Early in Miles Morales, on his way home, Miles comes across someone painting a mural on the side of a building. One of none other than everyone's favorite web-slinger, Spider-Man. The classic, original Spider-Man, with his bug eyes and bright red suit. Miles, still amidst his Spider-training, suggests adding the new Spider-Man too, and the painter replies with something to the effect of a dismissive “maybe.”

From there, the quiet opening turns bombastic as Miles and Peter attempt to escort a prisoner transfer back to the ultra-maximum security Raft prison, only for Rhino to escape, rampage through the streets, a mall, J. Jonah Jameson's studio, and finally a power plant. Miles blames himself for how badly things went, including Peter almost dying, and to some extent he's right. Miles did screw up early on with the helicopter, but he was also the one that stopped Rhino. So Peter did his best to cheer up Miles, and give his reassurances about how it all went.

Then he drops the bombshell that he's not only leaving town, but the whole country for a few weeks to help MJ cover a story, and in doing so, is leaving Miles as New York's sole Spider-Man. Thus starts Marvel's Spider-Man Miles Morales, a game much more succinct and better paced than a heavily Branded® title like that might suggest.

I'm not going to beat by beat summarize the whole game's story, and I'm going to try to keep this short. Or at least short for me. Miles Morales is in so many ways an evolution of the previous Spider-Man game, but such a refinement that it often feels like it exceeds the original. Given the change in protagonist, that's fitting. Peter is the old faithful, the classic, the tried and true Spider-Man that's been around long before I, or most (all?) people reading this were born. Miles is new, young, and ready to prove himself. He lives in that space between youthful overconfidence and gnawing self doubt. That place where when things go right, he's the best of the best, top of the world, but when he screws up, he realizes he's still far from the best he could be.

But he's just a kid still, only seventeen. A kid whose dad was killed the year before, who lost touch with his former best friend Phin after the two went to different high schools, who is in the middle of moving into his grandmother's old apartment. And of course, a kid still trying to find himself, both figuratively, and literally, given his newfound Spider-powers. And not so spider-y powers, once he can harness his bio-electric Venom strikes, and invisibility.

As a brief aside, a while ago a friend who knows a lot about the long history of the Marvel universe informed me that “Venom” in the context of electric powers actually predates Venom the goopy space symbiote. Just something I know I needed clarification on after both this, and Spider-Verse just refer to Miles' electric sparking powers as “Venom” with zero regard or reference to what I assume is the “Venom” more widely known and associated with Spider-Man.

It does make me wonder that if Peter is playable in the next game (my assumption is it'll switch back and forth between him and Miles, hopefully each getting roughly equal screen time (rather than it being majority Peter)), he'll have a Venom button of his own, just like Miles...

Even though he has way fewer gadgets than Peter, Miles' Venom powers more than make up for it, and make the combat even more fun than it was before. In the early goings I thought they were making it a bit too easy (probably not helped by my just replaying the first game on a harder difficulty and starting this one on normal), but things got a lot tougher later on. You really need to be good at timing those dodges to not be constantly using the Venom meter to heal instead of attack. I'm not always good at that, haha. That said I do think it's easier in this game to just accidentally walk or jump into machine gun fire after they've already started shooting, and you no longer have the warning lines. I've had a fair number of combos ruined by that.

But back to the story, and how Miles really does go through so much more than someone his age should ever have to. Not in a tragic, wallowing in misery way, in that superhero “need to rise above and do the right thing” sort of way. Even if it sounds clichéd when I describe it that way. Or, maybe the fact that it works as well as it does when all the individual pieces could be the sort of cookie cutter superhero origin story parts just slapped together in another context. Evil corporation that needs to be stopped, strife with another super powered person whose heart is in the right place, but her methods are “too extreme,” and would only hurt more people in the end, etc.

I know I'm a sucker for these sorts of stories, so the bar that needs to be met for them to work for me is maybe lower than it is for some people. But there's just so much about Miles Morales that feels like they're really going for it in ways that the previous game didn't. Roxxon isn't just an evil corporation, they're an evil corporation building an unsafe power plant in Harlem. Specifically because Harlem is a part of New York that historically is predominantly people of color, and the corporation thinks they can get away with it. Thinks, probably correctly, that not as much attention would be drawn this way, unlike if it was white people getting sick, or dying. In a game where aside from the evil CEO, all the main cast are people of color, I think it's pretty clear what the game is trying to do, and say.

That's not me saying the game is trying to be some super leftist, socialist thing, just that it feels a bit closer to reality than a lot of superhero stories get. Or at least the mainstream stuff in movies, video games, rather than in the original comics themselves (a medium I sadly have little direct experience with). I will say though, as a leftist, socialist person myself, I do appreciate it, and wish it went even further. Anti-corporate stories are certainly nothing new, but I'll take them when I can get them!

One of the things I really like most about the game is that it's not just about Miles protecting Harlem, or all of New York from the big bad corporation and its dangerous new energy. He actually gets time to be put the “friendly neighborhood” in Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man. For as great as 2018's Spider-Man is, most of what Spider-Man does in that game is fighting big picture super villains, or stopping crimes on the street as the now infamous “Spider-Cop.” It did have the environmental help side missions with Harry's research stations, and a few times Peter would go to the Feast shelter to help out Aunt May, but when he's in the suit? He's fighting crime.

