Miles Morales improves on the 2018 game in every way. It tightens up the open-world bloat and tells a more compelling and better paced story. I have always found Miles Morales to be a great character and focusing on him feels fresh. I love the winter setting as well. Just a phenomenal game overall - I sincerely hope this sets the standard for superhero games moving forward.

My biggest and only real complaint is that it shows a lot of deference to police, which feels extraordinarily tone deaf considering the cultural context this game was released in and, you know, the actual actions of the NYPD. It feels doubly weird when this game otherwise makes a lot of great decisions w/r/t diversity and representation. From the constant praise of Miles' heroic cop father to a mission where you literally use police facial recognition technology to identify and subdue criminals, it feels jarring and it's not something that would typically throw me off. The 2018 game was way, way worse about this in retrospect, but it feels egregious in this game because it's clear they put so much care into crafting a vibrant and diverse cast of characters. I think this is something the games community needs to take seriously moving forward if games are actually going to become more diverse in a meaningful way.

Copaganda aside, this is one of the most fun games I have played this year.