As I mentioned a while back, on a whim I decided to pop the cork off the champagne and finally sit down to watch the Spiderverse movies- a whim which I can credit pretty much fully for my decision to pick and finally review Spiderman: Miles Morales before the long wait until 2 touches PCs. I honestly intended to sleep on the game for a little bit longer, simply because the base Spiderman game did such a good job satisfying everything I wanted and I struggled to see what a DLC turned spin-off successor could bring to the table. But after seeing Miles Morales on the big screen in Sony's duo masterpieces; well I just had too see what it was like to don the mask of everyone's favourite Puerto Rican superhero. Plus, I really wanted to know what it would be like to be able to do both the invisibility thing and the zappy thing on command. Report, it's pretty cool.
So this will be a pretty lightweight review this time around because as I've already implied, Spiderman: Miles Morales is functionally very similar to the game it spun off from aside from a few thrills that change up some of the moment-to-moment gameplay and a new story. I shouldn't feel compelled to comment on how a game starring a new character would warrant a new story, but after recently getting into the Devil May Cry franchise, I've suddenly come to terms with the fact how, increadibly, that isn't a given! Still, I think Miles Morales does enough on it's own to warrant a full fledged review and not just a footnote addendum. That, and the fact the game does retail for the price of a AA game; so it's getting my full game treatment whether it wants it or not!
The general minute-to-minute of 'Spiderman: Miles Morales' is identical with it's Arkham-reminiscent dodge and response punch play tinged with an aura of mobility and mob control above what Warner Bros. superhero games allowed us. 'Miles Morales' merely adds atop what you can do with that system with a tighter selection of gadgets (Non of which I found myself really using at all during combat.) and the 'Venom Strike' system. Now you generate bioelectricity as you bash and dodge around enemies which can be funnelled either into healing yourself or dealing out big play 'Venom Strike' powers that blossom into huge and impressive crowd control moments! You can zap an entire room of badguys into the air, grab one and charge them into an electric pylon before throwing them off into a crowd, or simply just smack a fist-full of lightning into someone's face. It's a visually exciting change up to the combat which allows for a bit more diversity in the way enemy types are handled.
'Miles Morales' presents a couple different factions with gears and tools built specifically to counter-act your bioelectricity, encouraging you to get a little creative. Shield enemies will absorb your venom and shoot it right back, so you need to deprive them of that shield first. Programmable matter-sword wielding terror-weebs move too quickly for your standard Venom strikes, so you need to save your quick pounce attack to single them out for a moment of weakness. My only real problem with this system is that the power of these attacks are so overwhelming that they cancel out just about every other attack animation in the game as long as that enemy isn't hard-countered against it- meaning that there's no real timing or skill that goes into wielding them. There is a point of balance between big crowd control moves and subtle timing this franchise needs to nail in order to make combat feel just that little bit more rewarding.
At the very least these new powers make Boss Fights about 5x more appealing in this game, because boss character's get can their defences bypassed in the natural flow of combat rather than after being webbed into submission as was the case with literally every boss of base Spiderman. There's still a distinct lack of challenge to any of them, however, and where there's wanting challenge there tends to feel like a lack of variety as well. All the bosses fight you differently, but in broad strokes you fight all of them in the exact same way. Only really the final boss has the power to force you to approach them in a slightly different fashion, but none will really challenge you to throw everything you have at them. A step up this franchise really needs to go if the sequel game is going to stand out at all!
Oh, and I guess there's the 'camouflage' invisibility power to talk about too. Camo is really just an ability to go back to stealth after you screw up whilst sneak-striking. It's not an insanely transformative way to play the game and I'm pretty sure there was nothing I managed to do with Camo that I couldn't have done as Peter, but the option to switch invisible at will does feel fun to toy around with. The game does try to throw in a little moment to moment utility in combat in order to incentivise camo use, but I just found the interaction between in-combat enemies and my invisible self to be unsatisfying. The AI doesn't seem to know how to react and so even in the heart of battle enemies will just stand there dumbly looking at their friends being beat to a pulp by thin air until your invisibility meter runs out. They really need to be programmed to swing wildly or panic or something that would bridge the gap between camo play and intense combat.
The story of Miles Morales actually follows a similar trajectory to 'Across the Spiderverse', albeit in a much less grandiose fashion. Picking up after Miles has come to terms with his Spider abilities enough to be trusted on his ownsome, Miles must prove both to New York and to himself that he can be seen as Spiderman in his own light, and not just as the kid-version of New York's hero. And the story is very full-throated and obvious about this, having small transactions like "I named him (a cat) after Spiderman: the real Spiderman." One shop owner says in front of Miles. (Which is just aggressively rude, I might add. What a dick.) All the while, of course, the district of Harlem is being wrapped up in a scheme by an unscrupulous energy company which feels like an allegory for gentrification, but I can't quite nail down the parallels just yet. Oh, and there's techie terrorists. Because of course.
