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The best Spider-Man game so far

2K View2022-11-20

Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales - Full Review

🟩Pros

+Fun kinetic combat

+Best Spider-Man swinging mechanics and fluid animations

+One of the best PC ports (support for ultrawide, DLSS, etc)

+Modern synthetic soundtrack

🟥Cons

-Too short (under 10 hours)

Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales is truly one of the better games to have come out two years ago on the PS5 and PS4, and now we are lucky for another Playstation port to PC with this weekend’s release.

The follow-up standalone expansion to early this year’s PC release of Spider-Man Remastered, Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales continues the first game’s story, more importantly its DLC “The City That Never Sleeps”, It introduces Miles Morales’ version of Spider-Man as the playable character and shows us his solo rookie activities in New York city.

Is it really standalone?

If you’re wondering if you can play Miles Morales without playing the first game’s DLC, or even the first game itself, worry not. Miles Morales will give you a short video recap of all the things that happened before, including his origin story. This is something comparable to the very cool character introduction scenes seen in the animated film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. It's a nice touch that is also useful for returning players that might have otherwise forgotten or missed what happened.

Miles, the floor is yours

It starts off with the two Spider-Men working together to do some pretty intense crime fighting and a bit of mentoring session for the duo. It is amazing to play as Miles and see Peter Parker working, swinging, and fighting with you during the relatively explosive introduction set piece. Quickly afterward, the narrative direction immediately gives the floor to Miles after Peter Parker decides to take part in some working vacation to Europe. Now Miles has New York solo to himself, a big and at the same time scary responsibility.

Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales still plays and feels very much the same. The combat and animations feels just about as smooth as ever, but not without its own personality stamped onto it. For instance, Miles has a different set of moves and animations compared to Peter Parker. In contrast to Peter’s more experienced and serious swinging form, Miles has a more youthful and playful approach to it. It feels very familiar to old players while still introducing fresh stuff to keep you interested.

Newcomers to the franchise

Since I will spend most of the review here unavoidably comparing Miles Morales to the Spider-Man Remastered, I shall describe the game series as a whole first for newcomers to the franchise. Both Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales and Spider-Man Remastered perfectly encapsulates the feeling of being Spider-Man. Swinging around in New York city, with total control over your maneuvers, responding to street crime.

The combat is clearly inspired by the free flow combat of Batman Arkham and in a good way. Dodges and counters feel satisfying, the dopamine rush induced by performing really cool uninterrupted combo sequences are highly addicting.

The Gameplay Evolution

Miles Morales feels like a natural evolution and continuation of the game series. It picks up the story and never missed a beat. Gameplay wise, For returning players, most of the skill progression of Spider-Man in the last game was kept intact. For example, many of the simple movement and fighting skills you spent most of the previous game unlocking for Peter are now base abilities for Miles. That way returning players wouldn’t feel like they’re starting again from scratch while still not being instantly too powerful for newcomers.

Because of this I would recommend playing Spider-Man Remastered first before this one, if you haven’t yet but plan to do so anyway. If you play Miles Morales first, you might feel a little bit “nerfed” if and when you finally try out the original game.

The one game that I actively avoid using the fast travel system

Personally, I found the acrobatic and fluid animations of Miles Morales more aesthetically pleasing and satisfying to perform. Something that is already extremely satisfying in the first game even got better. Why? This is one of the games where I actively avoid fast traveling because swinging is so damn awesome. The swinging never gets old. Spider-Man never gets old.

Abilities and Gadgets

One of the ways Miles differentiates his Spider-Man from the OG are his newfound “Venom” abilities. And if you’re thinking of the symbiote Venom, it's not that. While the gadgets have been reduced from eight to only four, Miles now has two new cool abilities which are electricity and invisibility.

Those two aspects are given more emphasis in gameplay instead of gadgets. While you can no longer do cool web gadget combo combinations (due to the lack thereof), you can now use Miles’ numerous bio-electricity abilities in fights that do high amounts of damage and are aesthetically pleasing with its yellow-ish electrical explosion effects. All of which you can mix up with your regular combos and finishers.

His invisibility on the other hand, adds freshness to the otherwise basic stealth sections of the series as well as introduces another layer of combat. In addition to his unique skills and abilities, he also has his own roster of suits and costumes that you can unlock and upgrade over time.

A great game just in time for the Holidays

Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales is kinetic and action packed from beginning to end. You can finish it in under 10 hours, less than half of the original game’s length. A lot less filler and full of action, but still in the end I was left wanting for more.

As for the story, it’s much more personal and more of a coming of age for Miles. We see Miles here as a newbie Spider-Man, with his own trials and tribulations. Again greatly in contrast with Peter’s much more experienced and middle-aged story in the previous game. Also, we have already seen Peter’s coming of age story in other incarnations multiple times, so seeing Miles here instead of reliving Peter’s origin story again makes for a nice change.

Having said that, you might think it’s just a rerun of Into the Spider-Verse — it’s not — The story is unique and interesting enough in its own right and even more highly recommended for fans of that film.

It's perfect timing to release this again very close to Christmas, as it takes place around Christmas time, which shows New York in a different light: covered in snow and colorful lights. I appreciate the extra touch that they did in making this game visually different and in-line with the heartwarming spirit of Christmas.

Amazing Soundtrack

Soundtrack is one of the aspects where this game shines the most and gives its distinct personality. We are no longer bound to Peter Parker’s gracious and orchestra heavy “great power, great responsibility” soundtrack, so now finally we can get more creative with the music. It is now more synthetic and modern, much more in-line with Miles' personality and cultural heritage.

Technical Performance and PC Release

Miles Morales feels and plays very much like the PS5 version, only now with support for ultrawide and superwide resolutions and a higher graphics setting ceiling. Performance has been satisfactory so far, maintaining 60fps on a mixed of ultra and high settings running on my 6 core 12 thread RTX 3080 setup. I tested it on my secondary rig with a 4 core 8 thread RX 580 setup and it still ran well, albeit struggling to maintain 60fps due to CPU limitations. It is also tagged as "Verified" for the Steam Deck and runs well on my testing if you lock the performance to 40fps.

At the moment, PC players should rejoice, now that all the recent Spider-Man games have now come to PC, with a proper port at that. Bringing uncapped performance and limitless visuals of the Spider-Man franchise to the PC platform. That is until Spider-Man 2 releases next year for 2023, exclusive to PS5. We might have to wait a year at best for that to come to PC, if it will ever come.

Conclusion

Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales is the best Spider-Man game yet and is a truly worthy new entry to the game series. It takes everything that is good with the Spider-Man games, improves and compresses it into a fresh kinetic fun action that you can experience in under 10 hours.

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