With Halloween right around the corner, now’s the perfect time to play some unsettling games. If you’re a PS4 owner looking to get in the holiday spirit, the PlayStation Store is hosting its annual Halloween Sale right now. Not every game in the sale is a pure horror game, which means you can grab titles like Death Stranding and Days Gone for cheap, too. The Halloween Sale runs until November 3, so you have a few weeks to make your picks. There’s also a new Games Under $20 promotion filled with lots of bargains.
There are a handful of solid horror games in the sale. Resident Evil 2‘s stellar 2019 remake is discounted to $16, Little Nightmares is down to $5, and both Evil Within games are 50% off; the first entry is $10, while The Evil Within 2 is $30. You can also grab the atmospheric first-person shooter Alien: Isolation, and all of its DLC, for only $8.
Other games that somewhat touch on the horror genre are heavily featured in the sale, too. Death Stranding is on sale for $30, Days Gone is down to $20, and Doom Eternal is $30. You can also snag The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt’s Complete edition for $15 and Nioh for $10. Though not a huge discount, it’s worth noting that the recently released Souls-like Mortal Shell is on sale for $25.49.
The Games Under $20 sale runs until October 29 and features deals on a variety of popular franchises. Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection is discounted to $10, which is quite the bargain considering it comes with three great remastered adventures. Multiple Far Cry games are heavily discounted: Far Cry 4 is $6.59, Far Cry Primal is $9.89, and Far Cry 3 Classic edition is $9.89.
This week on Wrestle Buddies, GameSpot’s professional wrestling podcast, Chris E. Hayner and Mat Elfring are hanging out with friends, old and new. And, naturally, there are so many things to talk about–from the rise of AEW to horror video games to, of all things, Boy Meets World.
First, TV Guide’s Keisha Hatchet is back. The third Wrestle Buddy is here to talk about all of the times Boy Meets World features wrestlers on guest stars. Do you remember how Vader’s kid went to the same high school as Cory, Shawn, and Topanga? We sure do.
Then, we welcome AEW star Sonny Kiss to the show to celebrate the one year anniversary of AEW Dynamite. It’s been a wild year for Kiss, and we’re discussing the best moments. We also find out what video games the “Concrete Rose” is playing and talk horror movies. After all, it is spooky season.
All that plus we answer your questions! New episodes of Wrestle Buddies are released every Thursday on the podcast platform or app of your choice, including Spotify, Stitcher, and Apple Podcasts.
Redditor SonicDagan765’s first custom skate park was a recreation of one of the most memorable levels in Spyro: Year of the Dragon. They kept videos of the game open on the side as they crafted purple ramps and rails to replicate the sassy dragon’s playground in concrete. “I just paused it and tried to replicate the feel for [the levels],” they said in a Reddit thread of them sharing their Spyro-inspired park. “But it took many edits.”
Players can take these fan-made parks for a spin by searching the park creator database by keyword. You can find the Spyro park by searching for ‘Spyro 3 Skate Parks.’ There are a ton of wild creations available to play and they are only getting better as these amateur level designers learn the ins and outs of the park creator.
“I found that [storage fills up] real quick,” Gunderstank16 said. Creators have struggled to fit everything they want into parks due to memory limitations and have opted for less detail. “I usually end up making the majority of my parks out of basic geometry first, then after adding objects the complexity meter just gets eaten up immediately.”
Recreations of Mario and Spyro levels are only the tip of the iceberg. Players have recreated multiple levels from the Call of Duty series, including Rust and Nuketown, and others have remade Super Smash Bros. levels platform-for-platform.
All these parks look somewhat blank due to the memory issues, but the layout and geometry for many of them is spot on. That’s because many of these creators, just like SonicDagan765 with Spyro, had the games they were trying to replicate open alongside Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2.
“It helps to pre-plan everything using flat smart blocks of various sizes, and mapping everything out first before building it up,” Gunderstank16 said. “That way I don’t have to worry about it being slightly off. That and I had Super Mario Sunshine running at the same time so I could keep going back and forth for reference.”
The late 1960s and early 1970s was a watershed period for many aspects of American cinema, and one big change was how cars were portrayed onscreen. Previously they had usually been seen in movies purely to get characters from one place to another, and often involved actors sitting in front of fake-looking projected backgrounds. But movies such as Bullitt and The French Connection showcased a thrilling new approach to filming cars. The modern car chase was born, as directors strapped cameras onto hoods and risked life and limb to get some amazingly exciting automotive action.
