. Not only that but this game is incredibly buggy, there's multiple times where I'd swing into walls and be completely trapped or an enemy will be trapped. I've had audio tracks just disappear mid sentence or not be there at all. For some reason certain characters in this game have really compressed audio that feels really tinny every time they speak. A lot of those are nitpicks, but it's still something I noticed that hurt my experience. Even if there's a good chunk of this game that I didn't enjoy, Miles Morales is still a really good game overall. I don't want to sound like I hate these games or anything, because I really do like this series flaws and all. I really hope Spider-Man 2 is a great game, and please please do not waste Tony Todd as Venom, that's all I ask.