YMMV page for the franchise in general
YMMV page for Spider-Man (PS4)
YMMV page for Marvel's Spider-Man 2
- Angst? What Angst?: Despite Phin being a long-time friend of Miles to the point where he sees her as a sister and Miles's dad saw her as an "almost daughter", Rio's reaction to her death is surprisingly subdued despite her essentially being a part of the family.
- Awesome Music:
- The game has no less than two songs peformed by Jaden Smith.
- The trailer's soundtrack, "On My Own"
by Jaden and Kid Cudi, immediately caught the fans' attention. It also plays after finishing the game's opening mission, "Hold On To Your Web Shooters", allowing Miles to embrace the mantle of Spider-Man and making swinging around the city more cinematic. The exchange at the end between Miles and Peter seals it -Peter: New York's ONLY Spider-Man.Miles: I'm New York's only Spider-Man... (the subtitles change to address Miles as Spider-Man) I'm New York's only Spider-Man! Please don't screw this up. - "I'm Ready", which plays during the game's Creative Closing Credits and, unlike "On My Own", is made for the game itself. The lyrics really do a great job of showcasing the future Miles has ahead of him as the Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man.They think I'm way too youngTo stand up for the ones I loveBut let me tell you somethin'
- The trailer's soundtrack, "On My Own"
- "Where We Come From" is a very upbeat and cheerful song which captures the hope and triumph at the center of the game's story.
- John Paesano is back from Spider-Man (PS4) to do the soundtrack for this game and like in that game, the soundtrack is incredible, with much of it mixing orchestra and electronic synths together to create a soundtrack that is true to its predecessor, but with a unique and distinctive identity of its own, much like Miles Morales himself. Standouts include the main theme, "Never Give Up", the energetic "Spider-Training", the intense boss theme against the Prowler, "Trying to Protect You" and the fast paced and climatic final boss theme "Worst Enemies".
- The game has no less than two songs peformed by Jaden Smith.
- Base-Breaking Character: The Tinkerer AKA Phin Mason is quite a hotly debated character. A lot of fans dislike her and think that the narrative is trying to milk way too much sympathy out of her due to her absolute refusal to take responsibility for her plans going awry and instead blame Miles for them, up to the point where her stubbornness nearly ended up costing the lives of several innocent people and could have just made Krieger look better in the public eye, making her come across as extremely idiotic. However, others are willing to cut her a bit more slack since she was grieving over the loss of her brother, wasn't in her right state of mind as a result, and still had good intentions at heart, even if she went about it the wrong way. Furthermore even the game acknowledges that Miles knowingly messed up in handling her delicate emotional state so it’s not unreasonable that she’s unwilling to listen to him after he lied and manipulated her. Then there are those who think she's just too similar to Doc Ock and Mister Negative from the previous game.
- Best Boss Ever:
- Prowler. Much like Taskmaster in the first game, his boss fight was praised for being an engaging Mirror Boss and having interesting personal stakes for Miles. As a result there were also a number of those who would've preferred Prowler being the central antagonist of the game over Tinkerer.
- Not that Tinkerer is at ALL a slouch in this department either. An intense, fast paced duel as you pit all your gadgets, powers and speed against the Tinkerer's vast array of weapons set to an emotional backdrop and Awesome Music almost as good as the first game's climax.
- The chase/battle with Rhino at the beginning of the game is excellent on many levels: showing how out of his depth Miles is at first, establishing immediate action and tension, adding new facets to gameplay (venom power & Rhino wrangling,) and a sly nod toward/subversion of Peter's tendency to die to set up Miles taking the mantle.
- The boss at the end of the Holo-training missions is a neat surprise, and manages to be as fun and thrilling as the best bosses from the first game, especially once a second Holo-Vulture joins the fray.
- Catharsis Factor:
- There is something oddly satisfying about getting to beat up Rhino after the harrowing experience he gave Miles in the first game. Even better, you get to do it twice!
- Simon Krieger freaking out while getting arrested and publicly humiliated after the Prowler blows the whistle on him is very satisfying after he has spent the entire game being an insufferable Smug Snake.
- While probably not Insomniac's intention since Miles very clearly doesn't want to hurt her, the boss battle against Tinkerer and her gradually building frustration at Miles' inability to stay down can be very satisfying since the player is far more likely to have long lost their patience with Phin than Miles is.