High-speed car mayhem wasn’t just the domain of action movies. It started to be used by thriller and horror directors, who saw the vehicle as not just a tool, but as a threat in and of itself. And not just cars–huge thundering trucks, with their imposing height and size, became a genre favourite. Sometimes these vehicles had crazy drivers, and sometimes they were controlled by supernatural forces.
Of course, there’s only so much you can do with a car or truck chasing innocent people down the road, and eventually many of the movies inspired by classics such as Duel and Christine became familiar retreads of what had gone before. And some vehicles will never be scary, as anyone who sat through the woeful British movie I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle will tell you. But at its best, the killer vehicle movie can be as effective as sharks, demons, or masked pyschos.
We’ve gone back through the last five decades of killer vehicle films to pick ten must-sees for fans of automotive mayhem. These films all take a different approach to the genre, and while not all are great movies, they all deliver where it counts–ie. scary cars and trucks out to maim and terrify their human creators. Hit it!
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10. Killdozer! (1974)
Killer vehicle: Caterpillar D9
Killdozer! is surely a contender for one of the greatest movie titles of all time. Inevitably the film itself doesn’t quite deliver on the promise of that name, but it’s still good, silly fun. It was based on Theodore Sturgeon’s short story and made for TV, and focuses on a bulldozer that becomes a metallic killing machine when it is used to shift a crashed meteorite. Of course, bulldozers aren’t very fast, so director Jerry London has to invent reasons to have his victims (a construction crew) stand around while the giant glowing vehicle catches up to them, but it’s still a massive and imposing “villain.” The movie was subsequently adapted into a Marvel comic book and inspired the ’80s rock band of the same name.
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9. The Wraith (1986)
Killer vehicle: Dodge M4S Turbo Interceptor
This VHS favorite features two iconic ’80s stars of the era (Charlie Sheen and Sherilyn Fenn) and a super-fast Dodge Interceptor that takes out a criminal gang one-by-one. The car is driven by the ghost of a teenager (Sheen) who was killed by the gang, and is back for revenge with a helmet, leather jacket, and badass attitude. Sadly, while the car action is exciting, the movie’s production was marred by the death of camera operator Bruce Ingram and the serious injury of seven others when an overloaded camera car crashed.
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8. The Hearse (1980)
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7. Joyride (2001)
Killer vehicle: Peterbilt 359 truck
Joyride was clearly influenced by Spieberg’s Duel–even down to the Peterbilt truck–but while the driver in that earlier film was just a relentless psychopath, Joyride’s villain “Rusty Nail” is given some motivation. He’s a lonely long-distance truck driver who is the victim of a cruel prank played by a trio of kids (Paul Walker, Steve Zahn, and Leelee Sobieski) so decides that hunting down the trio in his massive vehicle is an appropriate response. We never see Rusty Nail, but an uncredited Ted Levine (Silence of the Lambs’ Buffalo Bill) gives the character plenty of menace over the crackly radio.
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6. The Car (1977)
Killer vehicle: Lincoln Continental
Unlike Stephen King’s similarly-themed Christine, which makes it clear straight away that the vehicle is the source of evil, The Car initially plays with the possibility that its death-dealing Lincoln has a murderous driver behind its blacked-out windows. In the end it doesn’t–and ironically given the movie’s tagline (“what evil drives this car?”), no explanation is given for the Lincoln’s habit of mowing down anyone who gets in its way. The Car was panned at the time, but has since become a cult favorite. One of its biggest fans is Guillermo del Toro, who was inspired to build his own amazing life-sized replica of the vehicle.
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5. Repo Man (1984)
Killer vehicle: 1964 Chevrolet Malibu
This wild cult sci-fi classic centers around Otto (Emilio Estevez) and Bud (Harry Dean Stanton), a pair of repo men in Los Angeles who are on the trail of a Chevy Malibu driven by an insane lobotomized scientist named Frank Parnell. While the car itself isn’t dangerous, whatever Parnell has hidden in the trunk causes instant disintegration when it is opened. The contents of the trunk are never shown, but we learn that it might be alien bodies that Parnell stole from the government, and Bud and Otto must outwit rival repo men, UFO conspiracy nuts, and CIA agents to retrieve the increasingly-radioactive car without being painfully atomized.
