My Review of "Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales"

Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales is one of the big launch titles for the PlayStation 5 in 2020. I've been a little worried playing it because so far everything that I've bought from for the PS5 including the PS5 have been buggy. There's a good chance that this game isn't quite as finished as it should be seeing as they had to hit a certain deadline to coincide with the PS5 launch.

I have a weird history with the Spider-Man franchise on the PlayStation. I've seen many Spider-Man games come and go. I never played the older Spider-Man games from original PlayStation up into PlayStation 4. It's not to say I never wanted to. I just never got to it. I remember hearing rave reviews for the game back in the day even with the original PlayStation version. I even bought the Spider-Man game for my nephew for the PS2 and never got to play it.

Now it's 2020 and I bought this expensive PS5 at launch and there's practically no games for it. I have no choice but to buy the game and test it out. After playing it, I start to wonder what I missed out on. Luckily I bought the Ultimate Edition which includes the remastered version of Spider-Man on the PlayStation 4. I hope that game is just as good as this game.

Right out the game this game is gorgeous looking. It looks like I am watching a movie. The load times on the PS5 are absolutely lightning quick. I could have swore I was playing a cartridge based game from the past. When I start the game off there's a plethora of options of how you want to play the game. For the casual gamer this might be really confusing because it has a lot of technical jargon that we don't really understand. As of this review I also received the new update that allowed the 60 fps with ray tracing (that's just means things reflect off objects to make things look more realistic).

I choose the basic options and away I go. It starts to feel more and more like a movie. Games are being designed this way nowadays where the story is starting to become more important than the game. I get a little worried because I don't want another Metal Gear game where it's all movie and I fall asleep before the game starts. Fortunately it isn't.

You're Miles Morales obviously and you're the new Spider-Man in New York. The original Spider-Man has been training Miles to become self sufficient enough to take on tasks himself. The opening starts off with the two fighting off this character named Rhino. It's a wild ride with crazy amounts of fun camera angles and adds to the variety in gameplay. This is a marvel to show to demo to your friends to show what the PS5 can do. Everything moves really smoothly with no hiccups.

It's also a great training ground to teach you all of Miles' arsenal of moves. Boy does he have a ton of moves. Again it may be overwhelming for newcomers but as a casual gamer myself I was able to get used to it after a little while. Most importantly it wasn't frustrating to learn. So you'll get used to it and have fun doing so.

Once you beat up Rhino (training mode) the original Spider-Man tells you that he's going on vacation and you're going to be protecting the city yourself. Miles' is a different Spider-Man as he isn't sure of himself and wants to do what's best. The storyline is quite different from what we've seen in the movies.

Miles' has his friend Genki to help him out with all of the tasks and missions along the way. There are a ton of missions and tasks as well. You could very well spend hours on this game. I found myself getting addicted to picking up all of the hidden items spread throughout the city. Each of the missions and tasks also have little side bonuses that give you incentive to make things a little harder for you. In addition to these tasks and missions you also have these obstacle courses to help further train your skills. It's very cleverly designed so that you will get better as you progress through the game.

The whole story involves this shady corporation called Roxxon that is developing this product called Nuform. There's an underground resistance against Roxxon and Miles basically has to figure out the truth between the conflict. You'll be tasked to find clues to figure out what exactly is Nuform, who wants it and why is it so dangerous?

It's a simple plot but all of the characters in this game are where it's at. Each one of them charismatically add to the story with their own interests. You can easily get sucked into the world and I guess that's what makes a great game nowadays. I did however find that they found the wrong voice actor or designed Miles Morales wrong. The voice sounds like a little kid but the character looks like a grown man. The voice and the character didn't really make sense for me when I was playing. Either make Miles look younger or have an older sounding voice.

The gameplay is also where it's at. Again it is a little bit of a learning curve to get used to but once you got it, it'll really feel natural. It's really fun just creating combos as you swing through the skies or fighting bad guys. They just keep adding new moves so that you can perform new combos that you never thought were possible. I did have some issues using the L3 combos but it was still fun. All the venom moves can also be daunting to remember.

As for glitches there are a few but nothing that would take me out of the game. There were the odd times when my character would have a hell of a time because I was wall crawling, got stuck and the stupid camera wouldn't help me figure out how to get out. They were only a few of these instances though. I did have syncing issues with the PS5 and the game. I don't know what it was but it was really annoying constantly seeing an error on my PS5 notifications every time I turned on the system.

Overall, I would say that if you have a PS5 there aren't many choices but this is definitely a must buy for you. It's one of the better games I've played in the past few years. It was an incredible experience and I will definitely go back to finish the platinum trophy for it. I have to give this game an 8.5 out of 10. It's been a while since I just continued to play a game until I finished it.