- Complete Monster: Simon Krieger is the sociopathic head of the research and development at Roxxon. Placed in charge of the Nuform Project, Krieger has Rick Mason develop Nuform, only for it to make civilians horribly sick, with Krieger choosing to distribute it anyways, ignoring the risks out of pure greed. When Rick Mason tries to stop the project, Krieger kills him, resulting in Rick's sister, Phin, becoming the Tinkerer. When Phin steals the Nuform, Krieger has his enforcer, Rhino, capture both Miles and Phin, going back on his deal with Prowler to let Miles go, and has them both tortured for information, with Krieger implying that he plans on dissecting Miles for his powers. Knowing that Phin plans to destroy Roxxon Plaza, Krieger has the Nuform reactor sabotaged so it will destroy all of Harlem instead of just Roxxon Plaza while Krieger hides in his bunker to survive the blast, planning on painting himself as an victim of a terrorist attack, before remaking Harlem in his own image. A cruel and corrupt businessman with no regard towards human life, Krieger will murder anyone just for the sake of money.
- Ensemble Dark Horse:
- Everyone who plays the game loves Spider-Man, the Bodega Cat.
- As far as the suits go, the Bodega and the 2020 suits ended up being the runaway favorites. The Bodega suit for allowing you to swing around with Spider-Man the Bodega Cat in your backpack. 2020 got highlighted for its unique design and Daft Punk-esque aesthetics.
- Deaf street artist Hailey Cooper won over a lot of fans thanks to her sweet nature, adorable interactions with Miles/Spider-Man, and helpfulness at the end of her sidequest. More than a few people are open to the idea of her and Miles becoming an item in the future because of this. In the next game, they would get their wish.
- Epileptic Trees: Despite no confirmation as such from Insomniac or Sony, there's no small amount of fans that believe that the game was originally intended to be a DLC expansion for the original game that was later repurposed as a launch title for the PlayStation 5, mainly based on its smaller scale and its number of reused assets (especially since there's a glitch that allows you to play as Peter).
- Game-Breaker:
- The Mega Venom Blast is your most powerful move, basically creating a giant explosion centered around yourself. It takes 3 bars of energy to execute, but will instantly take out anything but the biggest mooks (on Ultimate difficulty), severely damage and stun said biggest mooks, and, most importantly, heals you back to full health. If you're playing New Game Plus, you also gain a skill that automatically activates the Mega Venom Blast if you are about to be KO-ed, which means that, once again, you are restored to full health upon the brink of death. The 'caveat' is that this can only occur once per encounter, but it's more than enough for you to clear crowds of mooks, and in boss fights, each stage/checkpoint counts as an encounter, so you can get knocked out and activate the ability multiple times.
- Most enemies don't have a good counter against Miles turning invisible, and the ones that do have massive blind spots that don't save them from getting hit from stealth. The biggest drawback to invisibility is the long charge time, and striking while invisible greatly depletes the energy reserves. Thankfully, having a few bars of venom on reserve can greatly circumvent the latter issue.
- The air yank adds a combo point without actually doing any damage to Underground enemies thanks to their immunity to fall damage. Miles can thus infinitely alternate between jumping and doing air yanks on a single enemy to build up however big of a combo he wants, which is a lifesaver for the otherwise very difficult Champion III benchmark and 100 Combo achievement.
- Good Bad Bugs:
- Miles occasionally loading and swinging around as random objects, most notably, as a friendly neighborhood Patio heater.
- Also Spider-Fire Truck.
- Miles occasionally loading and swinging around as random objects, most notably, as a friendly neighborhood Patio heater
- Hilarious in Hindsight:
- Using the Quips ability outside of fights in Spider-Man (PS4), Peter can remark that he should try bantering in a foreign language. What does Miles as Spider-Man do? He speaks Spanish and some of his combat voice lines are in Spanish.
- I Knew It!:
- Since a good chunk of the first Spider-Man game was setting up Miles's rise to heroism, many guessed he would be playable in the next installment.
- Pretty much everyone assumed that the devs would put Miles' Into the Spider-Verse suit into the game due to the film's popularity and the fact that Peter's was in the first game as a part of its DLC. No one saw them putting in a suit mod that would animate Miles on 2's like in that movie, though.
- People also guessed that the Prowler would show up.
- It's the Same, Now It Sucks!:
- Many reviewers have noted that the basic plot structure of the main campaign directly parallels that of the 2018 game, but at a much faster pace and with much less nuance. There is the tech-savvy sympathetic supervillian that Spider-Man has a close bond with (Otto/Phin), the corporate magnate with a dark secret (Norman/Krieger), the friend Spider-Man fell out of contact with who turns out to be Secretly Dying (Harry/Rick), a public health hazard at the center of the plot (the Devil's Breath virus/Nuform), the premise of a new superpowered gang trying to fill the Evil Power Vacuum (Inner Demons/The Underground) and the story even ends with a loved one sacrificing themself to save the rest of the city.
- The Tinkerer in particular has a lot of parallels with Mister Negative. An otherwise good person trying to avenge slain relatives. A gang of mask-wearing mooks that exploit a power vacuum. Said Mooks are Empowered Badass Normals. The target of their grudge is a corporate executive, who ignored basic safety with a dangerous product. Both make use of bombings and repossessing things belonging to Wilson Fisk.