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4. Maximum Overdrive (1986)
Killer vehicle: Western Star 4800
Stephen King only directed one movie, and while few would argue that Maximum Overdrive is a particularly good film, it does have some highly memorable killer vehicles brought to “life” by a passing comet. The most famous is the Western Star 4800, better known as a “Green Goblin truck,” which has a huge face of the iconic Spider-Man villain on its front grill. The Goblin face is “explained” by the fact that the truck is owned by the fictional Happy Toyz company (and approved by Marvel), but clearly it’s just to give this thundering multi-wheeled menace a recognisable and scary personality.
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3. Death Proof (2007)
Killer vehicles: 1970 Chevrolet Chevy II Nova and a 1969 Dodge Charger
Tarantino’s contribution to 2007’s Grindhouse double-feature features an insane former stuntman, played deliciously by Kurt Russell, causing loads of gory automotive mayhem in a pair of modified cars. These cars–a Chevy Nova and a Dodge Charger–were specifically altered to protect the driver when filming action scenes, and allow Stuntman Mike to hit his victims at extremely high speeds without risking his own life. That is until he meets a team of female stunt performers who are themselves experts at driving very, very fast.
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2. Christine (1983)
Killer vehicle: 1958 Plymouth Fury
Perhaps the most famous killer car in horror, Christine is the vengeful Plymouth Fury from Stephen King’s classic 1983 novel and John Carpenter’s adaptation, which was released later the same year. While Christine’s murderous deeds remain the same in both–killing the various bullies and cops that make the life of her new owner (nerdy teen Arnie Cunningham) a misery, the source of her evil differs. In King’s novel, Christine is possessed by the spirit of her previous owner, the now-deceased Roland D. LeBay, who murdered his family and killed himself in the car. Christine in the movie is shown as evil from the very day it rolls off the lot, and it is the car itself that possesses both LeBay and subsequently Arnie. Either way, the scenes of Christine emerging from the darkness to pursue her hapless victims, as Carpenter’s ominous synth score pulses on the soundtrack, are some of the scariest of the director’s career.
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1. Duel (1971)
Killer vehicle: Peterbilt 281 truck
Wildly considered one of the best made-for-TV movies, Duel introduced America to young director Steven Spielberg and delivered some of the scariest killer vehicle thrills of all time. In this case, it’s a thundering Peterbilt 281 truck that relentlessly pursues a businessman played by Dennis Weaver in a Plymouth Valiant across the Mojave Desert, after it is overtaken by the Plymouth. Even though the rusty old Peterbilt is not supernaturally controlled, Spielberg stated that he wanted the vehicle to be seen as the movie’s true villain, so deliberately avoided showing the driver beyond a few fleeting shots. “The unseen is always more frightening than what you throw in the audience’s face,” he said in the movie’s DVD documentary.
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Disclosure: ViacomCBS is GameSpot’s parent company
Legendary is reportedly developing a new Buck Rogers movie to potentially serve as a launching pad for a multi-platform sci-fi franchise.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Legendary, the production company behind the upcoming Dune movie reboot, is planning to develop a new Buck Rogers project with Transformers producer Don Murphy and his wife Susan Montford, whose credits include Shoot ‘Em Up and Real Steel. The studio is said to be “putting the final pieces” together on a deal for the screen rights to the classic sci-fi character.
After years-long negotiations over the rights to the franchise, sources claim that the team behind the Buck Rogers project are wanting to branch the property out across multiple platforms, starting with “a big-screen take that would pave the way for a prestige television series as well as an anime series, giving audiences a 360-look at heroics sets in the 25th century.”
Buck Rogers is the spaceman protagonist of Philip Francis Nowlan’s Armageddon 2419 A.D., published in a 1928 issue of the Amazing Stories magazine. The novella opens with Rogers trapped inside a coal mine, where he falls into a state of suspended animation and wakes up almost 500 years into the future. The character rose to further prominence when he appeared in a 1929 John F. Dille comic strip.
Over the years, the stories of Buck Rogers have appeared in a variety of formats, including comics, movies, radio, and television. The developing project at Legendary could lead to many more adventures with the celebrated comic-strip spaceman, as Hollywood continues to revisit past properties. For more reboots and revivals, check out our rundown of the quickest movie franchise reboots.
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Adele Ankers is a Freelance Entertainment Journalist. You can reach her on Twitter.
PlayStation 5 users will be able to record voice chats and send them to moderators.
