Spider-Man: Miles Morales - The Ultimate Critique - Luke Stephens

spider-man miles morales this game is a bit of a strange one similar to uncharted the lost legacy this game does little to change up the formula of its predecessor unlike the lost legacy however this game was built perhaps primarily as a launch title for the playstation 5. and that puts it in a strange position considering it also launched on the playstation 4. it's a launch title designed around some flashy moments and showcase beats but all of those moments are restrained by almost seven-year-old hardware but in spite of this constraint miles morales presents some really interesting ideas and stands out as a unique experience set apart from 2018's marvel's spider-man that being said it is not perfect its rushed development and its over reliance on the previous game's map and mechanics show through very clearly in this video we're going to go through the whole game start to finish the whole story all the characters everything of course it goes without saying but take this as your spoiler warning if you want my quick and dirty recommendation i'd say that this game is worth picking up regardless of whether you're playing it on playstation 5 or playstation 4. in short it's dense and refined enough to justify the low purchase price nowadays around 20 give or take 10 bucks and although it isn't perfect it's an experience that's memorable in its own right that being said please like the video and subscribe before we get started these videos take a lot of time to make and all i ask in return is that you drop a like if you enjoy it and also if you're feeling generous i won't stop you from tossing a dollar into the patreon coffer to get videos like this up to a week early okay enough e-begging let's get into it the game opens up on the subway this serves as the game's main menu and also serves as a tech demo itself demonstrating how quickly the playstation 5 can load things up and load out of different scenes because the second that you hit start you're immediately in the game another example would be that i was prompted to restart the game after choosing the performance rtx mode when i chose to do this i picked up my phone buckling down to wait the two minutes it would surely take to restart the entire game but no almost instantly it loaded it felt ridiculous felt as though it didn't reload at all but it was super cool to see that being said the game is pretty but beyond the 60 fps patch it doesn't feel particularly next-gen sure there's ray tracing and better reflections that are actually reflections of the world itself but when you're swinging through the city you're rarely going to stop and admire the reflections off of skyscrapers it's just not something you're going to find yourself doing very much you might do it once when you're initially wowed by the game's engine and what they're able to do but beyond that it's not something you're going to notice it looks great but it doesn't feel truly next generation nor could it being restrained by previous generation hardware that being said miles leaves the subway listening to music and helping people while dancing around it sets the tone for the game and it feels like a nice and slow reintroduction to this world you'll also immediately notice that there's a lot more color and flavor in this depiction of new york city than even the predecessor considering that this game takes place in winter time it's actually surprising to see that they're able to bring more color and life to the city than in the previous 2018 version of the city most of this has to do with the art direction i feel as though they made a concerted effort to make sure that the lighting was always such that it highlighted these brighter colors to really frame the city in this exciting lively way upon exiting the subway terminal miles walks by a large mural where you can see artists painting spider-man miles asks them if they're going to add the new spider-man to which they give a non-committal answer it basically serves as proof positive that miles is spider-man has not been proven to the citizens of the city they still view him as the sidekick they don't think of him as on the same level as peter parker's spider-man and i actually really like this quick interaction at the start of the game because it actually passively establishes a long-term goal for the player over the course of this game you're going to try and prove yourself to the city with the obvious implication being that by the end of this story the player and intern miles morales will be on the same level as peter parker spider-man and the second i saw this interaction at the mural i said to myself i bet you at the end of this game miles morales spider-man will also be on that mural they'll paint him on because he will have earned his spot after everything he'll do over the course of this game and we'll get there but i don't think it comes as a surprise to anybody that i was right the next thing that happens is that miles crosses the street and heads to a store called teos to pick up some food and items that his mom needs for dinner that night this again serves as a subtle reminder of what is important to miles and when paired with the text message that miles receives from peter almost immediately upon arriving at teos you're reminded for one that miles is in a secondary position to peter parker being his sidekick effectively and also that family is important to him again everything in these opening sequences in these games and stories in general should be intentional this is when the audience is often the most focused and attentive to everything you're throwing at them so you should make the most of it and thankfully the writers over at insomniac really made sure that everything they showed the player in these opening moments was deliberate and intentional everything from the music to the way that miles is walking to the few conversations he has with citizens and his friends and family all builds onto itself to communicate very clear messages again it's really well done regardless you meet up with peter on the top of a roof they're gonna collect themselves and supervise this convoy that's delivering a large package which you are soon to find out is rhino this sequence serves as the tutorial for both the swinging and combat systems it's quick easy and fluid everything you want a tutorial to be furthermore there are some really cool moments and set pieces that they throw at us here even just this scene of swinging through new york city behind a helicopter carrying a massive payload is in and of itself a pretty cool sight to behold now i could point out how it doesn't make any sense to once again carry some super villain through the center streets of a massive urbanite metropolis but it's not really worth doing because some of these things you have to just accept for the game to make any sense at all i talked about this in the critique of 2018 spider-man how it doesn't make any sense to have a massive prison right off shore of manhattan but you kind of have to accept that that's what's going on in order for the game's plot to make any sense at all and i do accept that a lot of this was not chosen and written by the people at insomniac for sake of the game a lot of it is an artifact of the comic books that have been written over the last few decades that being said it still doesn't make sense to me so i'm going to call it out and move on but in a development that surprises absolutely no one rhino breaks free and starts rummaging through the city you chase him and this is when you get shown a lot of those cool set pieces smashing through buildings running through a mall that just happens to delicately have an insomniac game's logo placed ever so sweetly in the middle of the plaza and all of this runs freakishly well on the performance rtx mode my console never broke a sweat maintaining a solid 60 frames per second throughout yes it does rely a lot on quicktime events but that's just an artifact of having large set pieces with small scripted sequences throughout in my mind it would be rather pedantic of me to criticize insomniac for something so universal as quick time events while i'm sure there has to be some way for developers to put together flashy large cinematic sequences without relying on quick timed button prompts to make it interactive i do understand that this is a problem that's industry-wide and is not specifically relegated to insomniac so i'm not going to make a big deal of it and all told these are not bad they don't last very long and they're few and far between and honestly i think it's a fair price to pay for these spectacular visuals and for the really cool set pieces and scripted sequences we get here so you chase rhino through the city eventually landing at a rocks on gas refinery or storage area basically there's big gas tanks and it's some sort of fueling center that's in the middle of the city again i could point out how it doesn't make any sense with regards to real estate to put something like this in the middle of manhattan but i digress the ensuing fight introduces the player to a lot of new mechanics such as more carefully timed dodges enemies with grenade launchers that can track you and eventually to the venom punch basically pete and miles are getting their asses handed to them by rhino and in a last-ditch effort to overcome all of this miles discovers a newfound ability and honestly this is an interesting new mechanic but it doesn't do a lot the developers will implement this throughout the game in various puzzles and challenges which is relatively interesting but for the most part it just feels like a spartan rage mode a la god of war or batman's electrified fists in arkham origins it increases