Game Review - Spider-Man: Miles Morales (2020)

What's up, you bunch of deplorable degenerates of the blockchain? I've dragged my worn out ass back over to the computer to write up another intellectually stimulating review, that will get the blood pumping to your penis in microseconds. Today, I'm going to be going over the most recent Spider-man game, Spider-Man: Miles Morales. Spider-Man Miles Morales is the sequel game to the 2018 Spider-Man game, both of which were developed by Insomniac Games. While this game was in development, I assumed it was just going to be a DLC that would be dropped for the previous Spider-man game at some point. However, it turned out to be it's own stand alone game which dropped for the PS5 launch, which I normally would have been much happier with, personally.

But, holy fuck, this game genuinely just feels like you're playing DLC.

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And, I do mean that I just said. This game is absurdly short for the price point, which is $50. I did a handful of side missions, so it's not like I was trying to speed run the game or anything. Yet, I beat this game in roughly about 5 and a half hours. For the amount of content you get out of this game, that is a pretty terrible admission price. I really do believe to my g-fuel filled core that this game was supposed to be a DLC drop, but, they decided to just make it into its own stand alone title for more money. Maybe the side quests could have added a bit more to my playtime, but, I thought they were kind of dogshit. They all basically equate to fetch quests to gather time capsules, sound samples for a mixtape. Just really boring shit that wasn't very fun to do, which is why I only did a small amount of it in the first place. The only interesting quests are the main story line, which is the only place you'll find any meat on this dilapidated bone.

And, even with the main story being interesting and engaging, there's just not that much there because the game is so fucking short. And, the length of the game kind of works against the narrative of the game. Everything has to be at a very fast pace, where things feel a bit rushed without room to breath. One moment you'll be having friendly banter with a character, and then 90 seconds later they are now your mortal enemy who wants to rip your fucking asshole out of your throat. Or, we get introduced to a new villain and normally you'd have some time to wonder who it could be and build up some mystery/wonder about it.

But, in this game it just shows you who it is within 7 minutes. There's no build up or emotional tension, because there isn't time for that. Everything moves too quickly, so when there's emotional moments that are supposed to hit you like Mike Tyson, it instead just feels like a damp fart being blown on you. You never get to grow with the characters or build up an emotional investment in them because you have to blow through everything as fast as possible. It really does hurt the game a lot, and I think it could have been so much better if they'd just put more time into developing it into something past a fucking DLC. The game is just too compact with too much stuff thrown into it. The writing and narrative itself isn't bad or anything either where you can blame that. The game is just too damn rushed.

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A big part that the game does well with, however, is the combat system. The 2018 Spider-Man game had pretty solid combat, and, this game takes that and shoves some cocaine up its nose and just drastically improves it. I really enjoyed the combat, it's bold and fun and reminds me of the Batman Arkham games free flow combat, if you dialed that up to 11. I don't remember a single fight in the game where it got old, or where I got bored. There's a ton of options with incorporating gadgets into your combat, lots of combos you can pull off to pound into all the henchmen you come across. There's also different styles of combat that you can approach. If you don't wanna do a ground and pound type of style, you could go for more stealth oriented combat where you take enemies out silently and plan out your path. However, I don't really like doing that shit and prefer to just slap some fat ass and do cool finisher moves that probably cause the deaths of the people I'm fighting, but we pretend it doesn't.

One other thing I want to quickly mention which I really liked about the fighting in this game is that you can cancel anything at any point by dodging and then pick it right back up again without skipping a beat. So, if you're about to pull off some batshit crazy combo but it's going to get ruined by some losers super soaker filled with pee, you can just hit dodge and get out of the way before you finish twisting some dudes nipples off. It's just a great system, and is the cherry on top of the gameplay. The only thing I can really gripe about with the combat system is the skill tree that you unlock as you play. There really wasn't that many skills available to even unlock, and some of them that you could get were very underwhelming and just didn't feel like it made much of a difference as I played the game. Not a huge deal or anything, I just think they could have made a few more skills and made them more impactful.

While not exactly a part of the combat system, the movement system is also honestly pretty flawless in the game. I know there's been a huge circle jerk in the gaming community over no Spider-man game being able to top Spider-Man 2 for the PS2's webslinging mechanic, but, all of those people can finally put their dicks away because I would go as far to say that this game easily tops that and does a much better job with it. The webslinging is so damn fun in this game that I could probably just enjoy myself mindlessly swinging around doing nothing for 15 minutes. The movement system is so enjoyable that you never will find yourself wanting to fast travel around as you play. It's just top tier shit.

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Overall, while I did enjoy my time with the game, I will not recommend it at the $50 mark. This is easily a $20 game all day long, and I have no idea why they decided to slide their fingers up gamers rectums across the world. I think unless you like to piss all over your money, you'll probably regret buying this at full price. The narrative is decent, with some cheesy dialogue here and there, but mostly well done. The cut scenes are gorgeous to look at, which was just nice to see. The set pieces were pretty cool, combat is great, movement system is great. There's a lot to like here, but, it's very short on content to actually consume and there are things in the game that just feel rushed with the pacing, which hurts the game ultimately.

But, yeah. Until next time you fine folks of whoretown.

Later.