The news was revealed alongside the latest system software update for the PlayStation 4, version 8.00. PS4 users have been reporting seeing a notification in party chats where they are told that “voice chats may be recorded for moderation.”
According to the PlayStation Blog, this is a pre-emptive measure for the upcoming feature, which will launch alongside the PS5. “Voice chat recording for moderation is a feature that will be available on PS5 when it launches, and will enable users to record their voice chats on PS5 and submit them for moderation review,” explained Sid Shuman, Senior Director at SIE Content Communications.
“The pop up you’re seeing on PS4 right now is to let you know that when you participate in a chat with a PS5 user (post-launch), they may submit those recordings from their PS5 console to SIE,” he added.
It’s not clear just yet what the ramifications of this new system will be: will it be a means for Sony to find and ban users who break the code of conduct in voice chats, as reported by other players? The rest of the Version 8.00 update offers small tweaks to the PS4 UI, likely to bring it in line with features coming to the next-generation console and to mitigate cross-play issues. Version 8.00 includes new avatars, a means to mute all microphones from the quick menu and enhanced 2-step verification. It also removes the ability to create or access events.
Shortly after being cast as Furiosa in the upcoming Mad Max prequel, Anya Taylor-Joy has “already started dreaming” of the Fury Road heroine according to a recent interview.
Now, Miller’s found his leading lady and she couldn’t be more excited to take up the challenge and make the character her own. “The level of commitment that has been shown before me, I endeavor to match that,” Taylor-Joy said. “And that makes me really excited.”
“I fell in love with Furiosa, the way that Charlize presented her,” Taylor-Joy said. “She did such an incredible job and it was so beautiful and I can’t even think about trying to step [into her shoes]. It has to be something different, because it just can’t be done.”
Anya Taylor-Joy is known most recently for her work in The New Mutants as well as Emma and The Witch.
Mad Max Furiosa will begin filming in 2021 and is expected to launch in 2022. Actors Chris Hemsworth and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II will star alongside Anya Taylor-Joy.
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Matthew Adler is a Features, News, Previews, and Reviews writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @MatthewAdler and watch him stream on Twitch.
According to a synopsis from Disney, in this adventure, “after stopping a break-in at Scrooge’s St. Canard Lab, Darkwing gains an unlikely sidekick, Gosalyn, as he uncovers a dark conspiracy tied to the Missing Mysteries and one of Scrooge’s employees.”
IGN can exclusively reveal a clip featuring Darkwing Duck himself in the video below (or watch it at the top of the page):
In an exclusive interview with DuckTales executive producer Matt Youngberg and co-executive producer/story editor Francisco Angones, IGN learned why the creators decided to bring Darkwing Duck back.
“Darkwing Duck was one of the most iconic series of our childhoods,” Youngberg told IGN. “The original series’ blend of broad slapstick, clever wordplay, superheroic action, and genuine heart had a profound influence on us creatively as kids, and there is a lot of that influence cooked into the DNA of our new DuckTales series. It is hands down Frank’s favorite cartoon of all time.”
Angones spoke about how the episode is “an exciting opportunity to explore Darkwing’s legacy as well specifically what kind of hero the purple protector of the persecuted wants to be. He’s new to the gig, he’s got the cool gadgets and costumes, the high-tech hidden lair, an endless supply of catchphrases, everything he needs to fight crime. But when Gosalyn crashes into his life, Darkwing will discover who he’s actually fighting for.”
When we first heard whispers of a Monster Hunter movie, we assumed it would involve monsters fighting in our modern world, like in this early (leaked) tech demo. In actuality, the Monster Hunter movie set to release this year takes place almost entirely in Monster Hunter’s fantasy world, though that wasn’t always the case.
Check out the first Monster Hunter movie trailer below:
Fans have been vocally concerned about the blend of our world’s military into the more fantastical Monster Hunter setting since those early looks first hit the web, and those reactions were high of mind for director Paul W.S. Anderson when I visited the Monster Hunter movie set in South Africa in December 2018. At the time, Anderson recalled fans’ initial reactions after actor Diego Boneta posted a picture of his character in military clothing holding an assault rifle.
[poilib element=”quoteBox” parameters=”excerpt=85%20percent%20of%20the%20Monster%20Hunter%20movie%20takes%20place%20in%20its%20fantasy%20world.”]“All everyone saw was like soldier outfits, and I know there was, ‘What the hell is this? This isn’t Monster Hunter,’ reaction. But that’s only a fraction of what the movie is, that was just the first image that went out, because it was really the first week of shooting. The bulk of the movie is this,” W.S. Anderson explained, motioning to the larger-than-life sand ship we stood on and the surrounding sets outside, very much grounded in fantasy.
