Today, we're talking about Spider-Man.
This is Insomniac's Spider-Man game from 2018 that is now officially on PC. Now, it's on Epic and Steam. So, you get plenty of choice. We love that. And this port was done by the developers Nixxes, the now Sony-owned studio. That also did the Horizon Zero Dawn port. More and more of Sony's games are showing up on PC. And specifically here, we've been digging God of War and Death Stranding.
And now, we have this. Now Sony doesn't send us stuff early. So, like some of you guys, we just preloaded it. And we're jumping in here for the first time for first impressions. And we've been playing it on a few different devices here. So PC stuff wise, you can get ray trace reflections. They look good. You have a few options. Nvidia DLSS, which improves performance on a GForce RTX GPUs if you have it. And Nvidia DLAA. Which is Deep Learning Anti-Aliasing. So improved anti-aliasing for Nvidia GPUs.
And this is best only if you got a really beefy card. Now you also, regardless, get some crazy screen options. Ultra wide 21 by 9, which is fantastic. You get panoramic 32 by 9. It even supports multi-monitor setups.
But obviously like we didn't test that. But still overall we are feeling positive about performance. I mean, you can see here in the gameplay footage we captured, it looks pretty damn good. High default settings on PC are similar to the performance ray trace settings on PS5. And it looks really good. It is technically better than the PS5 version. But it doesn't look worlds better than the PS5 version.
Unless you dig into the details. And if you have the hardware and the monitor to back it up and you know what to look for. So, three things stood out for me that make this look much stronger.
Number one, is the obvious, you know, the beefed up ray tracing. It looks damn good in spots and a step above what has been offered previously. Number two, the detail in the distance. Like as someone who has never uninstalled this game on my PlayStation consoles and just kind of endlessly swings around in the game when I'm bored. My first swing on the PC version had me going, whoa, okay, wow.
Because it feels like the details way down the streets ahead of you, like way down those streets, are denser.
And it makes it all look a little bit more believable. And then three, the resolution. Obviously takes it a step above the console because it can be uncompromised. Depending on what your machine is. Now, this is the most noticeable depending on what type of person you are. You know, if you love resolution and pixel counting, you get your money's worth here. All of it is like a better, sharper, smoother version of the PS5 version.
And the best part is full ray tracing in 60 frames per second. And overall our experience has been solid. With very little frame drop. We've been using a PC with a recent Intel CPU and an RTX 3080. And also a gaming laptop with an RTX 2070 mobile. Now there's full mouse and keyboard support and it's actually not bad.
You know, for this style of game I prefer controller. But yeah, it's a good alternative. There's also Steam input support. So you can remap controls however you want with whatever you want. But also there is PlayStation Dual Sense support. So you can use your PS5 controller on PC and get all the haptic feedback effects as if you were playing on the console. Only downside is that the controller has to be plugged in for this all to work. But it's nice.
You know, you get the full experience. And I do actually like the little features on the controller. I've played the game enough that I'm used to it by now. So to have it here, it does help the experience, trust me. Now, it's not all perfect though. We have seen some visual glitches here between the two of us playing. We've seen geometry go a little crazy in spots for a few seconds. It's a little distracting. Also, ray tracing causes some ugly ghosting, very occasionally. And we've seen these weird black boxes appear, like here, on trash bags that kind of distracted from an otherwise awesome moment in the game. And I've also had a few ray trace flickering issues here and there. Not much, kind of small.
But all of these are worth pointing out. I have seen worse glitches pre-launch from some other reviewers. But I haven't run into anything like that. Maybe the developers are on their stuff here and they're patching frequently. I expect issues to improve either way. You know again, PC stuff is tricky if you're not like Digital Foundry level experts. Everybody's machine is slightly different. So just be warned. Our experiences have been pretty good, but you never know. And with the options and the power, the photo mode community and the mod community is now unleashed harder than ever, dude. I expect great things from you people. Make us proud. Now one place I
did really enjoy the game was on my Steam Deck. Now yep. Jake here once again to gush about the Steam Deck. I know, I know. But it's been really nice to hop in and swing on this thing.
With the settings at a mix of medium and low, I've been able to maintain a frame rate above 30. You know, into 40 ish. Yeah, all right. Not great on paper. But on the small handheld screen, very playable. Especially during challenging combat moments, where it matters the most. I had no problems and cut scenes were pretty smooth. You know, it's not perfect but still playable and enjoyable.
Just having it on the.go is just like a nice special little experience. Not to get corny, but it's just made me really happy. To be honest it's why I bought the game. They got me to double dip. I'm a sucker. And to be honest, I am kind of biased. I just love Spider-Man and comic books. And while this game has a few boring puzzles and some open world busy work, playing as Spider-Man is thrilling. From the beginning of this game to the very end.
The boss battles are absolutely incredible. Some of the action set piece moments in this game rival that of something like, I don't know, Uncharted. Swinging is fun and satisfying. Combat is pretty awesome. And can get very challenging with a nice little bit of depth. And there's bunch of difficulty modes, a bunch of accessibility options. And it tells an absolutely awesome freaking Spider-Man story. Dare I say, it's up there and if not better than some of the Spider-Man movie stories. Yeah. They just really get it. They really understand Spider-Man. They changed his face and it still looks weird. And I can't get used to it.
As you probably remember, the original PS4 game had a very different Spider-Man character model. Whatever. It was legal issues. I'm sure modders will change that too. But like again, what I'm trying to say is that this game just gets it. It gets all of the Spider-Man thing. So I very much recommend the game, if you've never played it and you're a Spider-Man or a superhero fan.
And along with that you do get the three DLC chunks that make up The City That Never Sleeps. Which gives you more story and more missions and a side adventure involving Black Cat and Hammerhead. It's not the greatest. It has its moments. But some of it is a bit boring for me personally. And the way it went with Hammerhead was just kind of, I don't know. It was a little dumb, a little awkward But it's not the worst. It's more stuff, you know. It's more Spider-Man stuff to play through. If you're itching for it after you finish everything in the game, it's still a good inclusion.
Really I'm just glad that PC fans can finally experience exploring this incredible New York City that Insomniac built. Zipping around a Spider-Man while the sun sets. Birds fly by, trains swoosh below. Pedestrians shout and bad guys get punched in the face. Like all of it rules. And it can look damn good here. Couple little things here and there, but we hope it continues to be supported and updated. And that's on the developer side. But on the community side, we hope we get some cool mods soon. Me personally.
I want to swing around as Venom.Not too much more to say about this one. It's kind of simple, unless we want to get into frame counting. So that's just our first impressions here at. This is what we're thinking of Spider-Man so far. But if you jumped in minute one, if you've been on PC and you've been waiting to get your hands on this, we'd love to know what you think.
We'd love to know your first impressions. If this is your first time experiencing the game, you should definitely share that with us. Cause that's pretty cool. If you're like me, an insufferable nerd who has played the game already a thousand times and then just played it again. What do you think so far? What is your discerning eye see? Did we miss something here? Let's talk about this stuff.
We definitely want to hear from you down in the comments.