Our Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered review is going to both a port report, as well as a general review of Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered. Now, I’ll state up front, I’m not particularly interested in superheroes anymore. Shocking I know, I believe the genre is played out and gets more tiresome with every new film release. I don’t really read comics anymore, unless they’re drawn by Amanda Conner, and think that the genre generally peaked with Batman the Animated Series. That being said, I’m not going to lie and pretend that there are not some great superhero video games out there, especially in the last 15 years or so. Yeah, we get games like Marvel’s Avengers, a live-service game that no one asked for and no one played, but at the same we have games like Batman Arkham City, Wolverine, and Guardians of the Galaxy, which I think are incredible games that any fan of action games should play.

And when it comes to Marvel’s Spider-Man, I think this is the best adaptation of the Spider-Man IP in video game form. Many people have argued that Spider-Man peaked with Spider-Man 2 on the PlayStation 2, Gamecube, and original Xbox, and I would have agreed prior to playing this game. It took almost 15 years, but Insomniac Games were able to finally dethrone that game, making Marvel’s Spider-Man, not only the best Spider-Man game, but placing it high upon the mountain of best open world games on the market. 

This is a review coupled with a supplemental video review. You can watch the video review or read the full review of the game below:

Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered
Developer: Insomniac Games
Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment
Platforms: Microsoft Windows (reviewed), PlayStation 5
Release Date: August 12, 2022
Players: 1
Price: $59.99 USD 

The story of Spider-Man is very fast-paced, starting you off right in the middle of the action. The game opens up with Spider-Man racing downtown to help the police take down Wilson Fisk, aka The Kingpin, after a years long investigation into his corruption and crime dealings has finally led to the police building a case to take him down. You are thrown into the action taking down waves of thugs, web slinging your way around a crumbling tower, a metaphor for Kingpin’s crumbling criminal empire. 

After Kingpin is defeated and finally put behind bars, he yells a warning to Spider-Man, a prophecy that he was the one who kept New York City safe, and with him gone, the power vacuum left behind will bring in something truly wicked. And something wicked this way came.

The Demons, Chinese mercenaries who wear demon masks and have mysterious powers, strike out against New York City, first targeting Fisk’s former bases of operation, before turning their gaze on the mayor of New York, Norman Osborne.

Spider-man has to work together with the police and Mary Jane Watson, a writer for the Daily Bugle and his ex-girlfriend, to seek out who the leader of the Demons is and bring him together before more innocent people lose their lives. The stakes always feel like they are being raised and kept me on the edge of my seat wondering what will happen next. 

At the same time, Peter Parker has to deal with the struggles of being a barely employed lab assistant alongside the brilliant, moral, but underfunded Otto Octavius. The two of them are working on a breakthrough for mankind, brain controlled artificial limbs, a tool to help combat veterans regain the pieces of themselves they lost in war.

You witness their struggles as their funding is pulled by Norman Osborne, and Dr. Octavius’ slow spiral into grief-stricken madness. Honestly, I thought it was a pretty real take on Spider-Man and Peter Parker as people, how would Spider-Man be able to even afford an apartment in New York City when he spends all his time fighting super villains? It’s not like he has licensing agreements or any of that. The Avengers might exist in New York, but they don’t help him, at least, not yet. 

I wanted to take a moment to talk about the side, some of the best content in the game’s story is just watching characters talk to each other. I loved the dialogue between Peter and Mary Jane, or Peter and his aunt. The characters are all well-acted, and their voice actors do a fantastic job, especially Yuri Lowenthal.

At the end of the day, the story of Spider-Man is charming and very enjoyable. Insomniac are not a new studio, but what they’ve been able to accomplish with this Spider-man title, creating a game that feels genuine and full of heart. It’s clear they cared about the source material, but also wanted to create a unique self-contained story. 

It’s the gameplay where Marvel’s Spider-Man absolutely shines. One of the most challenging things to properly tackle in a Spider-Man game was how to make the web slinging feel fun in the game. In a world where Spider-Man swings from building to building, you need to really knock it out of the park to make the player feel alive as they swing.

Insomniac did that and then some, because the traveling in this game feels awesome. You can get across New York City so quickly that, even when the game introduces a fast travel mechanic, I never felt the need to use it because I had too much fun just zipping down the street trying to do tricks. 

On top of that, the animations in-game are awesome. If you move the thumb stick a little to the left, Spider-Man will use his left wrist to swing from a building on your left, if you move to the right, he’ll use his right wrist to swing from the right. If you are low to the ground, he lifts up his legs so as to not hit the ground.

If you swing and slide along a building, Spider-Man will start to run alongside the building. You can run up or along buildings before leaping off and swinging from mid-air. Movement in this game is just awesome, there is such detail put into it, that, for example, say you want to swing through the lefts of a water tower, Spider-Man will compress himself and swing through the legs rather than hitting some kind of invisible wall like in other games. It’s just perfect. 

But it wasn’t just the movement that had to be taken into consideration, it was also the combat. How does combat work? Well, the combat is good, I like it. It feels like a faster pace Batman Arkham game. Where Batman is sturdier and hits like a truck, Spider-Man beats down his foes with quick attacks and web combos. I really enjoyed the combat and never felt like it was frustrating.

It was never unfair to me, and always felt like it was the perfect level of challenge. That being said, it did start to feel easier as the game went along, but I’m okay with that. Not every game needs to be difficult, I can safely say that Marvel’s Spider-Man is NOT the Dark Souls of Spider-Man games. 