Miles, with the help of his nerdy tech friend Ganke's app, actually takes the time to help people with more mundane tasks. Like finding lost cats, or tracking down one guy's stolen car. Granted the stolen car leads to a chop shop, so it gets to slightly bigger picture crime stopping even in that stuff. Even then, it's not like he stumbled upon some huge conspiracy, it's just a chop shop. A chop shop where the guys there complain about how they thought Spider-Man wouldn't come after them since they were a relatively small time operation. Small time or not, stealing cars hurts the community, and Spider-Man isn't going to stand for that. And it's great to see a superhero game taking time to let the hero help people, rather than just protect the city.

It's especially cool considering that this is a tighter, better focused game than Spider-Man. Both in the main story and the side stuff, Miles Morales is focused in a way that keeps the story feeling propulsive throughout. There is downtime, time to breathe, but every story mission actually moves the story forward, in one way or another. Whether that's a confrontation with the villainous CEO Troy Baker, or just Miles reconnecting with his semi-family-disowned uncle Aaron. Could be catching up with his old friend Phin, or trying to stop the dangerous Underground from attacking something, or someone. Or both, as the story deepens and it turns out both Miles and Phin have secrets of their own.

The “A Plot” conflict is about Roxxon, their dangerous new energy source, and the Underground, a gang rising to prominence in New York that stands against Roxxon, but for mostly dubious reasons. Miles is in the middle of all this, trying to save his community from whatever the terrible long term effects of exposure to the new energy will be, and do it without costly casualties like the Underground's methods.

But that's not the real conflict. The real conflict is that the Tinkerer, the brains behind the Underground's assault on Roxxon is Miles' old friend Phin. She wants revenge for Roxxon killing her older brother, who also just happened to be the guy who actually developed the new tech Roxxon is using. And if that wasn't enough, Miles' uncle Aaron is also the Prowler, an old B or C tier New York masked villain. He says he just wants to protect Miles, but his attempts to do so only makes things worse, and drive a wedge between him and Miles right when Miles needs someone like his uncle Aaron, not the Prowler the most.

During all this Miles' mother is busy with her campaign for City Council against an unseen opponent, so she's not around as much as she could be for Miles. Not that she would know he was Spider-Man until pretty late in the game, but sometimes people need whatever support they can get, even if it's from people that couldn't possibly know everything they're going through.

As another quick aside, the fact that the game never shows, or I think directly names Rio Morales' political opponent is maybe my one “big” issue with the game's story. It's just the sort of thing that makes it feel clear from the start that she's going to win, and kinda makes the whole thing feel like a weird subplot that doesn't need to be there. I say “kinda” because she is campaigning against Roxxon more than anything else, and there's things that happen around her campaign, and during a rally at one point so I don't actually think they should have cut it from the game. Just maybe given a little time to making it seem like she was running against another person.

Back to Miles, his being torn between his oldest and closest friend, and that person being the one he needs to stop to save his community... It's great, but it's also kinda heartbreaking. Especially after Miles makes his final attempt to stop Phin before it's too late, and the game switches to an extended flashback of Miles and Phin going to a museum exhibit. The two of them had a science project on display, and spending time with the two of them being happy, goofing around, just being kids drove home how tragic it is that their friendship went the way it did. And they ended up on opposite sides of this conflict.

In the end, after realizing that Miles was right and her plan would actually destroy literally all of Harlem, Phin ends up sacrificing herself to save Harlem, and Miles. In so many ways I wish she hadn't died. I think she's a great character I would have liked to her return in the next game. It would have been great, and heartwarming to see her and Miles become friends again. But more than anything else, she was still just a teen, still so young. She deserved better. Not in a storytelling/writing way, in the way that so many people hurt by corporations, by society at large deserve better. Especially when it's always the people at the bottom that get hurt the most.

Once all that is said and done, once Harlem is safe, and Miles has recovered, he's walking down the street again. Headphones on, listening to music, finally having a chance to relax, and live a normal life. If only for a few minutes. And as he goes, he passes that same mural from the start of the game, except now it's finished. Finished, and now featuring not just the original, but the new Spider-Man too.

Because to put it into the game's words, “he's our Spider-Man.” A Spider-Man for the people who didn't think they'd get one. A Spider-Man for the people who never thought they'd have a superhero who was from their community.

As sad as it was for Phin to die, and for Miles to go through everything he did, in the end he still saved the day, and became the Spider-Man he was meant to be.

Like I said earlier, I'm a sucker for these sorts of stories, but even so, I think this game is genuinely among the best superhero stories, at least in games. Almost certainly in games. I don't regret waiting until I got a PS5 to play it, but it is so good that I do wish I'd played it sooner. It certainly would have felt more seasonally appropriate last year around release, given the Christmas setting.

Anyway, before I ramble too much and get too far off topic, I'll just reiterate myself: I think Miles Morales is a fantastic game, and I couldn't be more excited for whatever Insomniac does with the franchise next.

And, of course, thank you as always for taking the time to read my blogs. I know I don't actually reply much to people who comment on the blogs (often because I don't have the energy to get into long discussions), but I do greatly appreciate when people read my writing.