damage and inflicts a status effect but because enemy variety is so poor in these games and also in miles morales it's not that common for it to feel as though you're doing anything really interesting or different it just feels like a more powerful punch as the game goes on you'll level up this ability to gain things like aoe attacks and variations of this venom punch that can affect even stronger enemies or multiple enemies all at the same time but again in my mind it just feels like a more powerful punch and it never crosses that line of feeling like something truly unique to miles morales but i grant you this could just be me and other people might feel differently let me know your thoughts in the comment section with this new found ability miles finds the strength and power to overcome rhino and put him down once and for all i mean not not kill him but like knock him out and this really says something for miles the fact that peter was struggling so hard with rhino in this particular instance and then miles was the one that made the difference and actually finished him it's the first step of miles overcoming his secondary status and proving himself now when i first played i felt as though perhaps peter was holding back somewhat to make sure that miles would step up to the plate overcome his fears and insecurities and kick rhinos but once and for all but the more i've thought on it and after playing through the game a second time it seems to me like peter was honestly just getting his ass kicked i mean after all if you're trying to prove a point or push somebody to become more than they currently are it's one thing to just hold their feet to the fire and force them to do something they're uncomfortable with it's an entire other thing to literally have your head pushed in by a giant rhinoceros man peter was getting messed up by rhino so while i think it would be an interesting dynamic and an interesting plot point to say that peter let miles take over this interaction and finish rhino to prove the point i don't think there's a lot of evidence for it but regardless after miles defeats rhino simon krieger head of roxanne shows up and decides that he's going to handle all of the mess that's been left over it doesn't seem like a big deal at the time but he basically ushers you away and says he will get the cops involved and handle rhino and you've done enough you go and rest spend time with your family blah blah blah we've got it from here thanks for your help it seems like he's being nice and watching out for you making your life easier but in reality he has his own motives for doing this and in a surprise that surprised absolutely no one this is not the last time you're going to see rhino but peter and miles take him up on his offer and decide to have a debrief together on top of a building it's at this point that peter communicates what is going to be the operative plot point of this whole game that launches the whole thing into motion and that is that he's decided to go away for a bit with mj he's decided he needs a break a vacation and this is the appropriate time to do it especially after seeing how miles stepped up and took down rhino it's proved the point to him that he can leave the city and it will be in good hands granted it's kind of a stupid plot point especially right after this horrific fight that they just had but i can forgive it after all it does set all of this in motion and sets up the rest of the game with miles being the only spider-man in the city and this was actually a piece of this game's design that i was really curious as to how insomniac was going to handle it in most of the pre-release trailers and demos that we saw we always saw peter parker fighting alongside miles morales this mostly because we were only shown off the opening section of the game while peter is still here and part of this made me wonder if we were going to be stuck bouncing between miles morales and peter parker as we went through the story of this expansion dlc spin-off game but thankfully the developers decided to let him stand on his own effectively the developers are treating miles morales in the same way that peter parker is treating him within this game they're letting him sink or swim on his own and i think it's great miles morales is a likable character the writing is good the performances are great and i think he can carry his own game pretty easily a lesser studio or publisher might have panicked and decided to have him work alongside the established character because they were afraid that he wouldn't be able to carry his own title but in this case they took the leap of faith and it pays off now after peter breaks this news to miles he's visibly worried and you can tell that he's unsure if he can do what needs to be done and this topic of insecurity is a really interesting one it's not something that's often brought up in superhero games maybe in superhero stories and origin stories specifically but in video games about superheroes most of the time you're joining them after they've been established as a superhero so you don't often get to see them questioning their own abilities or whether or not they can protect the city or people that they've been tasked with protecting it's a really cool dynamic and it sets the stage for growth within the characters the relationships everything will build over the course of this story so even though miles is a little skeptical as to whether or not he can do this he agrees takes a cute little oath that peter throws together on the spot and peter takes off leaving miles as the sole spider-man in the city and in what will be a surprise to absolutely no one this city is about to go to hell oh yeah i feel like we should probably address the whole new peter parker face thing it's a little weird to me so for those of you that were living under a rock when all this was going on or perhaps you just didn't care and you were busy getting laid and having a great time in college i don't know you do you but basically what happened the original peter parker model from the 2018 spider-man release was swapped out in exchange for this younger looking model that we see in miles morales after initially receiving some mixed signals as to why this was done we eventually got the unified answer from the developers over at insomniac that the reason they did this was because the original model didn't work properly with the new animation system that they were trying to implement in this game there was something about the actual physical dimensions of the face where the jawbones lined up the eyes everything that didn't work with this new system of facial capture and everything they were trying to do some people said they were just trying to make peter parker look a lot more like tom holland to unify it with the movies and while that might have been a slight consideration i don't think that was the primary reason they did it and i say that because both of these things can be true you can both need to redesign the model to make sure it works with the new animation system and decide that that model you're going to replace it with instead of bearing no resemblance to tom holland might share a little resemblance to tom holland now i know that they're actually using some actors scanned facial features they're not actually using something that was hand sculpted and invented on the spot this is an actual actor slash model that they scanned in for use in this game in the same way that the last of us except for ellie most of those characters are using actual facial scans for the characters they're real people that just happen to have been scanned in and had their likeness borrowed i mean all told i really don't see why this is a scandal some people were calling it peter gate and making a big deal of it i really don't see the issue yeah he looks different now whoop-dee-doo i didn't think the original model looked particularly good to begin with and if i'm being completely honest i thought he looked weird while i don't think swapping out one of the main characters models completely is a particularly good choice especially when you're trying to establish a new trilogy within a famous franchise it's something that i can forgive it's really not that big of a deal to me i don't know maybe i'm missing some reason this is a huge scandal and why people are super upset about this i honestly don't know i've never understood it if you can help me understand please do so in the comment section below or tweet me at luke stevens tv so after this conversation with peter he gives you a gift you go to central park to open it with your best friend genki there's also a vr component that you have to unlock by going and doing this stupid vr challenge on a rooftop it's really dumb i don't know why so many of these superhero games insist on having these vr challenges or augmented reality challenges i think they're so dumb they're not fun they're bland repetitive batman arkham has done this spider-man has done this now it's just stupid after completing this vr challenge unlocking your new suit and the vr ability contained there in you get a call from genki telling you that it looks as though the roxone plaza is being robbed so being the only spider-man on duty you swing on over when you get there you realize that there's no one at the plaza but there is a large new form reactor which is introduced by a video from simon the guy that we met earlier according to the video this reactor will supposedly be able to power all of harlem it's using some sort of new clean fuel called new form and in this promotional video it's basically made clear that this is the power of the future and the goal is to get these reactors placed all over the city and soon all over the world it sounds