When Sony revealed that Spider-Man Remastered was headed to PC earlier this year, I became fixated with the idea that the game would potentially work on the Steam Deck. I mean, it worked on a base PS4, right? By my understanding the Steam Deck is basically just a PS4 with a screen slapped on it, so surely portable Spider-Manning wasn’t an unrealistic thing to expect?
After spending a few days testing out the game on the Deck I’m thrilled to confirm that Spider-Man Remastered plays great on Valve’s handheld with only a few very minor caveats. Hooray! I can finally punch a Vulture in my back garden without getting shouted at by local bird protection services. What a time to be alive.
In the video above I provide a broad analysis on how the game performs on a Steam Deck, but the short answer is: very well. Using a custom graphics configuration that sits between low and medium settings, the game runs at a pretty consistent 30fps regardless of whether you’re swinging through the streets of New York or sneaking into an auction house. There is a touch of inconsistency when it comes to frame pacing, but I can’t say I found it particularly noticable, especially when I had the Deck’s performance overlay turned off. Seriously, turn that off. It’s bad for your health, looking at data all the time. Stop it.
It all looks very handsome, and with the exception of the frame rate, is pretty comparable to its desktop counterpart when viewed on the Deck’s dinky display. The only real issue I ran into was battery life. You can only expect to get around 90 minutes of playtime out of Spider-Man on the Deck, which is a bit of a bummer. As this is a relatively modern 3D action game, the Deck runs a little hot as well, causing its fans to ramp up to full speed for the entire duration of your play session. Headphones are recommended, then, unless you like to pretend you’re playing your Steam Deck on the wing of an airplane.
Still, I really enjoyed my time with Spider-Man on the Deck. It doesn’t feel hugely compromised and runs about as well as it did when it originally launched for the PlayStation 4. It’s just nice to play the game portable, honestly, and I’ll definitely be continuing my adventure as Peter Parker on the go rather than sat at my desk.
James will be back later this week to go over the game’s PC port in more detail, but in the meantime do make sure to check out his interview with both developers Insomniac Games and their port team Nixxes, who brought Spider-Man to PC. Once you’re done, scoot on over to read Alice B’s wonderful Spider-Man Remastered review.