After a long enough wait, Spider-Man’s PC port does not disappoint, thanks to its near-flawless gameplay, lively open world and fundamental grasp on Peter Parker as a character. While it has quickly cemented itself as one of my favourites in the superhero genre, it still fails to live up to others in that same vein thanks to a bloated plot, lack of distinctive style, and a few too many instances of unimaginative writing.

I’ve owned a lot of consoles across my life, from GameCube to Xbox One, before I finally made the switch to PC gaming, but never a Sony console – not out of spite, but it just wasn’t my thing, and I was never particularly desperate to play any of their exclusives. That was, of course, until 2018’s Spider-Man, a game that by every measure I was desperate to play, both as a fan of the character and comparable Batman Arkham series, so for four years I’ve silently seethed away waiting to get my hands on it. Even with the slow trickle of exclusives being ported for Windows, I honestly thought I’d be buying a PlayStation before I ever got to play this on PC, but here I am two months after its surprise announcement, and having seen just about everything it has to offer this past week, I think it was undoubtedly worth the wait.

Spoilers ahead!

Story-wise, Spider-Man is well… Spider-Man, through and through. The writers don’t try to do anything particularly outlandish to set their version aside from any others, but it does take place eight years into the career of an experienced and older Peter Parker, with a pre-established roster of villains and backstory by the bucketload, and most importantly it saves you from being bogged down in a potential origin story opening with none of the fun of the gameplay. However, it’s still a concept that doesn’t quite feel realised; the way he behaves (and looks, courtesy of the remaster’s updated face) isn’t incongruent with what you’d expect from a younger Spider-Man. Yet, the familiarity with which the character is portrayed is one of the game’s biggest strengths – Peter has his ups and downs and his tough decisions across the story, but remains the hopeful and morally resolute man at the core of his character. There’s no unwarranted subversion of expectations – he’s exactly the Spider-Man you’d expect to see in the pages of a comic book (even if I found the trademark quipping to be a little grating at times). Whilst most of the dialogue in the game can come across as a bit flat and exposition-packed, there’s a number of heartfelt moments scattered throughout the story as it explores the various relationships Peter has with other characters like Aunt May, Doctor Octavius and Miles Morales and how they develop in reaction to the events of the plot.

Speaking of, many of the game’s problems do unfortunately feel concentrated in its writing. For one, it suffers from the same issue as the Arkham series, where the hero ends up running into a huge chunk of their rogues gallery in the short space of time that the plot takes place over, more likely than not for the sake of having plenty of boss battles. This is exacerbated all the more by the lacklustre pair of main villains it has to offer in Mister Negative and Doctor Octopus. Both bad guys operate on essentially identical motivations in wanting to destroy Norman Osborn, but whereas Martin Li’s straightforward backstory informs his actions, it’s never quite clear why Octavius is so bent on revenge when Norman doesn’t really do anything that terrible to him. Conversely, the game takes its time building up Doc Ock as a villain, whereas Li is kind of stuffed in to the story as needs be, making him feel more like unwanted filler the writers had to use to make time for Octavius’ arc. The rest of the other supporting characters come across as pretty one-note at best, with the kindly old Aunt May or the young optimistic Miles, and at worst you have Mary-Jane, who becomes downright annoying when her entire motivation seems to be berating Spider-Man for saving her from life-threatening situations that she put herself in.

The plot itself isn’t anything to write home about either, and pretty much feels as recurrent as its villains, as the whole thing takes on a structure of “Spider-Man fights a villain, new bad guys pop up, Spider-Man has to track down and fight another villain, rinse and repeat”. Obviously the story needs to contextualise the gameplay to a degree, and honestly it doesn’t much cross your mind as you’re playing, but I’d like to imagine there were more creative ways of doing it. It seems simple enough to start with, but the cracks start to show as more and more elements get heaped into the story, like when anti-hero Silver Sable sort of just goes ahead and decides to sic her mercenary army on Spider-Man with a kill order for no good reason, or the unceremonious assembly and subsequent disassembly of the iconic villain team of the Sinister Six towards the end. The worst part of the game for me was easily the side missions, most of which were unimaginative little time-wasters involving repetitive and menial tasks for random civilians which, as nice as Spider-Man may be, doesn’t seem like a good use of his time when the city is under attack by criminals, soldiers and supervillains. The remaster also boasts the three City That Never Sleeps DLC chapters – they might be a little more streamlined than the main story, but its self-contained plot is pretty forgettable beyond a couple of hints towards future instalments, and the less said about the cyborg-mob boss bad guy the better.

As for the gameplay, well, its damn close to perfect. The phrase “feels like Spider-Man” is thrown around a lot in regards to this game, and for good reason. From its webslinging and wallrunning to leaping across the rooftops of New York; the traversal is so well designed and just honest-to-God fun that the only incentive I had for using fast travel was for an achievement. On the other hand, its combat is streamlined down to the best you can expect from a superhero game, with simple but satisfying mechanics that allow you to develop your own winning formula for taking down bad guys. Not only is it all tied together by some stellar animation, but further enhanced by the skills, gadgets and upgrades systems, that although a little small, offer you many more avenues by which to tailor your experience. As you make your way through the game you’ll also find yourself faced with a wider variety of enemies that require further adaptation on your part, and there’s no better way of testing out your new tricks and toys than on unsuspecting criminals you find through the random crimes that pop up as you traverse the city, which offer a nice break between story missions, as well as feeling like a bit of a responsibility (wink wink) given that you’re playing as Spider-Man. Much like the writing side of things, it’s the other side activities that aren’t quite up snuff; being made up of repetitive little trials and timewasters that don’t offer much beyond crafting materials or a new suit if you’re lucky, but given how fun the gameplay is at its core, it doesn’t do much to sour the experience as a whole.

Design is a tad more of a mixed bag here. It goes without saying that the game brings with it a whole host of well-crafted elements, from the great animation to the amazing range and detail of the various Spider-Man suits, but what really stood out to me was all the little elements baked into the game, like the interactions with pedestrians, the random popups of J. Jonah Jameson podcasts, or the little snippets of backstory that come with the collectables – they all really elevate the game and its world to another level. Speaking of, the Manhattan map is pretty great already, but especially so when stuffed with all sorts of Marvel-related locations and easter eggs, but it does lack heavily in atmosphere and ambience, especially when compared to the unforgettable locales of the Arkham series. The lack of soul hangs over much of the level design also, with very little in the way of breathtaking or memorable sequences, and I honestly have to say there was nothing that struck me as particularly original in the way that the environments or encounters are constructed. Surprisingly Spider-Man hasn’t been as perfect of a port as the previous PlayStation games either, with a number of visual glitches and loading failures that have required me to reload a save or restart the entire game, and I felt that the controls could sometimes feel a little unresponsive, but generally it felt more well-optimised than not.

Problems as they may be, Spider-Man Remastered is nothing short of great, and has certainly become one of my favourite superhero games, if not favourite games of all time. The writing may not be anything awe-inspiring, nor the design side of things quite perfect, but with a clear understanding of Spider-Man at his core and gameplay that knocks it out of the park, I’m more than happy to give this game a well-earned recommendation, and with the Miles Morales spinoff coming later this year, I can only hope the sequel’s arrival to PC won’t be far behind.

8/10