like a really good thing you could power an entire neighborhood or city using one of these reactors and it's clean energy what could possibly go wrong well as always it's never that simple we'll get there eventually though you do realize upon further investigation that somebody has broken into the roxanne building you go inside and search for the new form out of fear that it's been stolen or altered and manipulated in some way that could destabilize it it's at this point that you get attacked by some underground enemies it's not clear who these people are or why they're at the roxon facility we see them using purple metallic appendage alterations i i don't know how else to phrase it they have some sort of augmented skeleton suit that they wear that allows them to attack you with greater force than they would be able to by themselves which is refreshing because one of the saddest things is seeing some of these unarmed prisoners try and fight literal freaking spider-man after defeating these enemies you go back and investigate the area that they broke into realizing that they were investigating shipments of new form likely to steal it but it's right at this time that roxanne operatives decide to show up i'm just gonna throw it out there this is a massive corporation it seems as though they have fantastic security every single time you run into them throughout the course of the game except for this particular instance seems a little coincidental that they just happen to roll up 15 minutes late this one time it's so weird that they let the underground guys and spider-man investigate their facility so thoroughly without any sort of major response that i actually thought the only way that this could be explained in the story is if roxanne was in on helping the underground do everything that they were trying to do basically there was a conspiracy where they let them break into their own facility in order to achieve something but don't worry this isn't the case it's far more uninteresting and coincidental than that it really seems as though the security just happened to be unattentive and missed the mark this one time so after escaping the complex miles heads home to go and help his mother set up the apartment for this christmas dinner after some housekeeping such as cleaning up putting a record on the record player you go to the door when somebody starts to knock on it we're then introduced to miles old friend finn we don't know much about her but we can see immediately that these two have chemistry and likely have a long history something that will be further evidenced as we go throughout the story there's some other busy work that happens here such as the power dropping and you needing to stealth your way around the outside of the building to turn it back on but all told it's pretty minimal there is a cool moment when you're selecting a record where you can find a folder from miles's father about the prowler flip it over on the back and you can actually see a picture of him this is going to come up later it's a cool tie-in and it's something a lot of people might forget the scene wraps up with miles helping finn do some dishes at the kitchen sink it's a nice innocent moment it's a good break in terms of pace from the action we've been dealing with non-stop for about 45 minutes at this point and it's clear that these guys have a lot of catching up to do not really clear where she's gone where she's been or why you guys are so particularly infatuated with each other but it's good to see that they have a healthy relationship and a friendship that's growing ever stronger the next day a few interesting things happen specifically genki develops an app that can be used by citizens of new york to ask for spider-man's help this is actually a really cool idea and i really like this unfortunately it's incredibly underutilized in this game the potential is there the ability for npcs to dynamically call out for your help for dynamic crimes or issues that they're having throughout the city perhaps when there's an issue they call the police and then that happens to also dial it into the spider-man reporting system so everything gets reported into one coherent pot effectively there's a lot of potential here especially for dynamic encounters and events but unfortunately it never goes beyond the bland uninspired side quests and quick collect-a-thon missions that were so prevalent in the first game the first request does come in and it's part of the story quest line so don't get your hopes up too much that this is going to be the quality that you can expect moving forward as you use this app for small side content throughout the rest of the game it's a request from aaron davis who just happens to be miles morales uncle if you know anything about spider-man lore or comic books or even if you just saw into the spider-verse you'll immediately know that this guy is the prowler but at this moment miles doesn't know that his uncle is the prowler he just thinks that his uncle needs help with something he tells you there's some issue with the sensor it's it's kind of stupid basically you have to swing all the way across the city to the other side and then perform this quick and dirty puzzle where you align the train cars after fighting a bunch of people it's not particularly interesting and it's yet another case of a game trying to throw a puzzle at you that isn't actually a puzzle it's just tedious you immediately know the answer to the puzzle upon looking at it often the characters say verbally exactly what the solution is so there's no challenge here it's just a matter of performing the inputs and actions to do it it feels more like filler than it feels like actual content this then leads to one of the stupidest and also memorable moments of the game for me where you just go around beating up some of these underground people and then throwing bombs into the air as they explode above the street it's really dumb to me that you just go and then like oh i need to defuse this bomb and you just throw it like that's that's not how you fix and like defuse bombs but okay i mean to each their own maybe to you this was like a cool rushed quest line i don't know for me the time remaining and the time counter really didn't put that much stress on anything it just felt dumb and stupid and i don't like this after you've done all of this you go back and you speak to your uncle one more time and it's at this point that he realizes his uncle knows who he is he gives him a little business card that happens to say miles morales on it and miles realizes his cover is blown i mean it makes sense his uncle is the prowler he probably has better information than most of the public but even still it's a huge shock to miles that his uncle has figured this out this quickly it's a cute bonding moment between miles and his uncle his uncle's seeming very proud of him wanting to know more about his operation how he does things of course he has his own motivations for doing this being the prowler and all but it's still a cute character building moment we then meet up with finn and reminisce about her brother who worked for roxon childhood friendships memories and then also about the time that they happened to win a science fair using a science experiment they put together with regards to an energy conversion process that they discovered it's a pretty quick sequence and it takes place mostly through a flashback to a time that finn miles and finn's brother were on this roof together the whole thing is a little weird to me it just doesn't feel natural i really don't know how to verbalize or describe this other than that it just felt weird and stilted i think it's mostly the performance of finn's brother finn and miles perform fairly regularly here in terms of their acting performance specifically but her brother just has this weird dynamic and bizarre chemistry with miles and finn it just feels off and weird it felt so weird and off i was waiting for some reveal that this guy betrayed them or wasn't actually related i basically felt as though there had to be more going on here because it felt so odd to me but it turns out no it's a loving brother-sister relationship he's actually a really close friend of theirs and encourages them in everything they do it's just the performance is weird and feels off i don't know maybe this was just me and you didn't see this odd dynamic at all but to me it was really prevalent the game then transitions to night time and we start exploring the streets as miles not as spider-man this again reinforces the idea that this city has a lot more color this time around it feels a lot more lived in to be honest we saw this sequence leading up to the game's launch in a lot of trailers a lot of promotional pieces and in a walk through that they launched as well it really highlights the vibrancy of the colors the density of the crowds the animation's all great and it really highlights a lot of the ray traced reflections that you can see in the water and the glass and the windows all told it's a really cool sequence and i think it's really well done they really seem to have put a lot more effort into the pacing and breaking up some of the action sequences with some of these quieter and more beautiful moments it could be that it was a concerted effort to break up these moments more frequently or it could just be a reflection of the game's length this game is a lot shorter than the 2018 spider-man game is so it could just be that as a result of the game being shorter these moments take place more frequently i'm not sure now like i said miles and genki are here to celebrate and participate and support miles's mother who is holding a rally for her city council run i'm just gonna say it once because i feel