- It's Short, So It Sucks!: While the game was met with critical acclaim for its visuals, storytelling, and gameplay, a frequent complaint is how short the game is. The first couple of missions alone make up 10% of the game's progress, and there isn't a whole lot to do after the main story. Insomniac explicitly noted that this game was going to be shorter and was priced at $50 rather than the typical $60 because of it, but some reviewers find that the game's short length leads to Pacing Problems that its predecessor sidestepped.
- Like You Would Really Do It: Peter is beaten senseless in the opening, but the fact that the game is a spin-off immediately tells us that he's going to survive.
- Love to Hate: While Tinkerer is divisive, Simon Krieger has mostly been well-received thanks to being a smug yet fairly humorous Corrupt Corporate Executive voiced by none other than Troy Baker.
- Magnificent Bastard: Aaron Davis, Miles' affable uncle, is the retired mercenary, Prowler. Quickly finding out that Miles is the new Spider-Man, Aaron begins to worry about his nephew's well-being, and returns to his criminal activities for the sake of trying to protect Miles. When Miles reveals that his friend Phin is the leader of the Underground, Aaron convinces Miles to infiltrate the group by lying to Phin that he wants to help her cause. Afterwards, when Miles tells Aaron that Phin found out Miles' identity, Aaron suggests that Miles meets up and has an open talk with Phin after she finds out Miles' identity, truthfully using this as an opportunity to inform Krieger where he can capture Tinkerer on the condition that they don't harm Spider-Man. Later, Aaron tranquilizes and imprisons Miles as he's heading to Roxxon Plaza, making sure he stays out of danger even at the cost of other innocent lives. Despite his selfish nature, Aaron did everything in his power to protect his family until Miles made him see the error of his way, and publicly reveals all of Krieger's crimes at the cost of turning himself in.
- Memetic Mutation:
- "The exaggerated swagger of a black teen."note
- Uncle Aaron's trash-ass beatnote
- Moral Event Horizon:
- Rhino crosses it when he attempted to kill a baby.
- While he was already crossing the line by trying to force Nuform as an energy source despite the toll it takes on people's health, Simon Krieger definitively puts himself beyond the point of no return with his callous murder of Rick.
- One-Scene Wonder: The Kingpin is only seen once at the end of his long sidequest chain, and not even in-person at that. But the casual way he dismisses Miles' heroics while coldly turning the tables on him and almost killing one of his friends for his insolence, and the sheer tenacity he's shown at trying to sink his hooks into Harlem from behind bars do a damn good job at showing just how dangerous Wilson Fisk is in or out of prison.
- Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Danika Hart. Her original portrayal in the comics, written by Brian Bendis, was a rather unflattering portrayal of teenagers obsessed with social media and making Miles uncomfortable by highlighting the color of skin too much. Not only was the character herself not well received, but that storyline was also criticized for coming off as rather tone-deaf. This game switches her over from being a vlogger to being a podcaster and the dynamics of her relationship with Miles has been changed. While she is still a fangirl she focuses entirely on the positive influence Miles actions is having on their community and serves as the reasonable foil to JJJ's antics.
- Salvaged Story:
- Wilson Fisk's Starter Villain status in the main game didn't sit well with many fans of the character. As such, it's a welcome surprise to discover that Fisk is orchestrating the buy-out of Harlem from inside the Raft. While Miles stops his plans, it's only a small step to taking him down for good.
- One of the main complaints about the original game was that aside from Mr. Negative and Dr. Octopus, the rest of the Sinister Six didn't get enough of a chance to shine. To remedy that, Rhino features heavily in the plot by kicking off the game with one hell of a memorable chase sequence/boss fight as well as showing up later for a rematch. Vulture also makes a reappearance... in hologram form as the final boss of the Holo-Peter sidequests, where you fight two of him while Holo-Peter not only provides hilarious improvised dialogue, but also talks more about his history with the old buzzard.
- Scrappy Mechanic: Miles' app to find side missions seems like a really fun idea but the fact you have to pull it out by swiping your controller every time and scroll through them means that many players were confused as to how to do it. It's also just extra steps versus putting them on the map like other content. The DualSense pad is also extremely sensitive and can even pick up the motion of a finger that isn't actually touching it, making it easy to open the app by accident.
- Spiritual Adaptation: This title makes an excellent Infamous or Static Shock game.
- That One Sidequest:
- Getting the highest rank on Traversal 3.0 is likely the hardest challenge or mission in both this game and the predecessor, far eclipsing the final battles on the highest difficulty. The first question is how to get it even in theory, as you need to get a lot of information on which specific traversal technique for every segment has the miniscule but critical edge in speed. Once you've figured every step out, good luck executing it.
