'Spider-Man: Miles Morales' Provides the Perfect Twist on Its Predecessor

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In Spider-Man: Miles Morales, you play as Miles, an Afro-Latino teenager who is clearly uncomfortable and unsettled with his new role and responsibilities. We know that, because Miles tells us; he voices his concerns out loud and reflectively, to both his family and friends. But the game's next-level brilliance lies in its use of gameplay and non-verbal visual cues to reinforce that unease.

In 2018's Marvel's Spider-Man, Peter Parker's physical movements were smooth and seamless, whether he was swinging from building-to-building or zipping from point-to-point. His stealth takedowns had a sort of professionalism to them; he had honed his tricks over the course of a crime-fighting career—a career long enough to make enemies of multiple super-villains including Vulture, Rhino, Electro, Kingpin and Scorpion. Regardless of how skilled or unskilled the player was controlling Spider-Man, the game was aesthetically forgiving. It never stopped Peter from looking slick.

Miles, on the other hand, is significantly less surefooted. Again, this is regardless of the player's skill—it's baked into the character's idle movements and gestures. When Miles perches, he wobbles the slightest bit before regaining his balance. When he web swings, his lines are not smooth; his arms and legs flail before regaining their form. When he performs a stealth takedown from high up, he exaggeratedly leans forward and then backward to compensate for the enemy's weight. One day, he'll be as smooth as his mentor. But certainly not yet.

The web-swinging trick combos from the first game carry over into the sequel; you now have transition moves that can extend your combo for hundreds of additional points. But every so often, Miles doesn't do exactly what you want him to do; he doesn't regain his form quickly enough, or he'll fall on his face when he hits the ground. I've been experimenting to see whether it's me or him; I've concluded that this game, unlike its predecessor, emphasizes perfect input. If you want to do the perfect trick, you'll have to release your web swing at the exact right time. This game isn't going to cover for your imprecision. Again, it's an apt mirror of Miles' own struggles. He can't improvise or freestyle if he hasn't mastered the fundamentals.

A word to the wise: If you play Miles exactly the way you played Peter in the prior game, you're going to die, a lot. For context: I earned a platinum trophy on the first game, and I beat it on the hardest difficulty setting. I assumed that my elite skills from that game would carry over into this game, and make it a veritable cakewalk. But apparently, the developers had anticipated those assumptions as well.

 

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Miles acquires an array of "Venom" moves, which you can add to and upgrade as the game progresses. These are electrically charged attacks that can stun opponents and make them more susceptible to damage. Attacks and well-timed dodges fill up a dedicated Venom Meter. Miles can also turn Invisible, which you can use offensively, to sneak up on an unsuspecting opponent—or defensively, if you're surrounded by enemies and need to escape.

You need to incorporate all of these new moves into your Spidey repertoire to survive. I say that as someone who occasionally forgot, in the heat of battle, that these moves existed. There's a crucial moment late in the game, where my invisibility helped me bypass a section that I would have never survived otherwise. It made me think back. "How many other parts of the game," I wondered, "could I have avoided entirely?"

Unlike Peter Parker in the first game, Miles Morales is never overpowered. Even late in the campaign, he's a glass cannon; he can dish out a lot of punishment, but cannot take very much in return. You'll find yourself stealthing around a lot more as a result. The combat becomes practical and viable only after you've thinned the enemy's ranks. Otherwise, it's a last resort when you're spotted and cannot escape. Stick and move, stick and move.

The first game had enemy lairs where fighting hand-to-hand was inevitable; you could stealth kill the first wave of enemies, but after that, you were permanently spotted and attacked. The new game allows you to stay hidden for the entire battle. The stealth has been accordingly fleshed out; in any room with a large group of enemies, I had a massive collection of them stuck to the ceiling or hanging from the overhead lights by the time I was done.

Plotwise, the game has lots of teen drama in it, as befitting its main character. But the game's subtext is about technocracy, and the dangers of thinking that scientific innovation is the solution to systemic problems. It makes an important point about how communities of color are usually the ones to suffer from the experimentation and implementation of those advancements, and it expresses caution about the right and wrong ways to speak truth to power.

 

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If there is a place where the game falls short, it's in the ancillary activities that Miles can engage in outside of the core storyline. Part of what made the first game so appealing was its magpie ethos—of collecting multiple, tiny Easter Eggs, in the form of finding lost Backpacks and taking photographs of New York landmarks. This new game has no side activity that is equally fun or engaging.

The distinct variety of the first game, and its diverse in-game currencies, has been streamlined into a single in-game app, which informs you of available side missions and pings you if there's a nearby crime. There are no logic puzzles like the ones in Dr. Octavius' lab from the first game, where you had to match positive and negative electrical charges or sequence DNA. There are also no shoehorned-in sequences like the first game's MJ segments. This games all Miles all the time, kicking ass and doing what he does best.

The cinematic set pieces, like the Rhino fight and Braithwaite Bridge sequences glimpsed in preview footage, are a definite highlight, and it's a shame there aren't more of them. Marvel has a massive rogue's gallery, and The Tinkerer, though she's given a strong backstory and character development, is no Doc Ock. Rhino is a fantastic back-up villain, but he's already been done.

I played Spider-Man: Miles Morales on a PlayStation 4, and I attained 100% completion over the course of a week. I fooled around in New Game Plus mode for a couple of days afterwards as well. I then played the PlayStation 5 version of Spider-Man: Miles Morales for about six hours earlier this week, and based on that particular experience, we're all sleeping on the DualSense controller's haptic feedback and what a game-changer that has the potential to be. "It's only a vibrating controller," you might think, but the vibrations are so oddly specific in how they correspond to the on-screen action. I appreciated that the developers showed some judicious restraint in this regard; they programmed the vibration to respond only to Miles and anything in his immediate vicinity.

To wit: If you enjoyed Marvel's Spider-Man, you're going to enjoy Spider-Man: Miles Morales, too. They are similar but not identical, and the new game adds enough that's new to carve out its own identity. Then again, familiar is nice at a time like this. It's zen, escapist, and comforting to swing around the virtual Manhattan we already explored two years ago--to know that some things don't change. Avengers Tower. The Empire State Building. The Freedom Tower. The Guggenheim. Chinatown. Harlem, lit with Christmas lights for the holidays. They're all there.

It's heartfelt, it's home, and it's something worth fighting for.