like i have to her platform has to be the stupidest for anybody running for any position ever her whole thing is hold rocks on accountable and she begins her speech by asking what was lost when they bulldozed a block of harlem to build this gigantic new complex and skyscraper now bear in mind roxon is offering unlimited energy to the entire neighborhood using a clean new energy reactor she says it's experimental that it's might not be safe she says it's experimental that it might not be safe that they haven't shared enough information about it and that it's really terrible that they happen to bulldoze a cafe and an old day care and this and that i'm like get over yourself woman i get it game writers don't want to be like political or have any sort of character with a platform that makes sense but like this is the most stereotypical like oh community organizer is rallying for the neighborhood kind of thing i just find it really bland and hilariously uninteresting like again i get it why it's so easy to go and criticize large corporations it's easy to have a corporation like roxanne play the bad guy in a story such as this pretty much anything written in the 21st century if there's a corporation they're going to be the bad guys that's just how it is and i understand that and i can understand why they choose to do that because it's easy and predictable but it's been played out so many times i find it so boring there is a discussion at the end of this game where miles starts to question whether or not roxanne are actually the bad guys maybe everything they're doing is worth it because they're offering to provide free clean energy to the planet but unfortunately that discussion and debate never goes beyond the mere question it's not long into this rally if you could even call it that that it's interrupted by some character named the tinkerer this seems to be the leader of the underground troops that you keep fighting the ones in the purple metallic suits and this tinkerer character starts ranting and raving about how simon krieger the head of roxanne is a murderer and the underground will stop them they don't provide any real information as to why or what they're doing but they just come in and start beating everybody up destroying everything i mean it doesn't make a lot of sense because this rally is anti-roxanne so it's a little odd to interrupt it and prove your point by hurting people at the rally who presumably agree with you it's it's a little stupid but i guess they needed something to happen at this rally to give miles mom a reason to get injured so that she is a victim of this tinkerer character somehow's motivated to go out and actually figure out what's going on and take him down but it's just very contrived and this interruption starts a whole fight you start going up against the tinkerer and all of their minions eventually landing on the bridge where a new form reactor truck transport happens to have reached the tinkerer swipes a container of new form from the roxon van in question and miles tries to get it off of him with his venom powers which reveals in that moment that the tinkerer is actually finn again these types of contrived coincidences are very common in these types of stories these comic books sort of superhero tales i'm actually fine with it it's kitschy it's fun it's cute i can look past it though i do understand why some people would get frustrated that this character he just happened to just be reunited with is the villain that he's going to be taking on throughout the course of this game it's it's a little contrived again i'm willing to forgive it because i think it's to be expected in games of this caliber but i digress finn hits miles into the van where his venom ability reacts with all of these new form canisters which blow up the whole car and the bridge causing it to collapse and this whole sequence is actually pretty impressive graphically in terms of animation everything is pretty well done here you fight a bunch of underground lunk heads save a bunch of people on the bridge who would die if you weren't there bear in mind roxanne the tinkerer they are leaving these people to die so we know who the real hero is there's no question in this case but even after all of this roxon decides that miles is to blame for the event and they prepared to shoot it's in this moment that miles discovers yet another ability that he has which is turning invisible again it's not really a surprise to anybody who's familiar with spider-man lore or again who saw into the spider-verse but it's still a nice revelation to have at this point roughly a quarter of the way through the game now after this miles returns home and the next day finds out that his mother is going to go back to her campaigning while miles all the while thought that she would definitely quit after the attack and honestly this makes sense his dad died in the first spider-man game in a moment very similar to this attack a similarity that the writers were very well aware of they even have multiple lines of dialogue written out where miles says that this whole thing reminds him of what happened to his dad so seeing miles react in this way not wanting his mother to continue on this path is very understandable however she says that the morales don't quit it's not something they do so she continues on campaigning and miles stops pushing the point he's not going to convince her otherwise so might as well let her make her weird bland and obscure points to try and fix the neighborhood while he goes and actually deals with the problem we then get a pretty cute montage of miles and genki working together to craft a new suit that not only allows miles to have his own identity that's separate from peter parker's spider-man but also that allows him to use this new invisibility ability that he just discovered miles then decides it's time to find out more about the tinkerer and finn he wants to find out what her motivations are why she's so determined to take down roxanne and why she thinks simon krieger is a murderer so miles heads to finn's family's repair shop it's been abandoned for some time and it appears as though she's been working out of it all this time again i could bring up the point that abandoned buildings are rarely left abandoned for very long in new york city because real estate is so freakishly expensive there but i digress i think it is reasonable to suspect that finn probably has money from some sort of contracts that she's developed through military connections or this or that i mean clearly the money has to come from somewhere to develop this tech and this crazy big operation and all these mercenaries but it's perhaps not even worth thinking that much about maybe there is a line or some lore item specifically about finn and her family maybe they've got a ton of money that i'm not aware of i don't know if i'm missing something let me know as you explore this old repair shop you find a hidden lab inside this confirms that finn is the one that's designing and creating all of this underground tech that you've been dealing with throughout the game to this point you also discover a bunch of recordings of finn and her brother rick the same guy that was really awkward in that previous flashback what it seems as though happened from these recordings is that rick and his entire team that was helping him and working on the new forum project have become very very sick as a result likely of this new form but simon wouldn't admit it he didn't want it getting out that new form could possibly poison people make them sick and cause a lot more harm than good it's also explained that new form was rick's invention but that simon was the one cutting corners allowing it to poison people in order to make more money again big bad scary corporate guy is doing something greedy i get it it happens all the time most big corporate greed bags are greedy i accept that wholeheartedly it's just so trotted out at this point it's so bland so predictable i didn't like it with assassin's creed syndicate and i don't like it now it's just boring to me like for real once can we just once have a bad guy that does something bad for a reason other than just money and magreed like can we please just get something a little more dynamic and interesting like dear god please regardless they planned to flush the core and get rid of the backup new form in order to stop simon they weren't confident that simon would ever stabilize it or find a way to harvest and use its energy for good and in a safe and reliable way so they decided they would destroy it instead now these videos you're watching just so happen to be recorded by finn which was done so that if anything were to happen they could automatically dump them to the daily bugle it appears that something happened to rick but the phone was damaged so the videos didn't upload which is pretty convenient but okay you then fight some obligatory underground mercenaries who turn up and figure out that finn's phone is in the roxon labs if you can find it you can probably get the recordings and then you can link those to the daily bugle which will in turn take down roxon and chill out finn all in one fail swoop you know it's it's not the most compelling story and it's pretty coincidental and a little stupid but i've seen stupider so at this point i'll forgive it it's kind of dumb that the phone just happened to fall while at the roxon lab like it's it's amazing to me that she wouldn't have a backup of that video automatically sent somewhere else i mean clearly she's a smart woman she knows what she's doing when it comes to tech i can't imagine she doesn't have icloud or google drive or something but i guess she doesn't it's it's asking for a lot from the viewer and from the player