I'm not a superhero buff, but I've always had a soft spot for Miles Morales. He is a more interesting and human character than Peter Parker's various incarnations.

That sentiment extends to each of his games. Spider-Man: Miles Morales is a mini-sequel to Insomniac's 2018 web-slinging, slash spin-off. Rick Lane's review of Spider-Man (opens in a new tab) notes that it's an almost-good port of an almost-good game. The bad news is that Miles Morales' PC port is still only "mostly good." The good news is that it's one of the far better games.

Miles Morales is a more streamlined experience than its predecessor. There may be less to do, but almost all of it is more beneficial to Miles and New York. There are fewer side quests and the story is much shorter than in the previous film. Miles Morales has the perfect opportunity to develop a tighter, denser story.

Things begin with a brief recollection and speed up where Miles is now. The focus of the story is split between the teenager's home life, especially in the wake of his father's death in the previous film, and balancing his new Spidey duties while the OG takes a cheeky winter break. The daily web-slinging shenanigans lead Miles into a serious war between the Roxxon Corporation and the Tinker-led high-tech crime syndicate Underground. There is superhero-level predictability in the various developments. But the game does an excellent job of fleshing out the cast and giving some forgiveness to the predictable moments by giving them an emotional charge.

The more engaging storyline is definitely aided by Insomniac's success in making being Spider-Man feel even cooler than before. It may be a snow-covered replica of Peter Parker's New York City, but the developers have tweaked the near-perfect web sling to make it more satisfying. This time around, I feel like I have more control over wall running and steering around buildings. By default, I used a controller, but when I tried controlling it with the keyboard, Nixxes, the port developer, converted the input surprisingly well. It took some getting used to, but eventually it became as intuitive as using DualSense.

While taking down bad guys is pretty much the same for both Spidey's, Miles has a few key additions that set him apart. Venom's abilities shake up the battle a bit, and Miles can inflict bursts of electrical damage on his enemies. The hits have weight to them, and the snappy camerawork makes the combat more dynamic. However, the core moveset remains largely the same. While not necessarily a bad thing, those seeking a drastic combat evolution may find disappointment.

Stealth missions are still excessive, with Miles having to delicately balance himself on poles and beams, quietly netting enemies out of sight. I never like stealth missions and get tired of repeatedly scanning the enemy to see if it is safe to take them down by stealth. Many times I gave up and threw myself into the fight, but it was much more pleasurable to round up the underground goons with a Venom Smash.

With Miles Morales moving from the PlayStation 5 to the PC, the game is already a graphical feast. For the most part, the ported version looks equally gorgeous. Aliasing issues were encountered, especially in cutscenes. There were also a few graphical bugs throughout the hours in New York, such as textures not loading properly and Miles disappearing completely during the loading screen, leaving a stray web.

I also suffered from frame drops and crashes. My rig was incompatible with the raytracing option, and even with it turned off, I experienced nasty frame rate issues during combat and movement. It also crashed a few times, but thanks to the autosave, this is not a major problem in terms of gameplay. However, having to start the game multiple times a night started to get a little annoying. On the plus side, there are tons of options to tweak the graphics. By reducing the traffic density and disabling ray tracing, I was able to play the game on high settings with relatively little problem, aside from some crashing issues.

I would still recommend playing Insomniac's first Spider-Man. But for those who just want to kick around New York City in the winter, run through skyscrapers at breakneck speeds, and kick the crap out of bad guys, Miles Morales should be the one and only true Spider-Man. It's the best adventure ever for this hero, and he won't waste any time.