The Webhead's New Suit
I first played Insomniac's Spider-Man on the base PS4, and I remember considering that game to be one of the best I've ever played. The story, the visuals, the gameplay, and the world were all so extremely well-done that I'm a bit skeptical how they're going to top it for the sequel. But Spider-Man Remastered on the PS5 was one thing I never touched, mainly because I never needed it.
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And then, Insomniac came with an announcement way out of left field: one of the best PlayStation games I've ever played is coming to PC. And it's none other than the Remastered version for the PS5, which got me extremely excited - perhaps far more excited than I should have. I eagerly waited, got the PC copy on Steam, and found that the port was well-worth the wait in a lot of aspects - if not in other very glaring areas.
The game's visuals are, by all means, on the level of a remaster; NOT a remake. I don't have a lot of big gripes about how this game looks because frankly, I was already in awe of how it looked on the old base PS4. I remember telling my wife how we technically still didn't need a PS5 because the graphics on old gen hardware were still so darn good. I still stand by that. If you're still playing Spider-Man on PS4, you're not exactly left out in the cold in terms of graphical fidelity.
When I booted up Spider-Man Remastered on PC, I was so excited at the myriad of visual options I get to play with. That's really the beauty of PC gaming at its core: options. You get to customize your game however you want. I played on a relatively modest but still capable system, and the game has never looked as good or performed as smoothly as it did. It's like I'm almost playing a new game. While the original version already looked amazing, Spider-Man Remastered on capable PC hardware just blows that version's visuals out of the water.
I mean, look at this. Just look at it! That's ray tracing in action in this game, and that's not even on its highest settings. The reflections are so lifelike, I've literally never seen them implemented this well in any other game before. With how Insomniac Games managed to implement ray tracing this well with Spider-Man Remastered's PC port, it's gotten me excited for the future of video game visuals as a whole. And it really pays to have hardware capable of doing graphics like this - at least in my opinion.
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To cap things off, revisiting Insomniac's recreation of NYC is simply a great experience. The density of the city this time around is astounding and is, once again, due to the more powerful hardware that Insomniac had access to. This time, Manhattan feels like Manhattan - it's crowded, full of people, and dirty. But there's beauty in that, and this game captures that well.
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Spider-Tech
Spider-Man Remastered's PC port was handled by Nixxes, and it's safe to say that they did a really good job with the technical side. Other former PlayStation exclusives (Horizon Zero Dawn, in particular) didn't run all that well on PC. But Spider-Man (and God Of War before it) changed that, proving that PC ports should never, ever be piss-poor.
The game worked smoothly enough and was able to maintain a consistent frame rate, provided that you fine-tune the graphics a bit. My personal settings had me running the game at 1440p with a mixture of very high, high, and medium settings for a balanced experience.
spider-man remastered pc
I also ran things with ray tracing turned on, and I was very impressed with how I was able to turn on RT WITHOUT actually needing DLSS. That's a tough thing to pull off these days, so hats off to Nixxes. But I recommend other PC players with supported hardware to just go for DLSS r FSR 2.0 "Dynamic," then set your target frame rate (mine was 60). The game was able to minimize stutters and other performance hiccups after that. Don't go for the basic quality or performance settings.
That said, the game isn't without technical problems. The biggest annoyance for me is how simply alt-tabbing out of the game (for those who need to do it often, like I do) crashes the game up. It's annoying. Insomniac should definitely fix that.
Next up, I was expecting the DualSense haptic feedback to be far more pronounced. Instead, it was very muted - I think I'd rather play using an Xbox controller, thanks. What in the world happened with this, Insomniac? I was expecting way better. I hope this gets fixed. That said, I still stuck with my DualSense for my entire playthrough because I wanted the full "PlayStation" experience.
Another thing I noticed was the game's unusually high CPU usage even at 1440p. My own chip is no slouch, but I'd really rather stick with it for the entire gaming generation and not have to upgrade to an 8-core, 16-thread chip and beyond every three to four years or so. CPU usage is even more egregious at 1080p, which I assume is the resolution so many gamers plan to play this on. Not everybody has a 1440p or 4K monitor, more so the kind of PC hardware that can power such resolutions.
Overall performance seems fine, but stutters are still present and can get pretty heavy during swinging scenes (more so when in a car chase sequence).
Peter Parker's Story
I won't go into much detail about the story since you probably all know how the game's narrative plays out. It's an excellently crafted story that will not be out of place in a movie. And me, personally, looking back at it shows me just how "human" of a super hero Spider-Man really is.
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Peter's relationships are a major part of who he is, as his civilian self and as Spider-Man. I'm just looking forward for the likes of Otto to return, as well as Yuri Watanabe now that she's become the Wraith, in Marvel's Spider-Man 2 for the PS5.
All in all, Insomniac Games' original story is on par with everything I'd expect from a big-budget Hollywood comic book production. The dialog feels natural, the pacing is great, and the villains all have very understandable motivations. Their version of Peter Parker is also brilliantly portrayed, and I really can't say anything more.
Conclusion
Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered is a technical feat of console to PC porting that isn't exactly perfect, but it still works when it needs to. My only gripe about this is that despite the remaster being a great revisit, it's hardly worth the full price it's asking. That's the only thing stopping me from giving this version of the game a perfect score. The original game on the PS4, of course, will be well-deserving of a close-to-perfect review score (if not a perfect one).
So my suggestion: wait until the game is on sale, then get it. Then, and ONLY then, will it be worth your money.
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SCORE: 8.5 out of 10
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