to be honest to just accept all of this but it's all we've got so we'll just smile and nod and continue along our merry way down the corridor of this story so miles sneaks into the roxon lab and meets the prowler while there it's at this point he's revealed to be aaron again it's no surprise to anybody familiar with miles morales or the lore surrounding his story but if you had no relation to the story or no knowledge of it whatsoever this could be an interesting reveal that your uncle is actually the prowler he repeatedly warns miles against going after roxanne he's warning him that this is a big corporation they know what they're doing they're powerful they have a lot of resources and this is not a fight you are likely to win but miles is stubborn as all get out and something about that triggers a supportive side of aaron and he decides to help miles because if he's not going to help him he's going to just end up doing it himself and possibly get himself killed or hurt so you continue sneaking and eventually you find the phone in the video you can see that rick died trying to stop the core and simon allowed his death which is why the tinkerer in that video when they interrupted the whole rally said that simon krieger was a killer he didn't murder rick with his own hands but he allowed him to die and in yet another frustrating turn of events the core starts to explode effectively miles is able to destroy it before this happens destroying the entire complex by taking all of the energy into himself basically like a gigantic battery but he can't hold it and this energy all releases destroying the phone in the process again pretty convenient that there's no backup of this video nothing that can be done it's just fried and gone i like these guys are really resourceful it's kind of dumb that there isn't anything that's backed up or that they can't salvage it somehow but you know what there's there's no point in complaining about it at this point there's a lot of coincidences in this story and you just have to accept them in order to make it through after aaron and miles escape aaron tells miles to stay out of it miles communicates that he can't do this he has to see it through he's the protector of the city now and if he doesn't do something no one will and miles uncle seems to accept this surprisingly enough but he does tell him that he should use finn to his advantage there's also a little dialogue here where aaron tells miles that he told his father of his identity which is why the two of them fell out initially because his father didn't feel as though he could trust him anymore and after all his job was to go after people like this but even after finding out who he was he didn't turn him in or get him in trouble so there was this weird double standard going on it's an interesting dynamic it's one i would like to see explored more but unfortunately it's never really discussed again so miles taking this advice from his uncle decides to meet up with finn he tells her that he knows that she's the tinkerer after visiting the repair shop and he persuades her to bring him into the underground and amazingly she agrees now i won't beat this dead horse too much but i do just want to point out that finn views miles as a close childhood friend of hers she doesn't view him as spider-man or as someone who is even capable of defending themselves in any sort of dangerous situation she has no reason to believe that he would be successful as one of her mercenaries so the only reason she would bring him in is as basically brains to add to the operation as somebody that could do some thinking after all they have a history of doing science experiments together maybe he could help her design things and create some new tech but she doesn't even think about this for more than 30 seconds she almost immediately says sure if you can jump off this crane onto this ledge you can join like that's pretty dumb sure she may be thinking that now that miles knows who she is she doesn't have much of a say but i really don't think miles is the type of guy that would go to the police or would report her or let the public know who the tinkerer actually was if he didn't get his way he doesn't even try to blackmail her or imply that he's going to she just lets him into the club and i'm not asking for much even if she said let me think about it for a couple days and then you swing around and you perform some other quests and do some other stuff with your uncle that could work but instead it's just a quick consideration and then you're good you could have gone off completed some quests with your uncle perhaps completed some side missions that you have on that app that genki developed for you just something smaller and a little different but instead she's just immediately like okay and you're in their super top secret terrorist organization that's responsible for blowing up a bridge in new york city that's not a small feat that's not a thing you just casually join up it's i you know what i've i've made my point i'm going to calm down take a breather and we will move on so miles seizes the opportunity to explore the base something i didn't realize at first was that this is actually a recycled version of fisk's old building from the first game i mean i get it they already designed the building they might as well recycle it it can't hurt i suppose however i can't help but feel as though after fisk was arrested this place would have been shut down or at the very least would have continued to operate in some form but i guess the underground was just allowed to take it over but again maybe this is explained by them somehow having enough money to buy a skyscraper or to lease it out or something again if i missed some dialogue or some story building thing here that explains how they have access to all of these funds and all of these assets please let me know because as far as i can tell there isn't anything as you explore the building you hear rumblings that there's something going on in the basement naturally that peaks miles is interest so he changes into spider-man and you have to try and fight your way there on the way we actually go through several stealth sequences which allow us to use our stealth ability of invisibility for the first time in a large setting it's pretty cool however i will say in this game as with the last one the ledge hang attack is completely overpowered like it's stupid overpowered basically you just have to be standing on a ledge find an enemy that doesn't see you at that particular moment hit square you'll pull them up doesn't matter if you're pulling them past another enemy that enemy won't see them you wrap them up in webs and then they dangle incapacitated now back in the day with the batman arkham games like city origins and even knight i thought that this ability in those games was fairly overpowered but they balanced it out by requiring you to be standing on one of the gargoyles for instance this made it so there could only ever be one enemy hanging from a single gargoyle so if there's only three gargoyles in the arena you can only use this takedown on three enemies and as the games went on an enemy started shooting these gargoyles down you weren't able to use this ability at all because they were shooting the gargoyles down and that i feel is a good way of balancing this but in this case with spider-man it's completely overpowered and i went through this entire level basically using this singular attack taking everybody down i get it maybe you could say that this is realistic and this is just how spider-man would fight and clear out a room like this but it doesn't make it fun for a video game you have a ton of abilities it seems as though you should be able to use a lot more than one because one is completely overpowered but regardless you push into the basement as spider-man after getting through these areas there you see that finn is having some diabolical meeting and i'm sorry if you're hoping that finn is going to have some big plot twist or there's going to be some change in motivation where you start to side with her you're not it only gets worse basically what's going on is that the one container of new form that the underground took on that bridge is really unstable because of everything that miles did with his super powered spider electric charge ability i know it's the venom shock thing but i i like the supercharged electric blast ability more i think it rolls off the tongue better now these guys are very very vague with what they're going to do with this new form or how they're going to stabilize it if they're even going to but what they do say is that the new form is being stored in a theater it's located on a map that's on the table that miles is able to see so we fight snake and web our way out of this base into that theater and after another couple of arenas and combat sequences we can see finn's plan in its totality basically she wants to take the unstable new form that she stole insert it into the reactor that's in harlem and blow up the reactor along with the entire roxon plaza now if that doesn't sound like domestic terrorism to you i don't know what will because she literally wants to blow up basically a city block in order to prove a point because she's upset that her brother died while working for this guy i get it he left him to die basically but is that justification for blowing up a city block instead of just like trying to go to the authorities and prove your case i i just i don't see how this is a sympathetic character at all and i don't think miles is sympathetic to her either which is why he immediately decides he has to stop it now because they can't go having finn be a totally evil megalo maniacal character who wants to kill a ton of people