Marvel’s Spider-Man turned out to be something that Spider-Man fans have been lacking all these years. Namely – a sensible and entertaining, albeit slightly secondary, superhero action movie in the open world. In my opinion, she had only one serious problem – that sooner or later the game ended. Well, Miles Morales corrects this shortcoming at least a little. Although the new project Insomniac Games is more like a stand-alone add-on than an independent game.
On the nextgen, the game, of course, looks better than on the PS4 , but there is still no mind-blowing difference
One Flew Over the Vulture’s Nest
In different universes, who didn’t wear the Spidey costume, but only real comic geeks knew about the existence of Miles Morales a couple of years ago. The Oscar-winning cartoon Through the Universes and, of course, Marvel’s Spider-Man, where the black schoolboy was on the sidelines, introduced this cheerful boy to the general public . Now Peter Parker was off with MJ to Europe for the holidays, and the whole town stayed on Miles. Naturally, it could not end calmly. From somewhere, technically advanced terrorists from the Underground organization, led by a mysterious not-quite-villain Craftsman, have crawled out. And they got across the road a typical evil corporation “Roxon”, which with might and main promotes a suspicious project to create clean energy.
All this adds up to a not-so-twisted, typical comic-book conflict. Those who have watched Into the Universes (or read at least one book in their life) will instantly see through all the plot “surprises”, so the story serves only as an excuse to release Spider into town again. And to be honest, Christmas New York is great.
Flying on the web in terms of efficiency, entertainment and extravagance still leaves Batman with his cloak far behind.
It’s nice to just walk on it. Fly on the web, listen to podcasts by Jay Jonah Jameson or Danicast (yes, the former editor-in-chief of the Daily Bugle has a competitor). Watching the sunset, sitting on the top of the Avengers Tower … True, it is clear that the old PS4 is pulling it all out with all her might. Both the picture in the mourning frame and the empty city shout about this. The elaboration of the environment in some places clearly does not reach the level of The Last of Us Part II or Red Dead Redemption 2 , but it is easy to understand and explain: neither one nor the other had such dynamics and verticality. However, in the rare moments when you can safely wander around and look around, the world looks quite at the level of the best works of Naughty Dog and Rockstar Games… Although the feeling that the console is tired, it still aches. Even if not as sharp as it was at sunset PS3 .
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Well, at least the FPS does not sag (except for the final episode), and the game remains driving and coolly directed until the very end. Either we save a cat named Spider-Man, then we help the homeless, then in the best film traditions we piece together a crumbling bridge using QTE, then we solve simple puzzles with cobwebs and electricity. And whatever Miles does, it’s all fucking exciting.
New York still offers a bunch of side quests outside of the story campaign. We’re looking for time capsules, audio recordings, underground caches, Peter Parker’s training trials, cleaning up construction sites and generally killing time as best we can. Fun, frankly, for fans
Unfriendly neighbor
In principle, everything that was said in the review of the previous part of the series applies to Miles Morales. This is the same game, albeit two or three times smaller. What’s the last part! The gameplay scheme has not changed, probably since Batman: Arkham Asylum – well, Arkham City. Flying around the city – stealth – fighting – CGI videos – collecting optional junk. And I must say, in the able hands of Insomniac, this ancient alchemical formula still works. With the amendment only that instead of gloomy Gotham and a gloomy man in black, we have a festive winter New York and a boy in multi-colored tights.
Sometimes we are allowed to live the life of an ordinary teenager, but a family dinner on Christmas Eve, a Christmas market, or a science exhibition takes just a few minutes. Then the action carousel spins up again
Though Miles feels little different from Parker; much less than, say, Robin from Batman. Yes, he looks like a child who, for the sake of laughter, climbed into the work suit of his older brother, but he has almost the same dynamics and techniques – and he still has no time to look at details during fights. Battles with bandits, “Roxon” mercenaries and “underground” are still in the center of the gameplay and have not changed at all. Even new spider tricks do not affect the picture at all. Bioelectricity and invisibility make attacks stronger, but in fact only replace gadgets, which Morales has less than botanist Parker. Actually, the new enemies also differ little from the old ones. The same can be said about bosses – battles with them are rare, but endlessly commonplace. Even the final fight turned out to be more exhausting and difficult than interesting.
Invisibility and “bioenergy” are very useful things. But the enemies also learned new tricks. For example, during stealth episodes, the Handyman’s henchmen can simply take off and see the Spider, hiding somewhere on the mezzanine
It’s the same with stealth. Invisibility, of course, helps a lot (although the enemies have control over it), but the game never became a stealth action in the spirit of noir episodes of Shattered Dimensions . Stealth here is ideologically very far from Rocksteady’s multi-level puzzles.: hide and seek is still very dynamic, and it is much more interesting to take risks than to wait for the right moment to attack while sitting on a gargoyle. Moreover, in most cases stealth is only an option. The Bat, if you remember, threw away its wings after a couple of automatic rounds, but the Spider will calmly withstand even a direct hit from a bazooka. Detection most often means just an excuse to flex your fists, not a return to the checkpoint. Therefore, the choice between the quiet and loud paths is a matter of taste or mood, not game design. And the fact that both paths work equally well is very cool.
If desired, in the photo mode, you can steer at least a comic book cover, at least a Christmas card, at least such a Silent Hill
There is generally a lot of freedom here: in moving around the city, in the choice of activities, in the style of play. Yes, it was not without problems – and already familiar. A large, but not very diverse map, dozens of side quests of the same type (“I need to somehow kill the time before Uncle Aaron calls”), boring leveling, when you have to choose from several skills of the same uselessness … But Spider-Man costs, arms outstretched, step into the abyss between the skyscrapers, as if you forget about all this, albeit for a very short time. The series is not all perfect, but the only thing that it really needs is a full second part.
Collecting new outfits is still a separate pleasure.
Miles Morales became an independent project as if by mistake. It would have looked much better as a DLC for 2018 Marvel’s Spider-Man along with The City that Never Sleeps . Of course, this is still one of the best games of the outgoing generation of consoles and a worthy bridge to a new generation, but, my God, why so few?
