The cinematic opening fight against Kingpin is probably best enjoyed on a stable PC environment running at a smooth frame rate. That’s exactly how the original 2018 Spider-Man game functions. As games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild or Super Mario Odyssey have shown, the best portable games are ones where you can pop in for a few minutes and feel like you’ve accomplished something, but still have those more involved moments where you want to hunker down and bring it up on a TV. Stop a crime or two, locate a hidden backpack, or even just swing around for the thrill of it. Players can swing into the game’s version of New York for 10 minutes and get a fair amount done. Spider-Man is especially a great fit for portable devices thanks to its checklist-like approach to open-world activities. Within an hour, I found myself wishing that it’s how I could have experienced it for the first time. I kicked back on a recliner at a beach house and started picking away at it while I had some wrestling on TV in the background.

Rather than replaying the game at my rig, I decided to spend more time with it in a portable setting. It would have been a more notable feat had the 2018 game not gotten polished for PS5 previously. Sure, the PC version brings new features like ultrawide monitor compatibility and Nvidia DLSS support, but I don’t think most players who experienced it on PS5 will notice much of a difference even with the boosts. Frankly, my PS5 already is a powerful PC. There’s a reason I’m more focused on how Spider-Man runs on Steam Deck instead of a powerful PC. For the first time in years, I’m more excited for that brand of game than I am exhausted. While Marvel’s Spider-Man isn’t the first Sony game to hit Steam Deck by way of PC port, it reaffirms that this current era of flexible gaming is an especially perfect fit for Sony’s brand of big-budget open-world extravaganza. As it turns out, that’s the best way to play it - even if it means sacrificing some power to do so.

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