they decided to write in the excuse that this tower this roxon block this plaza is entirely vacant because it's still technically under construction and isn't done yet now i have to ask why they would bother writing the sin it seems to me like the only reason they would do this is because they don't want finn to be a murderous psychopath they just want her to try and get back at roxanne for the death of her brother and while i can understand that desire especially because they want to have this beautiful moment at the very end of the story where finn basically redeems herself by saving the city and changing her mind that it's not all worth it i just don't see how it makes any sense to have this entire plaza with no one in it ever i mean this is a city block in new york city chances are even if it is under construction there will be people working around the clock to get it finished you're asking me to take a lot for granted if you want me to believe that nobody is going to be impacted by the destruction of this entire city block and that's assuming that finn's calculations are correct miles figures out pretty quickly that it's actually going to destroy basically all of harlem if she tries to do this it's not just going to destroy this one plaza so it could just show that finn is being unrealistic assuming that it's only going to destroy this small little building that happens to be mostly vacant at the time of the explosion maybe that's how they explain it away but either way it seems as though we're taking a lot for granted by just assuming this building is vacant that nobody's going to be around or injured in any way and then to also say that finn can be redeemed because she was honestly just trying to cause some real estate damage so you fight your way through more underground mercenaries and eventually finn appears to stop you from taking the new form this leads to one of the cooler sequences in the game where you're chasing finn and the new form across the city it's visually really impressive it's smooth the animations work great it's again an insomniac classic finn almost successfully takes out miles but in one last ditch effort to get her to stop he reveals his identity shocked understandably she disappears again i could throw a hissy fit that she only just figured this out he's one of her closest friends sure she hasn't known him for a while she's been gone but he doesn't change his voice at all when he's spider-man so all of these conversations the arguing the fighting everything you would think would remind her of miles at least a little bit this is why i like in a lot of batman films and games where he disguises his voice it makes sense to me but again i don't think you're supposed to look into it too much and who knows maybe you honestly would not recognize your best friend or best childhood friend as this superhero because it seems so far-fetched that that's who it could be again probably not worth worrying about or even bringing up so i will move on after this fight miles gets a call from aaron his uncle the prowler he asks to meet and when you do he explains to miles that he needs to get a better work-life balance to avoid all of the things that happened between him and miles's father they take a quick break to find some musical beats together and samples that they can stitch together when writing music this serves as both main story content to break up the pace of the story after all we just had a pretty intense sequence and we need a break but it also serves as side content to collect these samples for miles music and basically it's comprised of finding a sample trying to match it with something in the environment to record it fresh it's a neat idea to pair visuals with the sound that you're hearing it's kind of fun but to be honest it isn't executed particularly well the only way this can really work is if the sounds are surprising or don't completely match the thing they're coming from until you realize that that's where it's coming from but i completely admit that this is a very subjective thing i really don't enjoy these sequences i find them kind of annoying to be perfectly honest and they're more tedious than they are fun for me it's a cool idea but it just isn't implemented particularly well but then miles takes off but before he's completely gone the camera sticks on his uncle and it's here that you see aaron telling someone miles's plan for stopping finn this of course implies that he's double crossing miles or at the very least is trying to do his own thing going behind his back after doing some side content you eventually decide to meet up with finn it's a tense conversation understandably and a very awkward one basically saying that miles is not going to let her do what she wants to do and she's saying i'm gonna do whatever i want to do i'm my own woman back off bruh and then everything is gonna tie back in with the beginning of the game remember how roxanne just casually showed up after you took down rhino said that they would call the police and handle everything from here well they didn't actually do that they took rhino themselves fitted him out with a bunch of their tech and gear to make him harder to fight for spider-man and now reintroduce him into the mix rhino interrupts your meeting and kidnaps both miles and finn you wake up in an unknown area to simon krieger who threatens to reveal miles's identity and pick him apart to learn more about bioengineering and make money and muahaha he's unable to get the mask off because of all of this electric stuff that miles is able to do now it's a convenient excuse i grant you for him not knowing the identity but it's it's still a little stupid but again it's not really worth complaining about now obviously this would imply to me that aaron your uncle is the one that tipped off roxanne that you would be meeting with finn so that they could send rhino to catch you and capture you both why he would do this isn't really clear at this point maybe he's getting paid by roxanne maybe he thinks that it's actually for your greater good because he doesn't think you should try to take on finn maybe he thinks that finn is the greater evil and he needs to shut her down and the only way to do so is by shutting you down too but i would say if he honestly was trying to double-cross you he would have just revealed miles's identity because he could he knows who he is but all this will kind of connect here in the next few minutes after a long monologue about greed and money and wanting to be rich and famous and powerful and blah blah blah on the part of simon miles is able to let out a blast of energy that helps them to escape and then we get one of the cuter and more personable moments throughout the course of the game which is that miles and finn work together to escape their imprisonment wherever they happen to be at this point they don't really know exactly on the way out though they run into prowler who's talking to simon you see it turns out the prowler actually was the one that turned miles and finn into roxanne he did double cross you but it wasn't specifically to trap miles and finn it was to just get finn the whole point was to shut finn down but let miles go that was the condition that aaron set when he shared that information he probably was also hoping that finn would get captured and miles would be able to escape i mean after all he's spider-man surely he'll be able to escape faster than finn would be able to however simon ever the pragmatist decided that finn wouldn't be that valuable on her own but if he also captured miles this would be great leverage against the prowler and against finn herself he can benefit from finn's technical know-how and all of her resources as the head of this bizarre underground gang the prowler is obviously very capable and would be a great asset and then spider-man is freaking spider-man so of course there's a benefit to having leverage over him to get what you want it makes sense to me that simon would do this that he would capture both of them because he could and in fact it makes so much sense to me that it's a little unbelievable that aaron would just take his word for it that he'd leave miles alone granted he only wanted finn captured because he thought that she was potentially going to destroy a entire city block but even so the prowler is a very capable individual himself why couldn't he just go and take down finn himself why does he have to go to a giant mega corporation to have them kidnapped it just seems a little strange especially if you're worried about them double crossing you it only makes sense to me to take matters into your own hands especially when you are the freaking prowler again it's just convenient that roxanne gets involved here even though they definitely don't need to be in order for aaron to achieve the same goals after they discover all of this with aaron and the fact that he double-crossed them finn is understandably very upset with miles for one she's upset that her trust was betrayed two she's frustrated that miles talked to the prowler about all of this to begin with and there's the reason that they got caught and all of this stacks onto the other frustration which is still forefront in her mind which is that miles is spider-man and never told her she also says that miles is like a brother to her which makes this betrayal all the more difficult to deal with however i hate to be the one to point this out but she's been gone for years i never found any dialogue specifically stating how long she was gone for but what we do know is that she decided to go to a different school with miles enrolling in brooklyn visions academy and finn enrolling in midtown high school this to me would suggest that they've been separate for at