Spider-Man: Miles Morales Was Almost My Perfect Game
Miles Morales Review
DISCLAIMER: This review is not a part of IGN’s official review process. While I am an IGN staff member and producer, this is my own personal thoughts and separate analysis. I hope you enjoy!
***SPOILERS AHEAD***
Spider-Man was never my choice of superhero. I just felt like his story had been overdone. So when I played Marvel’s Spider-Man (2018), I was really quite surprised to find myself really enjoying Spider-Man’s story for once. Peter Parker is this witty 24 year old trying to do everything with balancing his vigilante work and his normal day-to-day life. Peter was much more relatable in this story than he’d ever been for me and I really enjoyed my time spent on the game.
Spider-Man (2018) VS Spider-Man: Miles Morales
As much as I loved the first game, Marvel’s Spider-Man (2018) definitely wasn’t perfect and I honestly found myself really frustrated at certain points and wishing for the game to progress a bit faster. However, Spider-Man: Miles Morales really stepped up to the plate and said “Hey I can treat you better than that guy ever did.” Right off the bat, Miles Morales hit me with a new storyline that I immediately felt invested in. Miles is a 17 year old kid who had been bitten by a spider and developed powers. Peter takes Miles under his wing and teaches him about the basics of being Spider-Man. The two had clearly developed a great bond and seeing them become “Spider-Bros” and work together was incredibly sweet. While I love seeing Peter Parker, it was kind of nice seeing him as a side character this time so we could focus on Miles.
I played Miles Morales on the highest difficulty, Spectacular, and I found that the fights were tough but honestly pretty manageable. But right off the bat, Miles Morales threw me into an intense first mission that really got my heart pounding. The fight mechanics were just how I remembered them from the 2018 game, but somehow Miles felt more agile than Peter did. I’m not sure if that was just a figment of my imagination knowing that Miles is a younger Spider-Man who was probably more limber but it just felt more fluid. Combat felt snappy and combos felt really good to pull off. Miles’ bioelectricity made it especially fun to wallop bad guys in the gut or give them supercharged uppercuts to end fights. Spider-Man (2018) gave me a feeling of what it was like to be a fully-realized professional Spider-Man but Miles gave me an experience of what it was like to transform into a superhero.
The Story
When Miles leaps off ledges and swings through New York, he sometimes flails in the air, trying to regain balance. I loved that little extra wobble he had because it made me feel like we were both learning to be Spider-Man at the same time. It gave the player a sense of growth that mirrored Miles’ own personal development and confidence in his abilities. Miles was so concerned with being his best and not letting anyone down that he was always trying to prove himself. He put the burden on his own shoulders to try and be the person everyone needed him to be. Whether or not this stemmed from him losing his father and feeling he had to take care of his family, Miles’ internal turmoil really pushed the plot of him being left alone to protect New York.
Miles Morales is around 8-10 hours playtime, compared to Spider-Man’s 15-20 hours, which is just enough time to fit in a fully fleshed story. I wish I could say it felt like the story was handled properly but this is the one part I had a complaint. Miles’ story is actually paced pretty decently with the time given. Miles’ childhood friend Phin is the leader of The Underground, a terrorist organization, built to take down Roxxon. Roxxon is an energy corporation run by Simon Krieger (aka discount Elon Musk) that’s pushing the use of a clean energy prototype called Nuform into the world. Krieger signs off on Harlem being Nuform’s experimentation start point, even though Nuform has been found to make people sick. Phin, under the alias of The Tinkerer, starts to steal back the Nuform with the plans to destroy Roxxon plaza and the corporation with an incriminating video as revenge for her brother who died trying to expose the company.
While Krieger is the true villain of the game, the focus was mostly on Phin since she was the major roadblock to handling Roxxon’s evil plans properly and fairly. Miles reveals to Phin that he is Spider-Man and that he wants to help protect his city. Of course, the two have very different plans to take down Roxxon and after a mission where they’re both captured, Phin turns on Miles and becomes immediately hostile. I felt like this turning point was a little too quick but I also understood that the entire game was a lot shorter than the last. However, it didn’t feel like a natural turn for Phin to suddenly beat the living daylights out of Miles and leave him for dead when they had just been working together to escape from Roxxon. Miles spends the rest of the game trying to warn Phin of Krieger’s plan to overload all the Nuform Phin’s stolen, thus making her plan to blow up Roxxon Plaza to turn into the vaporization of New York. Of course, she doesn’t believe Miles, and Phin as the Tinkerer becomes the final boss fight.
