Of all of Sony’s numerous PlayStation-to-PC ports, Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered in particular always seemed like one to look forward to. Whether the draw for the individual was seeing all of Spider-Man’s many suits on display better than ever before (hardware allowing) or to swing through New York with elevated FPS caps in tow, Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered‘s core gameplay experience and its compelling story make the return trip worthwhile for whatever you’re looking for. That’s largely true for those with PCs that can accommodate more robust settings, however, as those without may be better off playing the game on a PlayStation console where it first released rather than compromising on a lower-end PC.
Videos by ComicBook.com
Like other PlayStation games that have come to Steam now, Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered boasts a couple of incentives immediately for those who waited for the port or are revisiting it on the PC. Bonus suits, the remastered aspect of the game itself, and all the DLC components of The City That Never Sleeps all start players out nicely with plenty to begin with and to look forward to. If you’re like me and you played through Marvel’s Spider-Man once upon release and never ran through it again, you may have forgotten that the actor for Peter Parker was changed, so be prepared for that bit of a shock if so once you hop into Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered.
For the purposes of this review, I split my time with Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered between two different devices: one was a gaming laptop with an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 which put me right at Sony’s recommended specs for the “Medium” preset while the other was a gaming PC with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 which put me just under the RTX 3070 suggested for the “Very High” defaults.
The latter was naturally the more enjoyable experience by leaps and bounds. After tweaking some settings like shadows and upscaling configurations, I was able to maintain a relatively steady 90-120 FPS even when swinging through the city streets which, if you’re familiar with Marvel’s Spider-Man to any degree, you’ll know that traversal feature is one you won’t want to compromise on. Some performance hangups were definitely experienced in interior spaces, particularly when interacting with unmasked characters like inside of the F.E.A.S.T. center, but for the most part, the game looks and feels sublime if you’ve got the power to maintain a steady FPS without feeling like you’re swinging through textureless buildings and blurry crowds. From the original release to the PlayStation remaster to now, it’s evident Spidey’s suits have never looked better than what we see here.
While the experience on the 1060 was nowhere near unplayable, it was certainly difficult to go back to after seeing Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered on the alternative. Comparison was the thief of joy there in the sense that the game would’ve been fine had I only had the weaker option available, but given that the laptop struggled to maintain 30 FPS on “Medium” when swinging around even after compromising in several different graphics settings, it’s difficult to recommend playing it that way if you’ve got a PlayStation 4 or PlayStation 5 available to you that can do that and perhaps more with far less fuss.
Performance aside, it was interesting to see what parts of Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered held up over the years after just playing through the original one time. We’ve already established the draw of high-flying acrobatics and near-splats saved by a timely webswing, but one aspect that felt far more tedious this time around was the gradual rollout of crimes and other side content tacked onto the main story. Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered‘s map is vast with plenty to do, and while you’re encouraged to explore at your leisure, it’s not particularly structured for those who like to check off every instance of side content before progressing through the next node of the main story. For those who do prefer that completionist style, it’s best to go against your tendencies and space out the side content so that you can knock out activities in sections rather than traveling to the corner of the map just to check a box.
If you are totally new to this PC release and were simply waiting for PlayStation to bring it over to PC, you’ll have a blast experiencing Spider-Man’s story that rivals his big-picture adaptations and shouldn’t have many issues at all, hardware permitting. Though Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered did fall victim to the occasional crash or two as well as some buggy features, those have largely been rectified by continued pre-release updates. For the returning web-swingers, if you’re like me, you may find that the time away from the game since release was enough to make it feel just new enough again to justify seeing what Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered looks like running on this platform.
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered
is scheduled to release on the PC platform on August 12th. A PC review code was provided by the publisher, and the game was reviewed using third-party Xbox and PlayStation controllers.
