Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales PC Review – Short and Sweet

Sony seems to be sticking with quite a schedule with its recent PC releases. Just a few months after bringing Marvel’s Spider-Man to PC—check out our review of that PC release here—Sony has now brought Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales along for the ride as well. Much like its predecessor, the game has been available on PS4 and PS5 and quite some time now, and you can check out our review on those platforms if that’s your jam, but if you’re a PC gamer that’s about to dive into the world of Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales for the first time ever, well, let’s get to it.

Much like the recent trend of Sony’s PC releases, Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales makes the jump from consoles to PC quite brilliantly. Echoing the protagonist’s sheer style, the game itself is a wonderful PC port, featuring a healthy series of options to play around with, and running fantastically right out of the gate without much tinkering needed on my end. For context, I reviewed Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales on a PC running on a Ryzen 5 3600 CPU, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, 32GB of RAM, and the game was running off a SATA SSD.

For the majority of my time with the game, I was able to enjoy smooth frame rates with an average of around 100fps, which puts it around on par with the original Marvel’s Spider-Man on PC. There was a healthy choice when it came to tinkering with graphics settings, ranging from simpler options like resolution, depth of field and motion blur, to heavier options like DLSS and ray tracing on supported graphics cards.

“Much like the recent trend of Sony’s PC releases, Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales makes the jump from consoles to PC quite brilliantly.”

And much like its older sibling, Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales also played well with a Steam controller, once again likely owing to the game’s compatibility with the Steam Deck. Speaking of which, while player accounts of how well it runs on Valve’s handheld system aren’t yet available, the game is set to run just fine on the Steam Deck, which also means that Linux players will also be in luck in getting the game to run on their operating system of choice.

Now, with all the talk about how well it runs out of the way, let’s finally talk about how well it plays.

When coming to Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales so soon after having revisited Marvel’s Spider-Man, it’s easy to see that the newer title is more of an iterative sequel rather than a revolutionary one. Rather than bringing sweeping, radical changes to the core gameplay, Insomniac instead chose to refine on the groundwork already laid by the original. Everything from the web-slinging to the combat feels like an evolution of pre-existing ideas, and there’s little in the way of anything new.

That isn’t to say that Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales is simply a reskin of Marvel’s Spider-Man, however. Aside from the story, which we’ll get to in a bit, Miles Morales as a character also has a few new toys to play with. First and foremost, when it comes to combat, the new Venom Powers play an integral role. Essentially a more focused version of the suit powers from Marvel’s Spider-Man, Venom Power acts as a super attack that can be used in tandem with the default healing ability. Sure, the variety in powers has been cut down a fair bit, but instead, what we get now is a more focused combat experience with encounters designed around the idea that the player will always have access to Venom Powers, regardless of the rest of their loadout.

“Miles Morales tells a plot that, while not as grand as that of its predecessor, certainly feels a lot more focused.”

Generally speaking, however, if you’ve played Marvel’s Spider-Man, you’ll know what to expect with Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales.

The biggest change, really, is the story and writing in general. Being a shorter game— Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales is around 7-8 hours for the main story, compared to Marvel’s Spider-Man’s 17-18 hours, Miles Morales tells a plot that, while not as grand as that of its predecessor, certainly feels a lot more focused.

There’s a stronger emphasis on the game’s ensemble cast of characters and their interpersonal relationships, and rather than focusing on saving the entirety of New York, Miles, being new to this whole superhero thing, instead has to focus on saving the neighborhood he calls home. Sure, the story will take you all over the city, but it largely comes down to characters from Harlem trying to do what’s best for Harlem itself. No one’s out to rule the world or destroy the planet. Does the story feel as grand as you typically see in other superhero media? No. It does, however, feel concise, and a lot more enjoyable thanks to strong pacing and the lack of padding.

And let’s not forget the true stars of Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, its lovable cast of characters. Right off the bat, the game focuses on having you spend quite a bit of time with its core cast, from fighting crime alongside Peter Parker to having a Christmas dinner with your mother and your two best friends, and eventually even hanging out with your uncle in strange circumstances, Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales places quite a bit of emphasis on making sure you enjoy the company of these characters before it even thinks about kicking off its main story.

Generally speaking, while Marvel’s Spider-Man tells an epic tale that really drives home the struggles of Peter Parker’s two lives, Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales tells a more character-centric story that feels more like it’s a coming of age story.

“Seriously, just the addition of some really good beats goes a surprisingly long way in making the game’s music memorable.”

Last, but not least, I can’t really leave this review alone without talking about the soundtrack. In just about every single way possible, the soundtrack in Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales leaves the one from Marvel’s Spider-Man in the dust. Now, it may come as a surprise to many, but I personally find sweeping orchestral scores to be rather bland, boring, and generally forgettable. Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales still features these grand overtures in the right moments, but more often than not, we get some sick hip-hop beats to go alongside the violins and horns. Seriously, just the addition of some really good beats goes a surprisingly long way in making the game’s music memorable.

In a vacuum, Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales is a fantastic game. But when you take into account the relatively recent release of Marvel’s Spider-Man on PC, Miles Morales comes off looking even better. Sure, it isn’t doing anything new, but it doesn’t really have to. It acts as an excellent refinement of ideas that were introduced in its predecessor, and let’s face it, not every game has to go around reinventing the wheel just for the sake of it.

It acts rather fantastically as a short middle story to bridge the gap between Marvel’s Spider-Man and its upcoming sequel, all the while telling a much more personal story about an incredibly likable new protagonist, his friends, his family, and his neighborhood. While Miles Morales isn’t going to be saving the world for a while—he is still new at this after all—he’s definitely well on his way to bigger and better things.

This game was reviewed on PC.

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