LP Beach

(I know Miles is originally from Brooklyn, but he lives in Harlem now and you can be sure I'll put a Guy from Harlem reference in my thread title if it's even remotely appropriate)



Hey, wait, this isn't Red Dead Redemption II! Yes, before me and ChaosArgate get to more cowboy shit, I figured we'd do something nice and short and Christmas-y since it's December and all that. The excellent standalone expansion to Marvel's Spider-Man from 2018 fits the bill quite nicely, so here we are.

Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales by Insomniac Games was released in November 2020 as a launch game for the PlayStation 5, with a PS4 version coming out on the same day. As I said, this is basically a standalone expansion in the vein of Infamous: First Light and Uncharted: Lost Legacy, a smaller game than the original Marvel's Spider-Man but still a fun experience in its own right.

Miles Morales was originally introduced in the Ultimate Spider-Man comics, becoming Spider-Man after that version of Peter Parker died (he eventually got better) and eventually crossing over to the main Marvel universe after the Ultimate books were cancelled. While his comic book incarnation was popular and the original run by Brian Michael Bendis was very good (I haven't read any of the more recent stuff), most people probably know Miles from the fantastic Into the Spider-Verse movie released a couple of years ago.

Miles also showed up in the original PS4 Spider-Man game and got bitten by a genetically modified spider, and at the end of the DLC Peter Parker took Miles under his wing to train him as a Spider-sidekick. Spider-Man: Miles Morales starts off a few months after that, and Miles finds himself as New York's only Spider-Man as Peter goes on a working vacation with MJ in Symkaria for a few weeks. What could possibly go wrong in a few weeks?

We'll be playing the PS4 Pro version for this LP due to the fact I don't have a PS5. Sony only sent a few thousand units to Finland, and those sold out months ago. So, PS4 Pro it is. The PS4 version is very solid (at least on the Pro), runs at a stable 30 fps, loads much faster than the original, and looks quite nice as well. Obviously, we're not getting any of the fancy ray tracing stuff and improved lighting and all that shiny stuff from the PS5 version, but I think you'll agree this still looks fine.

Oh yeah, and NO SPOILERS!

VIDEOS:

Episode 1: The Oath
Episode 2: The Underground
Episode 3: Miles Saves Christmas
Episode 4: Spider-Cat
Episode 5: Lost Control
Episode 6: My Time
Episode 7: The Leader

Episode 1: The Oath

The Spider-Men get in the holiday spirit by stopping Rhino's rampage through the city. I'm not going to bother making any jokes about Peter Parker's new face, because I think all of those have been made by now.

Episode 2: The Underground

Today, we do some AR training in our fancy(?) new suit, mimic the aesthetic of a different Earth in another suit, and beat up a bunch of Cyberpunk rejects.

Episode 3: Miles Saves Christmas

Miles saves Christmas, hangs out with his uncle and plays with some trains. This video is blocked in North Korea, Syria, Iran and Cuba thanks to 20 seconds of copyrighted music, and if you're in one of those countries I can upload an edited version later.

Episode 4: Spider-Cat

This one has a cat in it so I expect at least two million views.

YouTube has decided that processing ultra HD videos should now take an actual eternity (or at least over 18 hours), so this is 1080p only at the moment. The 4K version should be ready at some point in the not too distant future. Or maybe not. You never know with good old YouTube.

God imagine if the game hit you with the ol' Spider-Man 2 Pizza delivery minigame rules about flipping wildly for transporting SpiderMan The Cat

Episode 5: Lost Control

No, seriously, what is it with Spider-Man and bad things happening on and around bridges?

The megacorp with a private army is EVIL? Say it isn't so!

Well, seeing them ready to shoot him in cold blood is something I could see Miles not being ready for, but at least he was suspicious of them from the beginning.

Also, now that I've discovered this one, I'm going to have to marathon your previous LPs.

I'm fairly sure "that security guy" was Unc' Aaron, meanwhile it seems obvious that the Rally wasn't their objective, it was just a decent time and place to make a statement and attack some Roxxon goons while playing distraction

Meanwhile... The Tinker seems to have a somewhat feminine frame, its Phin isn't it, we're building to some classic "old friends are super-rivals in secret" or some shit... and they didn't even wait ten seconds to throw that into the open geezus, Miles had no reason to guess that "Phin has something rough going on" meant "Is a supervillain running a cyberpunk gang", he's just desperate to find reasons to fault himself for his friend's actions

And wooo, invisibility, sick

Cloudmonkey98 wrote: ↑

Wed Jan 27, 2021 6:41 am

he's just desperate to find reasons to fault himself for his friend's actions

Classic Spider-Man behavior right there. Peter has taught him well!

Episode 6: My Time

We get the suit from the box art, and to celebrate the occasion we hunt down some toy thieves and chase after pigeons. Okay, maybe not the most exciting way to bounce back after the disaster in the previous episode, but we are supposed to be the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man so we'll spend some time just helping people out.

Episode 7: The Leader

We visit Rick Mason's repair shop to find a broadcast monitor for retro gaming figure out why Phin became the Tinkerer. As it turns out, the back room holds quite a few secrets...

Also, I completely forgot I made that Bubsy reference on commentary all the way back in February, before doing the same in a San Andreas episode. I think about Bubsy quite often, as all of us should.