Producer Jeremy Bolt clarified further, stating that 85 percent of the Monster Hunter movie takes place in its fantasy world, which includes set pieces and allusions to lore from a variety of Monster Hunter games – even Monster Hunter Frontier, which never officially released stateside. Anderson explained the Monster Hunter movie takes place on a new continent and chronologically after Monster Hunter World. He said they worked with Capcom to carve out a corner of the preexisting Monster Hunter world specifically for the movie.
The Monster Hunter video game series is firmly set in the fantasy genre, where technology is limited to some steam-fueled mechanics, and scattered villages very much rely on bonafide monster hunters to keep meddling monsters at bay. There are hints of an ancient civilization that may have had technology far more advanced than is currently available, but the rise and fall of those peoples is mysterious at best. Overall, Monster Hunter’s unnamed world is a setting much different than anything our modern world could offer.
That’s not to say there weren’t versions of the script that had the story of a Monster Hunter movie taking place primarily in our world. Anderson and Bolt have been trying to pitch a Monster Hunter movie since 2009, and that leaked demo footage — which showed two Monster Hunter monsters (a Rathalos and a Gore Magala) dueling inside a shopping mall — was based on one of those iterations. Prior to the most recent adaptation pitch being greenlit, at least three other scripts were written and scrapped. The demo scene was adapted from one of these scripts, which followed a “bullied, quite clumsy” 16-year-old boy named Lucas as its lead character.
In a nutshell, Bolt explained, this version was a kind of teenage Matrix version where characters from the Monster Hunter world come to our world in search of “The One” who would end up being Lucas. Back then, they had thought to leverage the then-exceptionally popular young adult genre to get the movie made due to the popularity of Harry Potter, Percy Jackson and Twilight. Producer Robert Kulzer added that this version referenced the many myths about monsters and dragons that appear in each culture. These coincidences would be explained as the creatures from the Monster Hunter realm encroaching into our world. Every time, a hero would emerge and dispatch the creatures, in this case, the main character Lucas.[poilib element=”quoteBox” parameters=”excerpt=Anderson%20and%20Bolt%20have%20been%20trying%20to%20pitch%20a%20Monster%20Hunter%20movie%20since%202009″]
As the audience appetite for big-screen fantasy stories evolved to more adult fare, the vision for a Monster Hunter movie changed with it. Anderson explained, “By the time I came back to Monster Hunter, ‘young adult’ was kind of buried six feet underground with a stake through its heart. Nobody wanted to make young adult. The days of Twilight were over. It’s like, ‘No, no more young adults,’ and I’m like, ‘Oh, well, I better change that then.’” The script that ultimately got greenlit is instead inspired by James Cameron’s Avatar and Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones.
The movie’s plot follows Captain Artemis (Milla Jovovich) and her soldiers who are transported from our modern world to the Monster Hunter world through mysterious means. There, Artemis teams up with the Hunter (Tony Jaa) and other recognizable Monster Hunter World characters like the Admiral (Ron Perlman), to take on the monsters they encounter as they set to uncover the mystery behind the ancient civilization and how, exactly, she and her comrades ended up there in the first place.
The only part of our world we know will appear in the fully developed Monster Hunter movie will be a Middle Eastern desert known to appear in the opening moments; from there, a portal opens into the Monster Hunter world, where the bulk of the film takes place. And though the monsters have to be CG, those fantastical video game settings don’t have to be, which is why W.S. Anderson wanted to shoot on location, rather than use a greenscreen. Check out a behind-the-scenes look at how the Monster Hunter movie adapted its titular monsters from the game:
“It’s one of the video game’s strengths, these amazing, amazing settings,” W.S. Anderson said. “So we have like, lost jungle [sic], we have deserts, we have kind of rocky — I mean, everything you would recognize from Monster Hunter World. We have areas that resemble the Rotten Vale. I think Monster Hunter fans will really appreciate the efforts we’ve gone to to capture these landscapes and then put the actors in them.”
Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales is one of the biggest games coming this fall, a spin-off sequel to the incredibly successful 2018 Marvel’s Spider-Man from Insomniac. While Miles was a secondary character with some civilian-stealth segments in the previous game, this time he takes center-stage with his own set of Spidey powers, his own suits, and new villains to deal with.