least three to four years if they've been separated through all of high school and when we're first introduced to finn just a few hours before this in the game it's not as though they've been really close all this time it's introduced as a major reunion they haven't seen her in a long time or at the very least have not kept up for a very long time i understand you can still have somebody that's close to you that you care about deeply that is separate and that you don't see very often but it still seems as though it's not that ridiculous that miles isn't sharing every intimate detail of his life with her but regardless the two continue to fight their way out of the roxon facility that they're in it all eventually culminates in a giant boss fight between you finn and rhino it initially starts with finn and miles working together to beat down rhino and after they do that finn decides to take matters into her own hands and decides that she wants to finish rhino she wants to kill rhino miles doesn't want to let this happen especially because she's getting very emotional especially with rhino trash talking her brother saying he deserved to die blah blah blah and so miles tries to talk her out of it but she is not having it and starts to blow up with anger but just before all of this culminates miles is investigating on one of the computers in the adjacent room he finds out that because roxon effectively overclocked the reactor in order to get everything done on time and to make sure that the energy output was where they needed it to be they stand the chance of it blowing by itself if finn does insert that unstable new form piece into the reactor as is her plan it will definitely destroy all of harlem it was a suspicion before but this confirms it she's going to kill a lot of people if she chooses to do this and it's this point that he realizes that finn wants to kill rhino he tries to leap in the way but not before finn is able to stab rhino with this giant sword thing it's not clear to me right here if rhino is actually dead or if she just kind of stabbed him i really don't know maybe there is dialogue that confirms that he is dead here i'm not sure to be honest she's upset enough that she says she's going to do this no matter what and miles should stay away he tries to explain that it's not going to do what she thinks it's going to do that lots of innocent people are going to die but she's having none of it miles returns home broken and defeated in his suit still which is when his mom sees him considering that this is the first time she's seeing him in this state and as spider-man she handles this pretty well there's a really sweet moment here where miles and his mom catch up he shares everything with her explaining things with finn and what's going on with the city and it wraps up with his mom telling him that he needs to make sure he sees this through to the end and that he doesn't give up and let finn get away with this she also subtly hints that his father would do the same which is enough to motivate miles and now we're in the home stretch basically miles decides he needs to head to the oscorp science center which is where their science project energy converter thing that we mentioned earlier is located when he gets there he actually runs into the prowler his uncle aaron who locks him in a cell in order to protect him again he's trying to keep him contained because he doesn't want him to get hurt miles now is arguing that he does have what it takes and this is the first moment that we see a real change of attitude from miles compared to where he started this game just a few gameplay hours ago miles was telling peter parker that he didn't have what it takes to protect the city that he didn't want to do this by himself but now he's arguing that he does have what it takes and that his uncle aaron should not underestimate him that he's able to do this it's a really cool reversal from where he was just a little while ago and it again shows the growth of the character something i love the two fight it out and miles amazingly wins but miles before leaving makes sure to communicate to his uncle aaron that he doesn't want things to be like they were between his father and him he doesn't hold anything against him at all he just doesn't want to let all of these people die and he knows that if he doesn't stand up and do something about it no one will you then push on to the converter at the science center after defeating guards there's some little puzzle things you have to do with rotating this gigantic spheroid thing to connect wires and electric webs and things it's kind of interesting it made me think so that's good not to mention the setting and the scenery is really well done here this was definitely one of the more memorable moments in the game for me i'm not entirely sure what but you push into the science center and go through a flashback to your early years with finn not a lot happens here but there is a pretty cool moment where you can actually see peter parker and doc ock walking through the exhibits it's a really small cute moment and i like it a lot as far as i can tell the only reason this entire sequence is here is to make you feel a lot more nostalgic towards finn and their relationship they're trying to build it before they destroy it here in just a minute i didn't feel like this moment did anything particularly amazing but it was kind of cute which maybe is the point you come out of this flashback walking up to the new form it's here that finn returns takes the new form and you are once again tasked with fighting your way through a bunch of underground mercenaries after fighting through a metric crap ton of these enemies you break free and race to get to the roxon tower to stop finn on the way you have a bunch of fights in the streets to take down a bunch of underground guards i get that we want to have a gigantic combat sequence at the end of the game to make sure everything feels climactic but this really didn't seem necessary like she's about to blow up the entire neighborhood surely you can just swing past these guys stop her and then deal with them but no we have to stop and fight a bunch of grunts before taking on the main bad guy it just it's kind of stupid to me but again these are the types of things you just take for granted when playing a video game because you have to have something happen at the end of the game otherwise people would be complaining that it wasn't exciting enough or there wasn't as cool a battle at the very end of the game and granted if we had taken down finn and then we have to go and do a bunch of housekeeping like cleaning up all of these enemies separately it would feel really bizarre so i'm not necessarily even that upset about this i just think it's a little stupid and i'm going to think it's stupid while chuckling but still playing it and enjoying it if that makes sense after fighting through these waves of enemies on the streets you meet up with genki and your mom and basically connect and touch base on what's going on while you're talking with everybody a bunch of new rocks on guards show up i was buckling up for another round of beating back enemies and dealing with them before taking on the main event but prowler shows up out of nowhere and says that he's going to keep these people off your back while you stop finn everybody else is going to try and evacuate people to get them out of the blast radius so that if it does blow at least some lives will be saved miles races to the reactor to tell finn what will happen if she completes her goal of inserting the unstable new form into the reactor that she's going to kill a lot of people and blow up the entire neighborhood but she doesn't believe him she thinks he's lying which is an interesting take again they want her to be just forgivable enough that you're sympathetic at the very end of the game when she makes the ultimate sacrifice they can't have finn and as just a cruel evil person who says screw it i don't care if it's gonna blow up the entire neighborhood i want to get back at roxanne i'll blame it on roxon roxon will be responsible for all of this and it'll take down the entire evil corporation at least that's like sort of interesting but instead she's just like no i don't believe you and so she's misguided which makes all of this really bizarre i don't know there's just something weird about a bad guy who's only doing bad things because they're confused and yes there is a difference between a sort of philosophical or theological confusion for instance misinterpreting some holy book leading you to making evil decisions and just being confused or doubting information that you're told and this is far from the worst offense in this game the writers have done a lot of stuff over the course of this story just to make things happen that they wanted to happen but it is still really stupid that the ultimate villain of this game the main antagonist her final motivations for doing everything that she's doing for being the antagonist is that she doesn't think that you're being completely honest and she is confused by the stuff you're telling her so she doesn't believe you to me it's just unexciting and makes this whole boss fight feel really really weird like we're beating the crap out of each other for no reason at all granted she's trying to blow up an entire neighborhood but i just don't really know how to communicate this further other than this whole thing feels really strange maybe i'm just reading too much into this which tends to be my curse but she does insert the new form into the reactor she doesn't believe miles and this sets off this gigantic boss fight that ties up the entire game halfway through the fight there's an explosion that rocks the top of the