Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales Review

"Learning the Ropes"

Campaign

March 13, 2021 at 4:56pm
By Jason Stettner

This is a standalone smaller story set within the same universe of the absolutely incredible Marvel’s Spider-Man. This venture follows Miles Morales as he continues to learn the ropes of being Spider-Man, and particularly his first solo adventure. Peter Parker has left the city and it’s up to Miles to deal with crime while he’s gone.

It’s a fine premise to give this character full reign of the city, and while this is a standalone adventure you’ll see many fun appearances from previous characters as well which was nice. This story largely follows Miles as he’s dealing with the growing presence of Roxxon, and also the Underground headed by this mysterious Tinkerer.

I’ll try to keep things relatively spoiler free, but the plot is rather predictable if you have any knowledge of Spider-Man stories. This was a tad disappointing as I was hoping for something a little unexpected. It was very much predictable almost right off the bat, with no real narrative surprises in it. That doesn’t mean this is bad by any degree, it’s actually a fairly good story.

I’d say my main issue with it is that they clearly wanted to tell a larger tale here and it felt very condensed without much room to breathe. A real shame as they’ve got some awesome characters here, and I mostly just wanted to spend more time with them. There are plenty of side activities to take part in, and some extra busy work. It’s just the core story that I felt more could have been expanded upon as it’s basically rushing through content. A sacrifice for a smaller release I suppose.

Gameplay

If you’re coming from the first game in this growing franchise, the movement will feel very similar. You are however much more powerful with a sort of stinger attack which I compare to having electric abilities. It’s basically Spider-Man, but with some wild power attack and invisibility. That’s fine, as the swinging is just fantastic in this series and the combat feels great.

Things are slightly fancier this time around as well with the various visual upgrades made possible through PS5. You get three modes being available. One is a 4k resolution at 30fps with ray tracing, another is dynamic 4k at 60fps and finally there’s a 1080p at 60fps with ray tracing mode which is awesome.

It’s really fantastic to see such incredible ray tracing implementation this early into the generation and it looks wonderful as you’re swinging by the tall skyscrapers. Even smaller details such as during cutscenes with intensely lit moments, they come across as fantastic. It’s also generally just nice to have choices between the visual modes, it hits the mark in all of them.

This is of course an open world experience, so you can go anywhere at any time in the city of New York. It’s large in scale, and turned into a snow based setting for the setup of this particular story which is gorgeous. It’s about the same for interactivity in terms of the crowd, and the buildings you can enter as well if you’re coming from the last one. I did also want to mention that the loading is incredibly fast here, it’s basically instant with that being the case right from the main menu.

The Conclusion

Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales is a great standalone release, with the story being a bit compressed due to it being a smaller expansion upon a now growing universe. That to me was somewhat of a shame as I wanted to spend more time with Miles, and also the people around him.

They throw you right into the mix of these characters, and it could have benefitted with more time to set them up. I honestly would have been more lost, if I hadn’t watched Into the Spider-Verse and knew some of these individuals. That aside, it all looks great and it’s a blast to play. It’s got some great action to it, and it’s just a smaller story.

I do also wish they would hide his identity better, it’s kind of wild how many people know who he is. I should focus on gameplay more I suppose, but some of the story beats just stick out to me like that one. Whatever the case, it’s gorgeous on the console and a great expansion upon the original Spider-Man release so I can’t wait to see more from this universe.

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Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales Review on Playstation 5
Review Code Provided by SIEC

Rating Overall: 7.8