Sony is slowly but surely bringing its stable of blockbuster first-party titles to PC, and so far the results have been more than a little exciting. As we saw earlier this year with the release of God of War, and Horizon Zero Dawn before it, care and attention to detail have led to the sort of ports that felt true to the PC experience. And the legacy of the former PlayStation exclusives – games that helped define a generation.

On the PC front, we’ve seen expansive customisation options, improved visual detail, uncapped frame rates, and little touches like ultrawide and NVIDIA DLSS support. Stuff that goes a long way to set a high bar.

Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered, which launched alongside the PlayStation 5 and Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales (which is also coming to PC), developer Insomniac took the PS4 original and cranked up the resolution and detail. Thanks to the added power of the PS5 the studio even added real-time ray-tracing in the form of reflections, which was an impressive feat when you consider that traversal involves swinging and dashing through a densely populated open-world New York City full of towering skyscrapers with mirror-like windows.



Working alongside Insomniac, freshly minted first-party PlayStation Studio Nixxes Software handles the PC port here. The studio previously worked on PC versions of the Tomb Raider series, so it comes as no surprise that Spider-Man’s PC debut would be given the proper fanfare. When paired with a high-end rig (with DLSS Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered runs great on even a GeForce RTX 3060), the results are immediate and readily apparent.

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When paired with a high-end rig (with DLSS Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered runs great on even a GeForce RTX 3060), the results are immediate and readily apparent.

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Especially when played in a PC-friendly ultrawide resolution, to add a bigger dose of cinematic flair. This is awesome because Marvel’s Spider-Man is all about that blockbuster feel, with exceptionally well choreographed and directed real-time cinematics, remarkable character detail, animation, and some of the best voice acting and writing you’re likely to find in a comic book adaptation. In a way, it's the quintessential first-party Sony release, a single-player cinematic adventure with production values to match the fun and engaging gameplay.

And really, if you have the option to take the base PS5 version and push that even further, well, you’d be silly not to. Let’s go through what makes the PC version of Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered a release to take note of.

Ray-Tracing is Taken to Next Level

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When it comes to real-time ray-tracing the one effect you can always spot and take note of is ray-traced reflections. The reason for this is simple, ray-tracing allows a surface to reflect things in and around the environment that you can’t immediately see. Spider-Man’s face as he’s climbing a building, a billboard on the roof behind him. When it comes to traditional rendering, reflections are handled via technology that approximates stuff, or simply reflects the things in the frame. Real-time ray-tracing not only reflects the stuff that should be reflected, but it does so in an accurate manner thanks to the intense mathematical calculation of light rays required to pull off the effect.

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Spider-Man looks great without ray-traced reflections, Insomniac pulled out all the stops to make the game look and feel great on PlayStation hardware. With ray-traced reflections though, it looks incredible.

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Spider-Man looks great without ray-traced reflections, Insomniac pulled out all the stops to make the game look and feel great on PlayStation hardware. With ray-traced reflections though, it looks incredible. And on PC, with a high-end GPU like the GeForce RTX 3080, the quality and detail of the ray-traced reflections are noticeably better than what we saw on the PS5. More detail and more surfaces are reflective, including various metals, leading to a realistic cinematic presentation that truly shines.

You can even spot the effect in the highly-detailed real-time cut-scenes, as Spider-Man is reflected off of the bottom of a helicopter as it races through New York City. We’re not used to seeing ray-traced reflections in massive open-world environments, which makes the implementation here - and amplification on PC - all the more impressive.

AI Magic Thanks to NVIDIA DLSS and NVIDIA DLAA

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Of course, ray-tracing is taxing on hardware and requires a lot of power to pull off and maintain a solid frame rate. On the PS5 ray-tracing enabled meant playing at 30fps at launch, something that simply wouldn’t fly on PC. For many PC gamers, 60fps is now the baseline in terms of acceptable performance. As we’ve seen across a range of PC games that feature ray-tracing effects, Spider-Man includes support for NVIDIA DLSS rendering alongside a few other upscaling techniques.

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With DLSS set to the Quality mode, the result is not only a boost to performance but image quality that feels just about superior to native rendering.

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DLSS or Deep Learning Super Sampling takes full advantage of the AI-based Tensor cores found in the GeForce RTX range, with the result being a substantial boost to performance without sacrificing visual fidelity. With DLSS set to the Quality mode, the result is not only a boost to performance but image quality that feels just about superior to native rendering. DLSS is the secret sauce that makes Marvel’s Spider-Man’s ray-tracing and performance shine when playing in 4K or ultrawide 1440p resolutions.

The addition of NVIDIA DLAA (Deep Learning Anti-Aliasing) is an interesting one as the tech replaces traditional anti-aliasing methods like TAA for a sharper image and crisper detail at any resolution. This doesn’t have anything to do with performance, it simply makes the game look better - and is for those with GPU power to spare.

Ultrawide 21:9 and Panoramic 32:9 Supprt

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Widescreen TVs have been using the 16:9 aspect ratio since the dawn of the HD era, something that was mirrored in the PC space when widescreen LCD monitors began to pop up everywhere. But, as PCs are also the home of productivity and multitasking many out there began running multiple displays - which led to the arrival of ultrawide with 21:9 and even panoramic 32:9 aspect ratio.

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Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered is no exception, in fact, it takes the cinematic immersion to the next level as all of the real-time cutscenes have been recreated to take advantage of ultrawide displays.

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The former is of course more common than the latter and presents an image akin to a widescreen movie. And with ultrawide monitors sporting game-friendly tech like G-Sync, HDR, and low response times, games simply look incredible when played in an ultrawide aspect ratio. Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered is no exception, in fact, it takes the cinematic immersion to the next level as all of the real-time cutscenes have been recreated to take advantage of ultrawide displays.

Textures, Shadows, Environment Detail, and More

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The more options in a game’s display and graphics section the better, as being able to adjust things like level of detail, texture quality, shadow quality, and many more visual effects is the sort of tweaking needed to fully support a wide range of hardware configurations and hit that performance sweet spot. Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered has all of that and then some with things like FOV sliders that sit on top of the ability to change the style of ambient occlusion deployed. SSAO or HBAO, the eternal question. Ahem.

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As found with the improved ray-tracing, it turns out just about every visual effect and bit of detail has been pushed as far as it can go on PC.

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As found with the improved ray-tracing, it turns out just about every visual effect and bit of detail has been pushed as far as it can go on PC. Shadow quality goes beyond the console versions, the same goes for texture filtering and level of detail. The latter, which determines the distance that object detail is rendered is particularly impressive on a high-end rig - especially when perched on top of the Empire State Building.

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Underneath it all though lies a brilliant game, which makes Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered’s PC debut something to savour.