Below you can find everything you need to know about Insomniac’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales. Be sure to check back often in the weeks ahead as the game’s launch approaches, as we’ll be updating this feature with all the latest details as they get announced.
Release Date and Versions
Spider-Man: Miles Morales will release for PS4 and PS5 on November 12, right alongside the launch of the PlayStation 5. While it’s ostensibly being treated like a PS5 launch title, it’s coming to PS4 as well. But don’t worry, you can get the PS4 version and be secure in the knowledge that if you upgrade to a PS5 later, you can play that version for free and your save will transfer.
The standard edition of Spider-Man: Miles Morales will be $50 USD across PS4 and PS5. A separate “Ultimate Edition” is also available for $70. That version is only available for PS5 and includes a voucher code for Spider-Man Remastered, an improved next-gen version of the 2018 game.
Preorders and Bonuses
Across both PS4 and PS5, preordering Spider-Man: Miles Morales will get you some bonus items. Those include three extra skill points to start customizing Miles’ abilities right away, and an early unlock for the Gravity Well gadget. You’ll also get two alternate costumes: the TRACK Suit with an unlockable “Untrackable Suit Mod” and another suit, to be announced. You can find more details in our Spider-Man: Miles Morales preorder guide.
2018’s Spider-Man: A Primer (Contains Spoilers)
Insomniac has primarily released PlayStation-exclusive games for years, but Marvel’s Spider-Man was an unprecedented success. It was a huge financial boon for Sony and may have played a role in the company’s decision to acquire the developer shortly after Spider-Man launched.
In creating the in-game world, Insomniac envisioned a whole new continuity for Spider-Man, allowing the developer to take some liberties with the Marvel property and its characters. This has been dubbed Earth-1048 in the Marvel multiverse and has gotten continuity-crossing references in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and the Spider-geddon comic book arc. Each time, the Easter egg was clearly identifiable by Insomniac’s iconic Spidey-suit design, which sports a white spider across the chest along with Peter Parker’s usual red-and-blue coloring.
This Spider-Man game established a new Peter Parker–an experienced web-slinger and the scientific protege of the kindly Dr. Otto Octavius–as well as Miles Morales. It used Peter’s already-established superheroics to introduce a new backstory for Miles. While some elements from the comics remained the same, like Miles’ police officer father and biracial heritage, it made some significant changes. Peter and Miles befriended each other working together at a homeless shelter, whereas in the comics Miles was inspired by Spider-Man’s death without having personally known Peter. Miles’ father, Jefferson Davis, died protecting civilians, while in the comics Jefferson is still alive and well. Miles was ultimately bitten by a genetically-engineered spider that Mary Jane unwittingly carried back with her from Oscorp. A brief ending scene featured Miles showing his newfound Spider-powers to Peter, and Peter revealing to Miles that he’s Spider-Man.
The Ultimate Edition of Spider-Man: Miles Morales includes a voucher code for Spider-Man Remastered, an improved next-gen version of the 2018 game.
Meanwhile, several plot threads have either wrapped up or been left ambiguous for further exploration in a sequel. Peter and Mary Jane have rekindled their relationship. Aunt May passed away from a deadly virus, knowing that her heroic nephew would do the right thing and distribute the life-saving cure to the entire city. Dr. Octavius, who learned Spider-Man’s secret identity and became the villainous Doc Ock, has been apprehended and sits in a cell without his mechanical arms. And Norman Osborne is watching over what may be his son, Harry, who was often referenced but never seen in the game.
Spider-Man: Miles Morales Story
Spider-Man: Miles Morales picks up one year after The City That Never Sleeps, the post-story DLC for the 2018 Spider-Man. Miles has been training under Peter to embrace his Spidey powers, and he’s looking to be the hero that Harlem and NYC at large need, while also supporting his mother’s campaign for City Council. But a gang war is brewing between Roxxon Energy and a high-tech gang of criminals called The Underground, led by the villain the Tinkerer.
Roxxon has been referenced or utilized by dozens of comics, largely as a stand-in for real-world petro conglomerates like BP or Exxon. It has also had ties to both SHIELD and Hydra, and it has been behind some large-scale infrastructure projects in the Marvel universe. It’s unknown what its role will be in this game, but if it’s being targeted by a band of criminals, chances are the conflict won’t be so black-and-white.
