Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales
Developer/publisher SIE (Insomniac Games)
Format PS4, PS5 (tested)
Release Out now
With Peter Parker taking a much-needed break abroad, there’s a new swinger in town. This Brooklyn-born, Harlem-based replacement would seem to be the perfect holiday cover, yet as he steps up to assume the mantle of the Big Apple’s protector, Miles Morales is clearly suffering from an identity crisis. Happily, best friend Ganke Lee is ready with a pep talk. “Whenever you say Spider-Man, you always mean the other one,” he says, with a note of exasperation in his voice. “You’re Spider-Man.”
For large parts of Insomniac’s chunky standalone expansion (it’s been likened to in scope, but that somewhat undersells the runtime) that’s a good thing. Morales Spider-Man, with all that entails. The traversal that papered over so many cracks in the original game is, if anything, even more enjoyable here. There’s just a hint of resistance in the DualSense triggers – so subtly used that after a little while you might say the same: he always seems on the verge of mastering his powers without fully getting there. And that hint of teenage awkwardness is even better served by the unlockable Into The Spider-Verse suit, which mimics the film’s staccato animation technique wonderfully well.