- Crime In Progress diversions of stopping the Underground from stealing a FEAST food truck can be annoying due to them being one of the few crimes that have an auto-failure condition: if an Underground member manages to force the truck's door open, the mission is an instant failure. Since there's not a lot of time to stop them once they start forcing the door, this can be annoying if Miles gets surrounded by enemies thanks to the game's auto-lock mechanic that makes it difficult to focus on specific foes or escape from ones he's currently fighting.
- Tough Act to Follow: Downplayed. While still fairly positively received overall, the game has received some criticism in being a faster-paced retread of the original game's story, just with roles taken up by Miles and other characters related to him, resulting in some points being docked.
- Unexpected Character:
- Danika Hart was a fairly minor supporting character introduced in Brian Bendis' final run with Miles Morales before leaving Marvel to work for DC Comics. The fact that she was introduced so late into his run with the character left many people not expecting her to be included in the game.
- Doctor Curt Connors shows up in The Stinger at the end.
- Wilson Fisk shows up as the villain of a series of side quests despite no one thinking he'd be able to continue his crime spree from the Raft.
- More like unexpected reference, but the nod to Dazzler and Lila Cheney took many by surprise, especially since the first game seemed to go out of its way to avoid mentioning anything to do with the X-Men (in contrast to the litany of references to other Marvel heroes). Lila in particular is a rather obscure mutant.
- Unnecessary Makeover: Just as was the case in Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered, Peter's redesigned face (done by Ben Jordan) has been critically panned by fans of the original PS4 game, with many finding Jordan's younger, Tom Holland-esque face to not fit the older and experienced Peter Parker like John Bubniak did. That said, it is agreed upon generally that the new face looks better in this game than it does in the remaster, due to the improved face-mapping and it being better mapped around Jordan's face, thus not looking as off as it often did in the remaster.
- The Un-Twist: One series of sidequests concerns a group of thugs who are looking to de-value property around Harlem so their boss can buy up the area and take control of it and the local organized crime. Miles doesn't find out who until the end of the questline, but over its course he learns that they're well-funded and very loyal to their boss, who is in prison and they communicate with him via an internet connection. Even that vague description should be enough to figure out the obvious suspect, which is exactly who it turns out to be — the Kingpin.
- Visual Effects of Awesome
- Going into the next generation, many gamers were under the impression that games were going to offer the choice between ray-tracing and 60 FPS gameplay but not both at the same time. While this was initially the case with Spider-Man: Miles Morales and Spider Man Remastered Insomniac later updated both games to feature a "Performance RT" mode, that offers both ray-tracing and 60 FPS. Both the quality of the ray-tracing and the overall rendering resolution take a hit compared to the 30 FPS mode, though it still looks great and many would see this as an acceptable trade off for increased performance.
- Not only did Insomniac Games include Miles's suit from Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, but they also went the extra mile of including with it a suit mod that lowers the framerate of his animation so he would be running, jumping, fighting, and swinging around at twelve frames per second just like in the movie. And it looks amazing.
- What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?:
- The crux of the story is a group of youths of color trying to take down a billionaire industrialist whose lack of morals have endangered the city, with Miles and New York caught in the middle. It is impossible to not read into this, especially as The Underground are designed with a similar aesthetic to Antifa protesters (albeit with cyberpunk-esque tech and motivations and methods that are the diametric opposite) and the billionaire is shown using a private militarised police force who have no qualms about roughing up innocents.
- Whereas the first game portrays the police and Peter-as-Spider-Man as having a close working relationship and a generally positive dynamic, in this game Miles-as-Spider-Man is met with scorn, derision, and mistrust. Textually, this isn't because of race, but rather because the citizens have grown used to Peter as well as Miles making a bad first impression by publicly failing to prevent Rhino's escape and unintentionally made things worse, and later for the bridge incident.
- Even before the reveal of the nature of NuForm, Roxxon's move into Harlem sparks a lot of in game discussion on their negative impact on the neighborhood. Rio Morales is even basing her campaign platform on this issue. This is a clear reference to the real world gentrification issue in which businesses start to buy out property and land, attracting more "affluent" populations to move into these neighborhoods while the impoverished get pushed out and displaced.
- The treatment of NuForm raises many of the controversial "environmental nuclear power movement" issues. Many real life environmentalists believe in pitches like Roxxon that nuclear power is the best alternative to fossil fuels. However, there's questions of disposing of toxic waste from these issues as well as potential danger should reactors be damaged through natural disaster or terrorist attack.
- What Do You Mean, It's Not Symbolic?: Some particularly charged imagery seems to have been invoked with the ending of the bridge collapse scene, in which armed Roxxon agents attempt to incapacitate and/or kill Miles while civilians film the agents and yell at them to leave Miles alone. Just to drive the parallel home, one Roxxon soldier even grabs a civilian's phone and throws it aside because she's filming them.
