4/5 ★ – JimboHarman's review of Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales.

Going into this game I was really worried that it would be derivative of Into the Spider-Verse with the tagline “Be Greater, Be Yourself” but luckily despite the two narratives sharing the same message, Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales manages to set itself apart from Spider-Verse with it’s execution of this “Be yourself” message. There are a lot of facets to Miles and I think the game does a really great job at tying them all in to this central message. Miles struggles with honesty, self doubt and balancing his life as Spider-Man with his personal life and they all link together quite nicely. To start with, Miles’ dishonesty stems from him pretending to be someone he isn’t to Phin, similarly his self doubt stems from the fact he’s in Peter’s shadow, when he thinks Spider-Man, he isn’t thinking about himself, so in trying to be Spider-Man he’s also trying to be someone he’s not which all ties back into the trouble he has balancing his dual lives because he often chooses being Spider-Man over being Miles. Each of these struggles has a really solid resolution and the story isn’t light on Miles when it punishes him for his character flaws which I think goes a long way in making the lesson stronger. If he had just been himself from the start, a lot of trouble will have been avoided and that adds a layer of tragedy to the whole thing too. The story isn’t flawless though. The main story is really short, now that’s not bad in of itself but I do feel like a £50 price tag is a little high and there were a couple narrative elements that feel slightly rushed like the drama around Miles lying to Phin which gets resolved within a couple missions because he comes clean too quickly. At the same time, there are some things I’m very glad they didn’t waste too much time on like the identity of The Tinkerer because it’s such an obvious twists so I’m glad they wasted no time at all telling us who she is. Another issue I had with the story is the Museum flashback, it should’ve been the introduction and not so late in the game, the location would’ve meant more to the player when you go back to it for the climax and the fact that the scene takes place so late in the story just meant that nothing new was being established, so what I’m saying is that the scene should’ve been the establishment and not the callback. Gameplay wise, it’s the best Superhero game ever made. No other combat system comes close, the addition of the venom attacks is absolutely genius and when you get the hang of it it leads to some buttery smooth combos and those boss fights are a complete joy, it’s just a shame there aren’t more of them. The city traversal hasn’t been changed too much since the previous game but I can see why they didn’t change it much, it still feels great to swing across the city and basically if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. The soundtrack is also really good, not one of my favourites but it’s got some bangers. I was slightly set down by the graphics, maybe my standards are too high after The Last of Us 2 and Ghost of Tsushima but I’d still say for a PS4 they were pretty poor, I didn’t play on the PS5 but based off of the footage I’ve seen it looks a lot better.