Honestly, this fight felt like the most frustrating and unnecessarily long sequence in the game. The previous Rhino boss fight Phin and Miles had tackled was frustrating but it wasn’t to the degree that I felt it lowered my game experience so far. The final fight with Phin had three different fight phases and it felt incredibly frustrating to get so close to finishing her then getting thrown into yet another phase of the boss fight. While the visuals for this fight were beautiful, the constant repeating of lines during these phases really pulled me out of the moment. Phin and Miles would yell the same things at each other and if you died during one of the phases, it’d go right back to the beginning of the loop. After I finally beat Phin, I found myself a little too frustrated still to really enjoy the next few scenes.
Phin got her redemption moment when she helped Miles absorb all the Nuform energy and used her hand-made tech to blast her and Miles into the sky far above New York. Phin tells Miles that it’s okay and he can let go. Miles, unable to hold the Nuform’s intense energy in his body, unleashes a blast of power across the skies of New York, saving the city but killing Phin in the process. As beautiful as the next scene was of New Yorkers coming to shield Miles so he could put his mask back on, I was really just feeling unsatisfied from Phin’s death. I knew there was a redemption moment that had to come around for her but I really wanted to see her have to face the consequences of her actions. I wanted her to see how blinded by revenge she’d been to realize maybe she had been wrong and maybe trusting and accepting help from others wasn’t such a bad thing. Instead, Phin took on the role of a martyr and died saving Miles but also escaping responsibility for her actions.
Immediate Afterthoughts
This example is where Miles Morales could have benefitted from being a longer, full game. While the pacing of the game worked really well cinematically and prevented Spider-Man burnout, the underlying character development for Phin felt slightly neglected. She had so much potential to be a more fully established villain. We got the incredibly messed up backstory of her and her brother working to create clean energy which then got corrupted by Nuform, but then her interactions with Miles only progressed her character so much further. The turning point in which Phin deems Miles a threat and leaves him for dead was much too quick and her boss fight sequence where Phin realizes she was wrong was an incredibly unsatisfying ending to her character arc because I barely got to see her develop. But there just simply wasn’t enough time to really experience Phin’s past or emotions.
Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely loved Miles Morales and felt the game was extremely strong, but I just wish we had been given more time to establish emotions with Phin whose intentions changed so quickly. But overall the story was solid, pacing moved smoothly, and the amount of representation Miles Morales had was amazing. One of the reoccurring side characters was a hearing impaired girl, Hailey, who would communicate through ASL (American Sign Language) to Miles who could understand and sign back. Also, seeing a game with main characters who were people of color made me feel so happy. Representation is so important and seeing so much of it in this game made me feel personally welcome and included. Also, Miles is a Black Puerto Rican superhero who spoke in Spanish to his mother and in certain moments of joy or excitement. In one of the early scenes where Miles is seen spending his Christmas dinner with his mother and close friends, I was given so much cultural background to take in. Miles’ mother cooking her Christmas dinner with Puerto Rican flags on the wall while listening to salsa music. I absolutely loved to see the representation and celebration of culture in the game.
4.5/5
Highly recommend for NG+ playthrough
Score
I really loved my playthrough of Miles Morales and really just wish the last boss fight had been less tedious and that the game was just a bit longer. However, this is honestly as close to a perfect game that I think I’ve experienced so far and so my personal game score for Spider-Man: Miles Morales is a 4.5 out of 5 webs. While I wish it had spent more time developing Phin’s character and the ultimate moment where she would fully embrace her plans to destroy Roxxon, Miles Morales is a solid game that I thoroughly enjoyed and will replay to get my NG+ run-through on Ultimate difficulty.