Spider-Man 2 PC Review – PC Parker and Moddable Morales

Spider-Man 2 PC Review

Spider-Man 2 from game developer, Insomniac Games, is a one of the top Sony first-party exclusives. But no longer, thanks to game’s port by Nixxes Software. Both Spider-Man, Peter Parker and Miles Morales, have swung their way onto PC a year later. As a good as the game is on PS5 & PS5 Pro, PC gamers have been licking their chops in anticipation of elevating the game to new heights with their beefy gaming PCs. Not to mention modders, who are itching to add a slew of new content to the game.
This review is based on Version 1.205.0.0, designated as Patch 1, released on Feb 6th.

Spider-Man 2 launched to high accolades back in October 2023. You can check out our very own review here, Spider-Man 2 review. The content of the PC version is the same, so that review is still relevant. Even more so since the game has not, somewhat surprisingly, received any DLC content. If you are new to the game, we highly recommend you check out our PS5 review. This review will mostly focus on what technical advantages the PC version has.

In Spider-Man 2, the PC version of the game gives you twice the Spider-Men with both Peter and Miles featured in the game. Even more, you can play both Spider-Man with the simple press of the square button. This option is not always available. It depends on if there is a story requirement for you to play as a certain character.

Same Game As PS Version

From a story perspective, the civilian crises that Peter faces greatly outweigh the one Miles face. Peter is trying to build a life with Mary Jane. That means taking on life partner responsibilities, which include holding down a job. Plus, just having the time to build a life with her. For Miles, his sole existential crisis is getting into college. For sure, anyone who has been in that position, such a time in life, feels like a world ending event. But, it can’t compare to what Peter has to deal with.

Spider-Man 2 covers more real estate than the preceding games. Besides Manhattan, fourteen new districts across the bridges are now accessible. The addition of Queens and Brooklyn in the sequel effectively doubled the traversable area. The activity in all areas, including people, vehicles, and the general hustle and bustle of a big city, has significantly increased.

This increased activity makes the sequel ripe for the extra grunt that PCs can provide. At the far end, say a 4090 Nvidia GPU, you can run the game in all its full-blown glory at ultimate settings. My PC build is with 1440P graphics in mind, which is the current sweet spot. I’m running a AMD 7600X CPU with 32GBs of RAM and a AMD 7800XT GPU. I prefer to run games in native resolution with no frame generation.

With a game as graphically dense as Spider-Man 2, I can only run the game with a mix of settings on the low – high settings. To get those 100+ FPS numbers, requires some tweaking and the use of Frame Generation. Turning on ray tracing especially requires this. Such are the joys and pains of PC Gaming.

Ray Tracing Pluses and Minuses

With no Ray Tracing, I could get a fairly consistent 120FPS when staying in a particular location. On the other hand, the frame rate fluctuates widely when moving about the city. Then the frame rate jumps all over the place depending on where you are and what is going on around you. It never bothered me from a game-playing perspective, but it is a bummer my PC cannot keep a locked frame rate.

Ray Tracing is still an Achilles Heel for AMD cards. Not as bad as before, but Nvidia GPUs still have the edge here. So Ray Tracing necessitates the use of Frame Generation to keep the frame rates at a respectable level, i.e. 60 FPS plus level. The reason I don’t like Frame Generation is it introduces graphical glitches such as texture flickering. This is true here and is really noticeable with buildings that have fire escapes. Under each landing there is terrible flickering.

Graphical glitches aside, the game does really look gorgeous with Ray Tracing turned on. Especially in downtown Manhattan, which is just rife with reflective surfaces, be they buildings, vehicles, shadows, and city lights – especially at night. I spent more time than I care to reveal just crawling on windowed buildings playing with the reflections. The Coney Island Carnival is another ray tracing highlight sequence.

The PC version has a plethora of options, especially on the video and graphics side. There are a fair number of Ray Tracing options to accommodate the wide range of PC builds that exist. I highly recommend you search YouTube for tuning guides to find settings that best suit your build.

PC Features

There is also a useful chart on the Playstation Blog that lists recommended hardware settings for different performance levels. You can find the chart  here.
Other PC features available include ultra-wide monitor support. This includes such aspect ratios as 21:9, 32:9, and for you triple monitor race sim fans looking for a change of pace – 48:9 triple monitor support. Nixxes ensured all cinematics are fully viewable with aspect ratios up to 32:9.

Another big plus is full support for the Dual Sense controller. All the haptic feedback and tactility of the adaptive triggers are available for PC Players. The game also uses the Dual Sense’s speaker for certain sound effects. You can disable any or all of the features of the gamepad as you see fit.

Learning from the backlash of previous PC ports, Sony has made connecting to a PlayStation Network account optional. To entice players, Sony provides immediate access to two Spidey suits: the Spider-Man 2099 Black Suit and the Miles Morales 2099 suit. Speaking of suits, the Advanced Suit 2.0 from this game is available for NetEase Games – Marvel Rivals.

Spider-Man 2 PC Mods

This review mentions mods at the top, and boy, oh boy, the PC modders are out in full force. As of this review, there are over three hundred mods available. They range in impact from cosmetic changes to character swaps to performance tweaks. My personal favorite is allowing Peter to play as Venom in free-roam. It’s buggy, but hilariously so. Another cool mod, Venom Wings, allows for unrestricted play, unlike the web wings.

Spider-Man 2 on PC has not landed without some issues. There have been a host of graphical bugs as well as game crashing ones too. Nixxes continues to release patches, so hopefully, they will eventually squash all bugs.

Current issues aside, the PC version of Spider-Man 2 is just as thrilling and engrossing as laid out in our PS5 review. The story and characters grab you emotionally. The production values are top-notch across the board. If you are looking to play the ultimate version of Spider-Man 2, this is the version to play.

***Steam key provided by the game developer.***