Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered PC - Review
Years ago, Xbox announced that they would be doing day and date releases of their console games to PC, something that they hadn’t done before. Of course, the question was asked would PlayStation start to offer the same and while the answer was no, it seems that the idea of PC ports of some of their biggest titles has taken root, because after Horizon Zero Dawn, Days Gone and God of War, it is now time for Spider-Man to swing from PlayStation to PC.
When I reviewed Spider-Man for PlayStation back in 2018, I ended the review by saying “the entire game offers up everything on a whole other level, characters are worthy of your investment in them, the city begs to be explored and the story is one that is filled with more heart than anything I have played in years.” Now almost four years later, I have the same feeling and that is because replaying the game again, everything still feels fun and fresh, even though it is telling the same story. The story picks up 8 years after Peter Parker became Spider-Man, he has had some wins and some loses and when we join, it is time for a big win, the taking down of the Kingpin, Wilson Fisk. Upon the successful completion of that task, the city cracks open, small-time criminals come out to play and of course, there is a new threat in the form of Mr Negative. The pacing of the story is still wonderful and while there are those weird stealth focused sections still, the end result is a tale that is still enjoyable the second time around.
As this was a port of the game, there was a few things I was curious about, going into it, primarily how would it run on hardware that it was not designed for. Insomniac Games eeked every bit of performance out of the PlayStation 4 when the game first launched and while this is the remastered version from the PlayStation 5, that was just an extension of that work. PC is a different beast entirely, purely down to the sheer number of system setups that are possible, from players with the basic hardware, to those gamers who have dropped thousands of dollars on just a graphics card. The game does what many games do, when you load into it, ask you to check your settings and it is a really large amount of options you can tweak. You can leave things on preset, which the game will set for you, or you can modify elements, like the hair quality or how nice the weather particles are, as well as the enablement of Ray-traced reflections, if you have a machine that can support it. I didn’t touch any of the settings and I was presented with an experience that smooth across the board, excluding a few issues here and there.
With those issues though, some of them were just funny and others were really confusing and those latter ones did impact the playing of the game. Starting out with some light hearted ones, the hair on the main characters looked great, but on the random people on the street, in the background of cutscenes, it looked weird. There was even an instance where the hair was sliding across the top of someones head, it was quite an eye drawing moment. Other funny instances would happen when running up a wall, or crawling more specifically, because sometimes the transition animation wouldn’t load, so Spider-Man was stuck within a single pose, just sliding around, until I interacted with something else. But for all that made me chuckle, there were a few bad issues, the worst was when Spider-Man first meets Officer Davis. Somehow and I don’t know how, the game decided that textures didn’t need to stick to the world in the elevator shaft, which caused things to shoot out in sharp angles, which made me think more Superman Fortress of Solitude, rather than abandoned warehouse in New York. The first time it happened, it didn’t impact the game as Spider-Man doesn’t need to use the lift, but the second time, I had to shoot a panel after pulling a lift out of the way, the problem I couldn’t see as the world went all Christopher Nolan on me.
Something that is quite unique to this release is that amount of controller options you have available to use, there is of course the standard keyboard and mouse offerings, which are quite useable. You can connect a PlayStation 5 DualSense controller and take full advantage of that as well, just as if you were playing on that console, so adaptive triggers and such. Or if you are like me and not a fan of the stick layout on the PlayStation controllers, you can use an Xbox or other generic PC controller, which gave me a more natural playing experience. Though it must be said that seeing A, B, Y and such on the screen, when the last time I played the game it was X, O and Square, took some getting used to.
I honestly can’t say much about the game, that I didn’t already say in my first review, as the game is still amazing to play and well worth it, especially if you have never played it before. While some PC players may need to tweak their settings to get things running great, the team at Nixxes have done such an incredible job of bringing the game to the oldest platform, those changes should be minimal. If you are someone who has beaten the game recently, there really isn’t anything new to discover here, however if you are like me and hadn’t played it in a while or are coming in having never played the game, what awaits is an amazing game, something that is truly spectacular and one ultimate port.
The Score
9.0
Review code provided by PlayStation
The Pros
+Offers up an incredible amount of customisation options, so you can get the game running best on your hardware
+Contains the same story and world, with rich characters worthy of investing in…
The Cons
-… but also doesn’t offer anything new for those who have played it before
-There were some really weird graphical issues that caused some impact to the gameplay
