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

Platform: PS5 Time Played: 17 hours Status: Completed ⟳ I remember when Spider-Man: Miles Morales was announced and slated to be a launch title for the PS5 back in 2020 and finally getting to play the PS4 version in January 2021, it's been over two and a half years since then and now I’ve replayed the game in anticipation for Spider-Man 2, and from what I recall of my opinion from my first playthrough, not much has changed in terms of my thoughts on the game. Spider-Man: Miles Morales feels like an extended DLC expansion to the original 2018 game, serving as yet another middle chapter in between the first game and the next big installment which obviously ended up being Spider-Man 2, this time focusing on Miles’ journey into understanding what it takes to be Spider-Man, including the struggle of balancing one’s life, but mainly the sacrifices and consequences one must make and face in the name of the greater good. The main thing that makes this distinct and deserving of its own release instead of just being DLC are the changes in gameplay and overall game design to better reflect Miles’ personality and story. Firstly, there’s Miles' new combat mechanic, that being his Venom attacks; I honestly think that just these attacks alone serve to really change up combat in a really fun and inventive way, and in some ways even makes combat in this game feel better and more rewarding to play and control than the first. Charging up your Venom meter and absolutely blasting enemies back to back with your Venom Punch causing them to fly back with a colorful burst of electricity, slamming them into the ground with Venom Smash, charging toward enemies with lightning trailing behind you like the Flash and using said electricity to leap into the air, causing all enemies surrounding you to be vulnerable to aerial attacks, or even the Mega Venom Blast, absolutely wiping out all enemies in this huge finisher-like move. This is all to say that fighting enemies with Miles’ Venom skills feels so refreshing and allows Miles to feel distinct from Peter therefore allowing his solo adventure to feel like a more distinct experience overall. One of the major flaws with this game when comparing it to the first is that its story has a noticeable lack of emotional impact, unlike the previous installment. I think that this comes from this story’s shorter length and how it dives into the main conflict fairly quickly. For instance, we are introduced to the leading villain group, The Underground, during the second mission, wouldn’t a decently established gang be somewhat well known to Miles instead of popping up out of the blue, and the twist that Miles’ best friend, Phin, is their leader, The Tinkerer, being revealed not too long after comes a little too soon in my opinion. I would have much rather have more of a mystery surrounding The Tinkerer’s identity until it felt right to have the rug pulled out beneath Miles’ feet and THEN focus on how their relationship changes afterward. But I think that the problem stems from having the narrative have a quicker overall pace due to the game’s shorter length, and therefore the time spent on character development and building and establishing character relations is lacking. Now sure, by the end of the game I was invested in Miles and Phin’s friendship and where it was going, especially by the explosive climax (pun fully intended) that was honestly really strong and emotional, but it took a long time to get there for me. I do really like the themes of Miles essentially having unknowingly abandoned his friendship with Phin after they went to different high schools despite saying he wouldn’t, therefore enabling Phin to fall in with a literal gang after Simon Krieger kills her brother, leaving her no one to lean on for support; therefore the dilemma the Miles falls into is having to face the fact that he abandoned his friend and caused the problems that he’s having to face and that entire arc allows him to confront his Uncle Aaron when he discovers that he is The Prowler and tries to stop Miles from saving Harlem, allowing Aaron to try and atone for his past mistakes during the story’s finale. What I’m trying to say about the story is that it is fairly solid on a general level but it doesn’t reach anywhere near the same levels of greatness that the first game’s story did besides the literal climax of the game. I do think that the side missions in this game via the FNSM App do allow said side missions to fit better within the narrative of the actual game, building a literal community of people around Miles that comes into play really well during the finale, which is something that the first game didn’t attempt to do as its side missions were more so trying to replicate the smaller tasks that Spidey does in the run of a day. Speaking of side content, this game’s side content is lacking as well in terms of quality. A lot of the side content is brought over from the first game: enemy bases, combat and web-swinging challenges, and the time capsules (essentially like the backpacks from the first game), with the sound samples to learn the backstory between Miles’ dad and Uncle Aaron’s falling out, and the Underground caches being newer pieces of side content. The enemy bases, in my opinion, have improved pretty fairly; unlike the first game, if you take out the entire first wave of enemies via the variety of stealth takedowns at your disposal then you don’t have to fight the rest of the enemy waves unlike the first game, which makes sense, because if you defeated all of the enemies, how are they going to call for backup? It allows the stealth sections of the enemy bases to feel much more rewarding this time around instead of the enemy gauntlets from the first game. But then there are the actual stealth missions, part of the Spider-Training Challenges, copied over from the first game’s Taskmaster Challenges. These missions suck, plain and simple. I thought so when I played the game in 2021 and I still think so now. Compared to the Taskmaster Stealth Challenges of the first game and the Screwball Stealth Challenges from The City That Never Sleeps DLC, these stealth missions absolutely suck and are incredibly infuriating. One of the best aspects of the stealth missions was that the enemies were laid out to optimize the player’s sense of skill and reward, but here you have to spend a boring amount of time separating enemies in order to go in for the strike, and even if the enemy is listed as safe and you do the takedown, nearby enemies will still see you because the “safe” identifier only qualifies for the initial second and no time after that, so if you don’t hightail it out of there immediately so a safe area, you’re fucked. It just made the challenges so irritating. And even the web-swinging or combat challenges were just boring and didn’t really do a whole lot, sure there is the whole gameplay thing where Miles has to level up to Peter’s skill over the course of the game, and you do that quite literally as Miles starts out the game being very wonky and clumsy in terms of his animation, and gets more and more confident in his web swinging and attacks as the story progresses, but what I’m trying to get at is that by having Miles go through the same gameplay arc that Peter did in the previous game, it makes the overall experience feel repetitive, especially right after a playthrough of the first game where muscle memory gets somewhat thrown out the window. Going back to the story, I think that once Phil finds out that Miles is Spider-Man that things really start ramping up. The tension between them is true and real and then having to work together during that is really interesting. I wish it felt a little more earned when she just fully stops listening to Miles, yes it is earned, but if there was a little more backing that it would’ve worked better for me. And Uncle Aaron essentially feeding Miles bad advice causing him or trying to lean him into making decisions that Spider-Man wouldn’t normally make was a pretty interesting arc that kept me invested in his story, and the culmination of that arc with the boss fight against him was really cool too. One last nitpick that I want to mention are the different alternate suits. I know that Miles obviously won’t have as many resources to pull from for new suits as Peter does, but still, the suit variety here is pretty lackluster. I don’t really like the Sportswear Suit that he wears at the start, because if Miles was training with Peter for at least a year you’d think that he’d have a better getup than just one of Peter’s mask and his own clothes, and while I know that the Great-Responsibility Suit that Peter gifts Miles at the start of the game is ripped straight from the comics, it still looks really whack, and while I know that that is the point, it just didn’t look all that great visually and having to wear the suit for the period of time that I did was just not it. All in all, Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales is a pretty good time. Built off of the skeleton of the previous game, it of course was going to be a good game. In terms of the actual gameplay not a whole lot has changed besides Miles’ Venom skills in combat and some minute changes when it comes to traversal, so with the amazing gameplay from the first game, this was already set to be a good time. But as an overall experience, as I said at the start, this just feels like a decently-sized expansion of the first game, to the point where until I replayed it again, my memories of playing through this game last were mixed with my memories of the first game. So despite being an entirely separate package in order to step out of the shadow of Peter, it still feels a little held back by what came before. Still a great game though nonetheless.