By Clay Thompson | Arts and Life Intern
Every student needs a good escape from the monotony of school, homework and projects. What escape could be better than swimming through the ray-traced skylines of New York City as everyone’s favorite web-slinging superhero?
Spider-Man Remastered, an original 2018 Play Station exclusive and widely acclaimed game by both audiences and critics alike, has finally made the move to PCs. However, does this ported project hold up on computers like it did on consoles?
In terms of controls on the PC, it took me a while to get the hang of all the moves and combos Spider-Man could dish out to enemies, as well as learn how to effectively swing throughout the absolutely gorgeous and expansive open-world of New York City. However, after a while, and with the help of life-saving key mapping changes via the extra helpful settings page, I was busy swinging and slinging webs in no time.
The story of this particular Spider-Man game, revolves around a now adult Peter Parker fully ingratiated into his dual Spider-Man and Parker personas, getting himself involved in a notorious terrorist plot, and with the help of some new and familiar faces, taking down the threat to save the city. The story is no masterpiece in storytelling, like The Last of Us or a few other previous PlayStation exclusives, but it gets the job done. The voice acting is on point and the story is action-packed, with enough moments of stealth, puzzle-solving and tension to balance the action out with solid detective work and gameplay.
The gameplay and combat are frenetic and satisfying. Whether I was swinging around rafters and punching out bad guys, or silently taking out goons with my various web gadgets, the combat in Spider-Man Remastered on PC is undoubtedly fun. The only qualm I would say about the combat system, is that it was sometimes a bit finicky. For example, sometimes I would be trying to dodge an enemy attack, and I would, for no apparent reason, just stand still or shoot a web, rather than my intended move. Whether this was me just pressing the wrong button or some problem with button inputs in the keyboard controls, it was something I ran into more than once and cost me several fights. The good thing about this, is it is an issue that can be fixed, if it is a technical one.
The graphics on the Spider-Man Remastered game is the last thing I wanted to cover. They are really good. Playing on an Alienware M15 r4, with NVIDIA RTX 3060 ti, I could play at maximum graphic settings and ray-tracing, with fans making quite a racket, but the picture more than made up for the noise. I would not recommend playing this game on a regular laptop, as it is likely you will have to play on low settings to have a smooth gameplay experience. But for those that invest in gaming PCs and laptops, you will be very happy with the graphics of the game.
Insomniac Games’ Spider-Man Remastered is a decidedly decent port to the PC. Controls, gameplay and graphics work as great as they can on PC, with immense customizability for any gamer. Sometimes combat controls could get dicey, but that is nothing an expected update to the game can’t fix. The story isn’t groundbreaking but does its job to be a great, action-packed adventure, with plenty of main and side missions to complete around the city to round out gamers’ time and money.
