4.5/5 ★ – hcolesmith's review of Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little burnt out on the formula for most of when I was playing this game. I went in directly after finishing Guardians of the Galaxy, right after seeing No Way Home, after a long rut of watching a lot of other MCU films. So yeah, I’m not sure this is exactly what I should have been playing. But I’d wanted to play it since it came out but was waiting until I got a PS5 and then got this on sale. Miles Morales is lean, mean, and takes a little bit to get going. It takes a little bit to realize that this isn’t a meaty game. Rather, it’s a hearty snack meant to show us what the PS5 can do and hold us over for Spider-Man 2. And for those things specifically (as soon as I realized it), this game soars. The side content is lackluster, but stretches out the same map from the original game just a bit further and gives you enough to do without completely overstaying it’s welcome. However, there’s some newness here that absolutely rips. The main missions are all killer, no filler. That one where you save people off a collapsing bridge? Absolutely rocks. Haven’t felt that much intensity since watching No Way Home (and probably not since Sekiro in a game). The organic blend of cutscene to gameplay is wonderful and the game gives you juuuust enough freedom to feel the frenetic desperation of Miles beat to beat while shuttling players through its design so you won’t get lost. Similarly, the combat additions in Miles’ Venom power add a much, much needed boost to the base fighting system. Although there’s a lot of robust mechanics in the initial game, after a while you realize you lack just a smidge of crowd control ability and you wish that you felt just slightly more powerful. Here, the Venom abilities fix this in spades without feeling OP. You have to work to build up the energy, and if you played on hard like I did, it’s not like I could zoom around the whole time. I was expecting to enjoy this game, but didn’t know it was going to absolutely rock. But it does. Insomniac knows how to do it.