Spider-Man: Miles Morales Is Innovative in its Depiction of Community
More than a spinoff, much more than an average superhero game.
I’ve always had trouble getting into superhero media. I’ve always half-joked that most DC Comics movies suck because its big superheroes are boring, especially Superman: why should we care about a bunch of nearly invulnerable wealthy elites and/or aliens? There’s no relatability there, it’s all just power fantasy fiction!
In truth, though, the same holds true for Marvel. Thor is basically a god, Captain America is some dude from the early 20th century, Iron Man is Elon Musk with glove-missiles, Captain Marvel is so powerful they had to send her to a different planet for the entirety of the last Avengers movie just so they had some suspense, etc. etc. This is why I’ve always enjoyed Spider-Man the most: he’s a normal guy who accidentally gets thrown into being a sort-of-superhero, but most of his powers are just some bootstrapped tech and he’s not even close to Thor strong. As a result of this, Spider-Man media has always been so much more grounded. It’s why “Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man” is even a phrase that people know: he’s the everyperson’s hero!
Peter Parker, though, has his own issues. He’s generally mopey, generally woe-is-me, sort of your run-of-the-mill white guy. The recent Spider-Man movies do a good job of humanizing him with the help of great performances from Tom Holland. But the first Insomniac Spider-Man game? Great gameplay, but the character himself was pretty boring.
That’s not at all the case for Spider-Man: Miles Morales.
I’m increasingly convinced that Miles should always be, and always have been, the main Spider-Man, because his character is just so much richer. His teenage awkwardness, pride, and angst are all immediately relatable, and his growth story under the shadow of Peter Parker to something different but just as badass is way more interesting.
And Insomniac’s latest nails all of this in a way that’s honestly astonishing. A lot of it has to do with the groundwork laid by the Into the Spider-Verse movie, but Miles Morales made me realize just how rare it is to play an action game that’s so grounded and so dense with what it feels like to exist in society.
When you play as Miles, you take control of someone learning about their city, and you experience the sights and sounds along with them. One of my favorite scenes in the entire game has you walking with your friend Ganke through an open-air market in Harlem. People are eating street food, dancing, playing music, talking, inhabiting the space. As Miles walks in street clothes slowly through the market, he soaks it all in and so do you.
This is one of the keys to the game: Miles spends a good amount of time out of the Spider suit just… living. During one scene, you walk around Miles’s house while his mom and Ganke prepare Christmas dinner. You can interact with objects from Miles’ life. You choose what music to put on the record player. It’s a gentle, peaceful moment. It is something so rarely seen in video games of this type.
But what makes Miles Morales so innovative in this respect is that Miles himself is never static. He’s always moving through space in the way you’d expect from a teenage boy. Walking down the Harlem streets, he has music blasting in his headphones and he throws some dance moves in to his stride here or there. He chats with the locals, trying to forge those connections to his new neighborhood. And you can even walk him into local bodegas, interacting with the owners, doing small tasks for them like retrieving lost cats and tracking stolen goods.
This is, of course, on top of the world-class gameplay that Insomniac perfected in the first game. Swinging through the city as Miles is as exhilarating as you’d expect, but Insomniac went one step further and slightly tweaked the experience to fit Miles’ personality. Instead of the dead-serious swinging of Peter Parker, Miles is gangly and awkward when flying through the air sometimes. His tricks seem more… fitting for a teenage boy. And there’s even an analogue to That Scene from Into the Spider-Verse (the What’s Up Danger scene).
There is one massive caveat to my glowing recommendation for this game. Miles Morales’ main story is a bit tone-deaf. Miles’ father was a cop who died in the line of duty—that’s not new to the Miles Morales canon in the Marvel universe. But Insomniac seemed determined to stay as far away from making any statement on the relations between cops and communities as possible, which is especially grating considering that Miles and his mother moved to Harlem, a community with a long history of instances of police violence and strained relations with the NYPD. Worse still, though, is the main plot of the story revolves around stopping what is essentially described as a hardcore antifascist gang from committing vigilante violence against the big private security company that’s become basically the de facto police force in the city.
Gameplay-wise, this results in some very interesting three-party fights, and the two enemies have wildly different tactics. However, I could not shake the feeling that casing the Big Bad Villain as an organization attempting to break the hold of a private security company is a bit tone-deaf in 2021—especially when the game doesn’t try at all to address issues of NYPD brutality.
This is more than enough to be a legitimate dealbreaker for some potential players, and I do not fault anyone that decision. But I also cannot praise the game enough for its establishment of a hyper-local feel, its small flourishes that make Miles seem more like a teenager than any game I’ve ever seen before, and its insistence on giving the player moments to just live in and interact with small, personal spaces.
In that way, at least, Miles Morales is a triumph—and even if you avoid the main story, I still think it’s worth checking out.