Some thoughts about… Spider-Man: Miles Morales (PS4) (Patreon)

I wasn’t a big fan of the main Spider-Man game. Sure I liked the Doc Ock storyline, but I thought the Mister Negative stuff was half-baked and didn’t like web swinging, the gadgets, and the end-game combat was super tedious. So when the Miles Morales expansion was announced, I was pretty lukewarm on it and it seemed super over-priced, but now it’s down to a reasonable price, so we’re checking it out!

It’s pretty much more of the same so it’s super over-priced for what’s there. Thoughts done!

Deeper thoughts… Miles seems squandered as a protagonist. His voice alone, ugh. It’s really tough to listen to a whiny teenager for a whole game. Short expansion or not, I wanted to skip cutscenes so I didn’t have to listen to Corporate Teen Writing. And man, I just did not care about anybody in the game. Nobody in the story feels like an actual person. Everybody that’s good is an absolute angel, holier than everybody around them. Everybody that’s bad is a moustache twirling cartoon character picking fights with small business owners and the homeless. And the game doesn’t care about homeless people or have any commentary on a society that in the story just pretends to care about the underdog; they’re just props to make allies saints and villains scum.

Couple that with the laziest of writing for smart people. Are you good with technology? Then that means in a day or two, you can invent programs or gear that would revolutionize society. At least in the main game, Peter was a scientist and worked for a lab where he had access to state-of-the-art technology. Ganke is… a high schooler with a laptop? And he can just make anything the story requires. Miles makes a device that creates sentient hard light clones of himself just instantly based on a set-up Peter made where holograms were confined to a specific projector. And the bad guy… any one of their devices would change the world and they bust out new tech every mission. It all just contributes to the idea that none of these characters are people and I shouldn’t invest anything in their troubles. Everybody is just a walking plot device. Should I hate fictional teenagers this much? Clearly no, but here we are. We’re learning things about ourselves and we need to live with that.

One of the best things about the game, it takes place at Christmas. I’m not even a huge Christmas person, but there is just something I love about video games that take place at Christmas. The holiday is barely even relevant to the game’s story other than providing a reason for a few characters to be in the same place, but it’s still just… nice. More games should take place on holidays, especially Christmas. Learn from the greats, like Yakuza! And… Blue Stinger! Christmas even makes something like NiGHTS good!

The writing wants to have it both ways and depends on you knowing the Spider-Verse movie but also not. In the game, Miles unlocks his camouflage powers for… reasons, and he instantly masters them. You’ll spend a few hours using them flawlessly, aaand then there’s a story scene where, like in Spider-Verse, Miles can’t use his powers on command and almost gets caught. Then a bit later, there’s a scene where Miles can’t un-sticky his hand and is about to be caught, despite this never even remotely being an issue through the game. There’s just no reason for the scenes outside of callbacks to the movie. The much more likable and better written movie. Then the game’s version of the Prowler is just so poorly written. We’re introduced to the Prowler by Miles randomly finding one of his dad’s police files on the villain, almost immediately followed by Miles mentioning that his uncle hasn’t been around for a while. So if you have any media literacy, it’s presented that Uncle=Prowler but Miles just doesn’t know. You shortly meet the uncle and he’s a nice guy, and figured out Miles’s secret identity but is cool and helpful about it. A short time later in the game, you menacingly meet the Prowler and… he’s also a nice guy, helps Miles out, and instantly reveals his identity as the uncle. But then the game starts using that menacing musical sting from Spider-Verse. So if you’re familiar with the movie, you get the audio callback, but it’s completely gratuitous. If you’re not familiar with the movie, the game is using this fear inducing sinister music for… your friendly uncle that gave you a subway pass and unlocked the game’s fast travel system. Eeevil! When he comes back towards the end of the game, things start to come together, but the game never really explores the issues. They could have really done something with the Prowler and Tinkerer to explore a theme of “how far can you go doing bad things for a good reason until they’re just bad”. Instead, you just get last minute attempts at redemption the game, characters, and writing didn’t earn.

The entire emotional impact of the main conflict is lost because both characters act like idiots and try to force a “you lied to me” drama that is wholly unoriginal, uninteresting, and kind of just wrong. It’s the kind of conflict that would be completely solved by normal people talking for ten seconds and while the two character do actually sit together and discuss things multiple times, the writing has to twist itself so they never actually talk about the issues because they’re so flimsy and don’t stand up to scrutiny. There’s also Miles’s mom, who apparently overdosed on Botox just before the events of the game or something because she can’t emote like a human being. Whether she’s happy, sad, or angry, her face is always stretched back in a weird half-grimace/half-smile. Everybody else in the game can move their mouth and make facial expressions except for her.

Combat’s about the same, if a bit worse. You’re required to open with Miles’s Venom attacks on the new enemies, so combat becomes rote and rigid. If enemy is doing X, then you do Y. It doesn’t feel free-form or Spider-Man-y. And every enemy has SO much health. Until you get to late game levels where you earn some attack power boosts, Miles feels like a total wimp. Coupled with every other cutscene being any other person around the city knocking the stuffing out of Miles.

So much of the game is a mess of “hold one button, tap another” style combos. It’s such an unwieldy, awful way to handle things. Especially when it’s a “puzzle” where it could have just been a single button press.

I can’t really remember how the original version worked, but now you can equip suit mods as you see fit, instead of them being tied to specific costumes. Buying a suit unlocks the mod but you can change your suit look afterwards and still use the mods, so you’re not stuck making a choice between useful upgrades vs looking cool. I went with the “Animated” suit again.

I hit some minor bugs along the way, but they were mostly annoyances. You can’t interact with things unless you’re a specific distance away from them. Close to a door? Then Miles is completely at a loss for what to do. Take a few steps away from the door and Miles remembers how they work again. I hit one issue where I couldn’t interact with collectibles or things around the city. The little UI bubble appeared but the Triangle symbol was missing to actually interact with things. Quitting and launching the game the next day fixed that up.

They originally charged $50 for this, but it’s just an expansion and doesn’t seem interested in proving itself to be anything more than that. It’s been two years since I played the base game and just about everything felt instantly familiar. Same enemies, same challenges, same bosses, same structure, same boring side activities like the Crimes and enemy bases… Same squirrely controls where it’s a pain to try to get Spider-Man to stand in one specific spot or he gets confused if an object is too close to him and blasts off it instead of running around it. Same awful camera that fights against you. Same problems trying to target a specific enemy to grab their shield because the game will target an enemy away from you instead. Miles’s Venom powers are the only major difference from the main game but outside of the game forcing you to use them, they don’t really change anything, and other than that… Kind of the same thing. Not to belabor a point, but $50!

If you were a huge fan of the main game, congrats, you got more of the same. If you had any complaints about the first game, hey, they’re probably still an issue here and this expansion isn’t suddenly going to make you love the game. And the writing is bad. So very bad.