Spider-Man 2 is out on PS5 this week, which means the wait is hopefully now on for a PC release
The technically-impressive sequel might be more forgiving on the hardware front than you expect, too
It sounds like Spider-Man 2 is pretty damn good, going by reviews that have appeared today ahead of the web-slinging sequel’s release on PlayStation 5 this Friday. While there’s no official word on a Spider-Man 2 PC version just yet, the appearance of previous PS5 exclusives over the last couple of years hopefully means it’s just a matter of time. The sooner, the better, based on what we’ve heard so far.
If Spider-Man 2 does eventually swing onto PC, it’ll be interesting to see what kind of system requirements it lands with. Digital Foundry’s brilliant-as-usual tech breakdown highlights the game’s use of the PS5’s highly optimised loading times - made possible by its SSD and I/O - to jump quickly between its dual protagonists of Peter Parker and Miles Morales, as well as effectively eliminating loading times when fast-travelling freely around the game’s open map.
On top of that, it sounds like Spider-Man 2 is a significant technical step up from the original game - which came to PC in a Remastered form - with far greater density when it comes to the crowds and traffic of its New York City environments. Pop-in is far less noticeable when zipping around, while the overall detail of the game has been boosted both close-up and at distance. Ray-tracing is now the default, too, with no option to turn it off (at least in the PS5’s simplified graphics settings, which will likely be far less flexible than any PC settings) - allowing the reflections of water and skyscraper windows to look significantly better than in the first game, and other effects like smoke and explosions to be rendered using RT too.
Both Spider-Man and standalone spin-off-slash-sequel-ish Miles Morales came to PC last year, bundling in the game’s DLC, adding mouse-and-keyboard support and bringing additional PC features from adjustable render and ray-tracing settings to uncapped framerates, better shadows and support for DLSS and DLAA.
The system specs for those games might gesture at what Spider-Man 2 might demand if and when it comes to PC, with even the older game’s specs recommending an SSD and a GTX 1060 for 60fps at 1080p. Unsurprisingly, pushing the game up to 60fps at 4K needed significantly more horsepower, with a RTX 3080 and i7-12700K or equivalent.
Despite the tech demands, Spider-Man Remastered scaled nicely to run smoothly on the comparatively modest hardware of the Steam Deck, albeit at a lower 30fps and at the cost of battery life.
Given Spider-Man 2’s increased reliance on the PS5’s swift loading, the PC specs for fellow PS5 port Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart might also gesture at what we’ll need. That game’s impressive instant portal-hopping between levels made use of Microsoft’s DirectStorage tech and a healthy stock of acronyms like DLSS, FSR and XeSS, with a GTX 4080 needed for 60fps at a max 4K resolution.
Even so, Rift Apart’s fast-loading trick still managed to work on a 7200rpm HDD and a microSD card in a Steam Deck with only a little more loading time than on PS5, so Spider-Man 2 may also be fairly forgiving in its PC requirements.
Still, we won’t know for sure until Spider-Man 2 comes to PC - which, for now, is still yet to be confirmed at all. While Sony have said that PlayStation exclusives won’t come to PC at launch - as is obviously the case here - the arrival of both Horizon games, Spider-Man and Miles Morales, and Uncharted 4 all suggest that we might see a Spider-Man 2 PC version in a couple of years (as with both Rift Apart and Horizon Forbidden West). Hopefully, it won’t take quite that long.