Miles as a character plays up on the 'inexperienced kid' angle in a manner that doesn't quite play out as 'incompetent' as much as it does just 'accident prone'. Even the worst disasters that occur throughout the narrative, the releasing of Rhino or the destruction of one of Manhattan's Bridges, aren't technically his fault at all- but the boy assumes responsibility anyway in a trait that is supposed to allow him to appear both moralistic and amateurish in the same breath. Personally I just ended up finding him meek and self defeatist for a lot of the story. A perception not at all helped by the fact this story relies hard on that increasingly tired trope of 'any form of lying whatsoever is completely morally abhorrent', when the superhero choose to hide their identity from those they love. Such to the point where he is played as the badguy against his best friend for choosing to lie to her despite the fact that, spoilers for the third mission of the game, she lied several times beforehand about being the leader of the terrorists!
The Underground, this game's villain faction, and the Tinkerer, the leader, feel like a substantial step down from Mister Negative and Doc Ock from the base Spiderman game. Part of that is no doubt due to the truncated run-time of the game which clocks in at maybe a third of the original game's running time, but I think another part is because they just aren't that interestingly conceived of in the first place. The Underground is these matter programming tech-centric criminal syndicate that seems to be trying to stop a annoying tech guru from unleashing his 'alternative energy' source upon the people of Harlem. Their only motivation appearing to be because their leader, the Tinkerer, fancies herself a morally righteous crusader of personal vengeance. The ingredients on their own sound solid, but when brought together they're missing a combing agent to mix everything together, leaving the premise flimsy. Why do a syndicate of criminals care about their leaders moral justice trip? Don't worry about it, just enjoy the ride!
Also, and I hate to do this, but I think the visual design of the Underground and the Tinkerer is trash. In fact, I think everyone apart from Miles himself is overly complicated and messy in their oppressive monochromatic scheming. The Underground are all purple and modular with shiny sliding plates and telescopic swords, whips and shields- the Tinkerer also carries this design theme with such few significant visual stand-out features that she literally blends into her own faction and doesn't standout whatsoever. This wouldn't be so much of a problem if not the fact that another key member of the story, The Prowler, is designed with the exact same 'modular power suit' design and is also purple themed, albeit with a little bit of green thrown in there. It reminds me of that boring 'over militarisation' redesign of superhero costumes that occurred in the age of the Avengers movies (and the 'Ultimate' universe comic line.) Boring and uninspired.
My spur to play this game was driven by my love for the Spiderverse movies, unfortunately that may have been an inappropriate comparison because I think those movies do a much better job with characterisation. Miles, for one, lacks the charm that his animated movie equivalent has, and comes across as whiney and self defeatist whereas Spiderverse Miles feels resilient and unrelenting. Game Miles' meekness struggles to solidify into humour, whereas Spiderverse Miles seems almost effortlessly humorous. (Heck, I even quoted Spiderverse Miles for the blog because video game Miles lacks any real standout lines of his own.) Ultimately, I just think that Miles was underserved by the scope of this narrative and how the team chose to write him- I'm hoping that a more put-together and experienced version of him come Spiderman 2 will have more of an on-screen presence to gravitate towards.
Conclusion
'Spiderman: Miles Morales' keeps a lot of what made the original game great and peppers it with neat thrills and tricks to justify it's existence as a standalone. It pulls some new rendering tricks to cut down on loading times, and gives us a snow swept alternative to New York so that the familiar streets aren't too interchangeable with the original game's offering. Unfortunately the smaller narrative slate lacks the time to create a main character as solid as the first game's, a villain with as much of an arc and a finale worth coming back for. In this 'Spiderman: Miles Morales' kind of feels like a step down from the absolute achievement of it's namesake and probably deserves to be a companion piece viewed as another element of the main game, because I'm not sure the narrative spine of the game is strong enough to stand on it's own. That being said, what Spiderman got right in gameplay, Miles Morales solidifies neatly, which is largely where it matters in games like this. A tipsy-turvey opinion review to be certain, but one that earns a recommendation for fans of the original looking for more. I'm not really sure if this will be required playing for those who just want to jump directly into Spiderman 2 once that lands, but if you're interested than know I personally grant it a deliciously arbitrary B+ Grade. A very serviceable Spiderman game for certain, but Miles deserves a lot more than 'serviceable'. (Fingers crossed come 2.)
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