'Spider-Man: Miles Morales' Trailer: Video Game Sequel Swings Onto PlayStation 5

During today's PlayStation 5 announcement, Sony and Insomniac Games officially revealed the first teaser trailer for Spider-Man: Miles Morales, the highly-anticipated video game sequel to Marvel's Spider-Man. Watch Miles swing into action below.

In 2018, Insomniac Games released Marvel's Spider-Man for the PlayStation 4, and it quickly established itself as one of the best superhero video games ever made. (Depending on who you talk to, it holds the top spot.) In my review, I called it "a terrific addition to the superhero video game canon and an addicting, thrilling experience that already has me itching to jump back in and swing through the city once again." That game followed Peter Parker, the first and most frequent person behind the Spider-Man mask in the comics and movies, but it also featured Miles Morales as a supporting character in the story. Here's my video review of that game:

Several of the game's missions involved playing as Miles, and the game actually gives you his origin story as Spider-Man, leaving off with a tease that he'd be a much bigger player in a sequel. Now we know he's the main character – his name's right there in the title!

Marvel's Spider-Man told one of the best Spider-Man stories of any Spidey tale in any medium – maybe the best. So this game has a huge legacy to shoulder, and I'm hopeful that by centering the story on a character who hasn't traditionally been at the forefront of these games, but got a big pop culture awareness boost thanks to 2018's brilliant Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse movie, that they'll be able to sail over the already-high bar they've set for themselves.

This trailer is purposefully a bit too frenetic for me to be able to glean any story details – who are those characters Miles is fighting? I have no idea! – but this sequel looks to retain the same type of gameplay experience as the original, which allowed players the freedom to swing through the city at will and engage with enemies on the fly. And in its shiny new beef-ed up PS5 package, I imagine this is going to rocket to the top of many gamers' wish lists.

Spider-Man: Miles Morales is currently slated to hit shelves later this year, in the vague "Holiday 2020" window.