Hello again, and welcome back to Thing of the Week, where today we're looking at Marvel's Spider-Man Miles Morales, Insomniac's great little spin-off of their previous game, Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered [which I talked about in detail in both TOTW#50 and TOTM#1]. I absolutely loved that first game, and recently 100%'ed it, including DLCs, so I was extremely excited to get my hands on this one in preparation for Marvel's Spider-Man 2, which is finally coming to Steam at the end of the month.
In Miles Morales, you play as... well, Miles Morales, who gained spider-powers towards the end of the first game. Miles Morales takes place in pretty much the exact same map as its predecessor, just with a wintry coat of paint, and whilst initially you'd assume it also has the exact same gameplay, you'd be partially mistaken - Miles has slightly different powers to the original Spider-Man, with his bio-electric 'Venom blasts' and ability to become invisible. These two little additions make the gameplay surprisingly different, and allow for a lot of unique combos that Peter can't do. All in all, the combat is just as fun - if not, more fun - than Insomniac's first Spider-Man game, and the same applies to the rest of the gameplay. Of course, the traversal is brilliant, and swinging around Manhattan is very satisfying. I especially love Miles' swinging animations, which tend to highlight how he's much more amateur than his mentor. Unfortunately, Miles Morales didn't feature certain mission types that you could find in the first game - MJ's stealth missions, for example - but its much shorter runtime definitely allowed for that. All in all, Miles Morales' gameplay was a small but noticeable improvement over the previous game [which is really saying something considering how much I liked that one] and I never found myself getting bored, despite the fact that I'd spent about 20 hours finishing off the first game and its DLC right before picking this one up.
The other thing I should mention if I'm talking about this game is its story - whilst this game didn't feel quite as well-written as the first one, and the story didn't hit quite as hard, it was definitely still very enjoyable, and once again something you could definitely see in a volume of a comic book, which I love.
Overall, Marvel's Spider-Man Miles Morales is an incredibly fun game that packs a lot of punch into its relatively short [100% in around 20 hours, excluding NG+] runtime. It features gameplay which improves further on that of its predecessor, and a great story line that kept me engaged throughout. I'd absolutely recommend picking this up if you played and enjoyed Marvel's Spider-Man, or simply if you like Spider-Man comic books.
Thanks for reading, and I'll catch you next week for another TOTW!
Extra Info:
PlayStation Page l Steam Page