In the comics, The Tinkerer is a brilliant inventor and usually portrayed as an elderly man. He isn’t often a threat himself, but he creates some of the high-tech suits and weapons used by Spidey’s most notorious foes. In this version, The Tinkerer is a woman who appears to be taking on Spider-Man herself in a superpowered suit. It’s possible this iteration is a younger version of the Ultimate variation of the character (The Tinkerer who fights Miles in the comics), or perhaps her suit is just a feat of design that lets her act sprier than her actual age.
Days before Spider-Man: Miles Morales hits stores, a prequel novel is coming out that could shed more light on the story. Spider-Man: Miles Morales – Wings of Fury will pit Miles against The Vulture–who appeared in 2018’s Spider-Man as a member of the Sinister Six–and his granddaughter, Starling. Those high-tech villains will help Miles come to terms with what kind of hero he wants to be. On a thematic level, they’re technology-based villains similar to The Tinkerer, and Vulture is similarly elderly.
New Miles, New Peter
One aspect that was immediately apparent from the debut trailer was that Miles has gotten a new look for this sequel. He looks much more like his comic book counterpart now, with a darker skin tone and shorter hair.
Less apparent was that Peter would be getting a facelift too. That detail wasn’t announced until well after the game had been, with word that Insomniac had replaced the face model for Peter in Spider-Man Remastered. The new Peter looks notably younger and more like the current Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Spider-Man, Tom Holland. Insomniac says this is to make his face a better match for the facial capture performance from actor Yuri Lowenthal, who also provides Peter’s voice. Lowenthal lightheartedly tweeted that it’s the fault of his “stupid stupid bones.”
Some fans have been critical of the change, suggesting the new look doesn’t appear as if Peter has been Spider-Man for eight years by this point. While it hasn’t been confirmed that Peter will make an appearance in Spider-Man: Miles Morales, it would make sense as Peter is acting as Miles’ mentor. If he does show up, it will probably be with the new face model, not the old one.
Miles’ Unique Powers
Though Miles Morales is a Spider-Man, he has a few unique powers that differentiate him from the familiar Peter Parker version of Spider-Man. Miles can web-sling and wall-crawl just like Pete, and he has similarly enhanced speed, agility, reflexes, and durability. He has a Spider-sense, but canonically it’s not as acute as Peter’s. Miles has two unique powers of his own, though: a cloaking ability that lets him render himself (and his suit) essentially invisible, and a “venom strike” electrokinetic shock.
We’ve already seen some of these powers in action during the debut trailer and subsequent gameplay trailers. His venom strike power in the comics has often been relatively limited, but in the game it appears to be much broader electricity powers that play into a wide suite of abilities. His Spider-sense also appears to be on-par with Peter’s in terms of gameplay, where it is used to warn you of impending attacks. On the PS5, this ability will make use of the DualSense controller. The haptic feedback will give you cues for which direction an attack comes from, and you’ll be able to feel the crackle of Miles’ Venom Punch.
Miles Morales has a few unique powers that differentiate him from the familiar Peter Parker version of Spider-Man.
“The haptic feedback precision allows us to do all sorts of new things,” Brian Horton, creative director on Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales explained. “We’ll be hinting to players which direction attacks are coming from by providing haptic feedback from the appropriate direction on the DualSense wireless controller. Because of the high resolution of DualSense wireless controller’s haptics system, we can really push the dimensionality of the feedback. As you hold down Square to do a Venom Punch, you feel Spider-Man’s bio-electricity crackle across from the left side of the controller, culminating in the right side on impact.”
The story will show itself in Miles’ abilities too. Since he’s a less experienced Spider-Man, his animations and moves are said to be a little less refined than Peter Parker’s. He’ll also be the only playable character, a change from the 2018 game that featured story sequences with Miles and Mary Jane. A teaser also showed Miles wearing one of Peter’s suits with a hoodie, a possible reference to the character’s iconic look from Into the Spider-Verse.
Next-Gen Power: Performance vs. Fidelity
On PlayStation 5, you’ll be able to choose from Performance Mode and Fidelity Mode in Spider-Man: Miles Morales. Performance gives the game a smooth 60 FPS in Dynamic 4K, while Fidelity Mode runs at 30 FPS in 4K and includes visual enhancements like ray tracing. The PS5 version is also said to run without loading screens, even when using fast-travel, thanks to the new hardware’s SSD.