skyscraper and freaks out all of your family members at the bottom of the plaza the boss fight continues you keep beating the crap out of each other and eventually you get the best of finn she gets knocked on all fours and just so happens to look down at the street at the precise moment there's an explosion that ripples across the entire neighborhood it's now that she realizes miles was telling the truth and that she likely just killed a lot of people and everything starts to go to hell the building starts to explode they get knocked from the building and miles is able to save finn from the fall but once he's at the bottom he realizes that the reactor has only seconds before it blows and it's here that we have one of the cooler sequences in the game visually at least miles begins to absorb the energy from the reactor and you can actually see in this footage i'm playing right now that miles is bones and even heart is showing through his skin and suit the energy is so great that it's effectively like an x-ray i'm gonna be honest i really don't know how they did this this well it's beautiful fantastic and so subtle you might not notice that you can see his entire skeleton through all of this but it's fantastic and by this means miles absorbs the energy of the reactor he knows that he's going to have to release the energy any second and that when he does so it could kill a lot of people and it's at this point that finn decides to take this matter into her own hands that she's going to save the city and make up for her mistakes so she grabs miles runs up the side of the skyscraper with her crazy purple boot things and then rockets into the sky while holding miles like a little baby she knows that this is going to kill her but she knows it's the only way to save all of those people so she takes it on herself the explosion happens she's turned into a bajillion little bits and miles collapses all the way down back to the reactor so even though finn has been turned into a metric but ton of powdered sugar miles is going to be okay there's also a cute little moment here where miles is on the ground without his mask on a bunch of new yorkers come up and see his true identity but instead of sharing it or snapping photos or making a big deal of it they decide to protect him and they also stand in the way between miles and the paparazzi and the police and everybody else that shows up at the last second in order to allow him to escape we then jump ahead four weeks seeing simon getting arrested you see what happened is that aaron told the police about his identity as the prowler and at the same time outed simon leading to the arrest of them both this ties things up nicely and sees the other antagonists get arrested and see justice is served we then get a really awesome tie back to the original opening sequence remember when i said that we had the long-term goal of getting on that mural with the original spider-man earning our place in the city and being trusted by those citizens well it happened you walk right by the mural with the song playing and you see that the new spidey is also on the mural he's earned his spot we then have our final scene where we go up to the top of the roof and meet with peter who's back from his trip another good touch is that miles now is drinking coffee upside down whereas at the beginning of the game peter was again just showing that now they're equals and can do the same thing it's a good touch miles also asks if it gets any easier and pete says that some parts do and some parts don't and they conclude that their job is making sure that companies like roxanne don't get away with thinking that people like the residents of harlem are disposable they then swing off through the city and land in one of the coolest finishing poses i've ever seen in any game ever and then the credits roll also real quick small side note this ending credit animation and everything they did here is really well done like so many games have such boring credits where just names and titles scroll slowly on a black background it's terrible this had effort put into it this is like really impressive it's beautiful it's stylized it matches the music it's awesome like i i love this i found myself sitting through all of this and i'm glad i did because there is a post credit scene this sets up the next game basically you're in first person as harry osborn in that vat that we got a glimpse of in the first game you then see norman osborne walk up and tell the scientists there to get him out despite the scientists reservations he says it's time and they need to make this happen this of course sets up the green goblin as being the antagonist for the next game which i'm very okay with because the green goblin is one of my favorite comic book characters ever granted it's probably just because of the nostalgia factor tied back to the original spider-man from sam raimi but still and then we get access to the open world again miles swings to the top of this church the same church that you met finn at and he leaves behind the little space bound trophy that was awarded to him and finn back when they were in middle school or high school or whenever they want it and then you have access to the open world again you can continue exploring completing side content doing whatever else you need to do speaking of that side content there's some here but none of it really goes above and beyond what the initial game did we've discussed some of it over the course of this video things like collecting those sound samples or collecting collect-a-thon items things like that i'll admit that my personal preference is usually to avoid the collect-a-thons i just don't find them fun and to me often they're just wastes of time meant to pad out gameplay time some people really like them and for many the ability to just swing through new york city is in and of itself worth doing and i agree it's super fun and i enjoy it immensely but i'm not going to go through for another 20 hours picking up every little thing that's been left behind as with the first game i found myself swinging around for an additional hour or two before getting bored and just moving on and that to me is not really a bad thing this game is actually fairly cheap especially right now the value proposition for the main story is pretty solid by itself it doesn't need a ton of side content or replayability to be worth it in my mind especially when you factor in a lot of the post release content that they put out specifically with regards to suits so while it may piss some people off that i'm not going to go through every single collect-a-thon in the city in my mind this video is long enough already and i will spare you the trouble in conclusion i like this game i think it's pretty solid of course it relies on many of the tropes that are time tested and have always been true within the superhero genre of video games and to some extent there are stupid plot lines that you just have to take for granted and accept as part of the story because that's just what you have to do some stories are just not written to withstand immense pressures or extremely analytical thinking you're just meant to kind of go through and enjoy the ride it's like harry potter there's a ton of plot holes in harry potter tons of things that don't make sense and that jk rowling definitely made up on the spot to explain away things that didn't make sense before not realizing that it caused more plot holes later on but you can still enjoy those films and books just by going along for the ride i guess what i'm saying is just because this game has plot holes has weird coincidences and has things that are very contrived doesn't mean there's anything wrong with it the game is still fun and that's kind of the point of video games to begin with so while a video like this is meant to nitpick and critique every little thing that i can pick apart within the game you're definitely not meant to take these critiques and dismiss the entire game as a result hopefully now you have a better understanding of how the game works why it works the way that it does and what they could have done better it also should hopefully allow you to formulate your own opinion of the game itself don't take everything i said as gospel truth formulate your own opinion you might disagree with me on some things that i said here and if you do let me know in the comment section below or tweet at me at luke stevens tv or let me know in the discord i'd love to hear your thoughts and i've been wrong before and i've admitted it before so just let me know your thoughts you might convince me but that does it for me thank you for watching if you did enjoy the video please do like it that really does help these videos are put up for free if you enjoyed it all i ask is that you drop a like it really does help also if you have a game that you'd like to see me critique in this same fashion let me know as well the next critiques are also on their way i have videos coming for assassin's creed valhalla uncharted 3 4 and the lost legacy resident evil 8 village and yes we're going to be beginning a breakdown of the entire elder scrolls franchise and as always if you'd like to hang out with me while i work on these critiques just head over to twitch.tv forward slash luke stevens and you can hang out with us while we play through these games and hang out together i stream mondays wednesdays thursdays and fridays so there's a pretty good chance you're gonna catch me but that's all i love you all more than you could possibly know and i'll see you in the next video peace out

Channel: Luke Stephens

Views: 130,755

Keywords: luke stephens

Id: _g4ciMrZLzI

Length: 79min 3sec (4743 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 28 2021