Spider-Man has some cool gadgets to use in combat as well. On top of your ability to web sling, you can whip out a new tool to help you smack around thugs, whether it’s a web grenade, a land mine, a little flying drone decoy, or a nice shock from a taser, there is always a tool for the job. Along with your web gadgets,each of the main costumes that Spider-Man can unlock comes with its own special ability which, thankfully, you can then equip to any costume, along with three buffs.  

But, if I’m being honest, my favorite strategy was running away until I found a manhole cover or a trashcan and using my webs to sling it at a thug’s dome and try to knock his goofy looking noggin around. 

That being said, there is one major drawback to the gameplay in Marvel’s Spider-Man, and that is any time that you’re not playing as Peter Parker or Spider-Man. Occasionally, you will run into scenes where you will play as Miles Morales or Mary Jane. These sections are usually stealth sections that feel bland and repetitive.

Admittedly, I really enjoyed the first time you played as Miles, but that was because the scene that takes place after was INSANE in the story. Unfortunately, they are not fun, they aren’t even really engaging, I never felt like I was on my toes or had a lot to worry about. It was basically just trial and error stealth mechanics until I was able to play as Spider-Man again. But the moment I played as Spider-Man again, the light returned to my eyes and I was right back into playing the game. 

Let’s discuss the graphics, after all this is a remaster for the PC. With the game coming to PC, it comes with a host of new graphical options for you to toy around with to get as much flash out of your game as possible. I was running the game on medium to high settings with raytracing on, and I got a pretty consistent 60 FPS.

Whenever I did get a frame drop, it was while I was swinging around the city at top speeds for a long period of time. After a while, the map would sometimes struggle to load in on time, but if I slowed down for a moment or two, everything would normalize again. 

So, while there are hiccups here and there, the game overall ran very well for him. In combat though, I never saw a problem, it ran like a dream. Spider-Man is also the first game I ever got to experience raytracing in, and it was awesome. Seeing light reflected off buildings and in puddles of water just was so cool, I’m going to struggle playing games that don’t have that option going forward. 

The graphics presentation is awesome, as expected from a PC remaster. They gave us the tools to make our game look as good as possible and I tried. The game just looks great, with the photo mode, you can take some really fun pictures too. I never felt like I personally made a picture that looked good, or properly encapsulated just how beautiful this game looked though. 

There were moments where I would just stop on top of a building and just admire the world, maybe it was the night sky over New York City, or the sunset on the horizon. Perhaps it was swinging through Times Square, with all the colorful billboards. It was just awesome, the game is as fun to look at, as it is to play. 

The music in Spider-Man feels classical, more along the lines of what you would see in the Sam Rami Spiderman trilogy compared to what we may have seen in the Tom Holland or Andrew Garfield films. It raises the sense of nostalgia in me and fills me with a swelling of excitement when I’m swinging from building to building. You can hear the music kick in the background, it just feels awesome. 

On top of the music, the voice acting is also superb. As I mentioned earlier, Yuri Lowenthal does a fantastic job as both Peter Parker and Spider-Man, and that’s a skill that not many have been able to master. I genuinely bought him in both roles, even when the two feel like different characters. 

One of my concerns that I had when I started up the game was that I was afraid that hearing Spider-Man’s quips would get old after a while, but Yuri has put so much time and effort into his voice acting that I never got bored of it. It’s not just him either, every character was perfectly acted in this game: Norman Osborne, Otto Octavius, Jonah J. Jameson, Martin Li, Aunt May, MJ, Miles Morales, Jefferson Davis, Kingpin, Yuri Watanabe, they all do a fantastic job in this game.

Honestly, some of my favorite moments were just when characters were talking to each other, I felt their connections were real. Peter talking to Miles at his father’s funeral stood out to me in particular as a really well-done scene between two amazing voice actors. 

You know, when I first sat down to record my thoughts on this game, I didn’t think that I’d be gushing about it as much as I have. But honestly, I don’t have much negative to say about it. Is the game perfect? No, not really. The combat is a little light, it could have used more depth for sure, but that didn’t take away from the game for me. Also, there are those sections that you play as Miles Morales or MJ, and I just didn’t enjoy them. 

I’m not playing Marvel’s Mary Jane Watson, I’m playing Marvel’s Spider-Man, let me play as Spider-Man. That being said, this game has performed well, played well, and left me wanting to get my hands on more in the future. Hopefully, we’ll see Marvel’s Spider-Man – Miles Morales appear on Steam sooner rather than later. 

But as someone who never played the game when it first appeared on PlayStation 4, I have to say, if you’re going to play one superhero title that is not a Batman Arkham game, this should be the game for you.  It’s incredible, and Insomniac should be patting themselves on the back for making a game that feels genuine and fun. I know I will be going back in for a second playthrough before the year is over. 

That being said, the game isn’t perfect. When you’re not playing as Spider-Man or Peter Parker, the fun level definitely dropped for me, even if I liked the characters, I didn’t want to play as them. Plus, while I liked the combat, I acknowledge that it was pretty light weight. Fun and Flashy, but lightweight.

Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered was reviewed on Windows PC using a code provided by Kinguin. You can pick up a copy of Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered from Kinguin and save an additional 14% using promo code NICHEGAMER. Additional information about Niche Gamer’s review/ethics policy can be found here. Spider-Man Remastered is now available across Windows PC (via Steam and the Epic Games Store), and PlayStation 5.