SWING TIME

MARVEL'S SPIDER-MAN REMASTERED is a mostly good port of a mostly good game

- Rick Lane

I honestly believed that Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered would struggle on keyboard and mouse. The web-swinging and slugfests of Insomniac's open-world Spidey game feel so specifically tailored to a PlayStation controller that I couldn't imagine how anyone could feasibly translate it to the PC's traditional control scheme. Yet not only is the game perfectly playable on keyboard and mouse, in some ways it's superior to the PS4 experience.

Swinging through the New York skyline was always the best bit of Insomniac's title-with the Ratchet & Clank studio delivering possibly the best movement system in any game of the last decade. Traversing Manhattan as Spidey is equally enjoyable on PC, only now you press and hold left-shift to start and maintain a swing, interspersed with deft taps of the spacebar to add little bursts of straight-line speed. But it's the addition of mouse control that really gives the PC version an edge, letting you slip through tiny gaps between tenements and skyscrapers in a much smoother fashion than with a pad. Spidey's web-swinging was designed to make you feel like an experienced superhero in his element, and the mouse makes inhabiting this fantasy that much easier.

Combat, too, is surprisingly at home on keyboard and mouse, considering how involved Spidey's fighting style is. Basic attacks are assigned to left-mouse, and you can launch enemies into the air by holding the button down. Almost everything else is assigned within easy reach of your left hand, from webbing-up enemies with rapid taps of the E key, to deploying special abilities like healing and combat finishers with the first few number keys. The only console hangover is that Spidey's web abilities are chosen from a selection wheel brought up by holding down middle-mouse. But not only does using this quickly become intuitive, the fact that it pauses the action also allows a moment to figure out your next move.