You can finally play Sony’s Spider-Man on PC—but it’s not all good news (yet)

Enlarge / All images in this review were personally captured by Sam Machkovech on various PCs, unless otherwise specified. (The game's handy "photo mode" helps on this front, though such images are still representative of real-time gameplay.) (credit: Sony / Insomniac / Nixxes)

In two days, the 2018 hit game Marvel's Spider-Man will break out of its console exclusivity and land on Windows (Steam, EGS) as arguably Sony's biggest PC port yet. We knew Sony was bullish about selling more games on PC in the current fiscal year, but we didn't expect a critically acclaimed gem like Spider-Man, which previously drove console sales as a PlayStation exclusive, to make the transition.

The thing about PC ports, of course, is that they have to work on a wide range of machines. As of press time, the Spider-Man version we tested doesn't necessarily surpass the mix of stability and impressive technical performance that developer Insomniac delivered on dated PlayStation 4 architecture.

Such complaints might be moot when Spider-Man launches on Friday, August 12—and we sure hope so. At its best, this game does whatever a PC rig can, delivering ultra-wide ratios, super-charged graphical settings, higher frame rates, and increased ray tracing depth. But while it looks great on a super-charged PC and impresses on hardware as weak as a Steam Deck, it's tough for me to comfortably recommend Spider-Man on midrange gaming rigs.