From grand open-world adventures and haunting psychological thrillers to emotionally layered narrative journeys and tightly crafted action, these games prove that single player games are thriving. These are the games that immerse us, challenge us, surprise us, and remind us why we fell in love with gaming in the first place. With this feature, we are running down 15 of the greatest single-player experiences from 2021 to 2025.

Clair Obscur Expedition (2025)

Clair Obscur: Expedition transports players into a dreamlike world where reality is painted, reshaped, and wiped clean every year by a mysterious celestial artist. It’s combat system blends turn-based mechanics with real-time inputs, which helps it stand out from the crowd. Every encounter feels like a stage performance of sorts, and its unique setting wraps everything in a surreal, painterly aesthetic. Expedition succeeds because it fully commits to its artistic identity; story, visuals, and music all speak the same emotional language. 

The first thing I should note is that I had little in the way of performance issues from the game. I was able to largely max its settings out, minus ray tracing, while playing it on an AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D, 32 GB of DDR5 6000 MHz RAM, and an AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT GPU. The frame rates weren’t quite able to make full use of my 144 Hz display at a resolution of 1440p, I was still getting well over 60 FPS, with the general open-world gameplay stabilising at around 70-80 frames per second. While performance wasn’t an issue, I did face a few crashes, at the time of writing this review. While I’m unsure of what caused these crashes – I wasn’t able to replicate them on purpose, and even play time seemingly wasn’t an issue – it does indicate that there are some technical issues with the PC port.

"The first thing I should note is that I had little in the way of performance issues from the game. I was able to largely max its settings out, minus ray tracing, while playing it on an AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D, 32 GB of DDR5 6000 MHz RAM, and an AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT GPU."

At the time of writing this review, many others still have reported quite a few technical issues with Spider-Man 2, including crashes, video artefacts, visual glitches, and even poor performance. Unfortunately, there doesn’t yet seem to be a hardware-related throughline discovered as of yet, with both AMD and Nvidia GPU users facing these problems. There also seem to be software-related issues, with both DLSS and FSR users pointing out visual jittering, especially with the hair on characters.

The keyboard and mouse controls are also surprisingly well thought out. I wouldn’t, however, recommend it over a controller. In fact, the title has downright fantastic integration with the DualSense, bringing over essentially all of its key features. My personal favourite has been the game’s use of the adaptive triggers on the DualSense, letting you feel just the right amount of pressure for some of its quick-time events and prompts.

With all the PC-related things out of the way, now is a good time to look at Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 as a whole a little over a year after its release. As was the case with the last two titles, Spider-Man 2 also features a completely original story, this time around involving Kraven the Hunter. The game focuses on spending its first couple of hours by letting you get reacquainted with its open world, however, introducing a host of side-activities and collectibles you can start going for right off the bat. Once you’ve had some time to settle in, the game throws its second major set piece at you, introducing Kraven to both Peter Parker and Miles Morales in the process.

Throughout the game’s thrilling story, there are a couple of understated B-plots happening; Parker is still figuring out how to manage his life and balance things like having a job while also occasionally trying to save the city from supervillains, while Morales on the other hand is dealing with a bevy of personal issues, from mundane things like figuring out his college applications to more complex emotions, like testing his limits for forgiveness when he comes face-to-face with the man responsible for his father’s death. Both of these side-stories tend to not get too much of a focus while still giving us some fun, complex character arcs to follow throughout the more bombastic main storyline.

"Gameplay is where Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 truly comes alive, with just about every aspect of the original two titles being improved in one way or another."

It is worth noting that a lot of the more interesting and nuanced parts of the story come from the B-plots that run throughout the game’s side content. There are even hints of a larger story happening in the background, with things like random criminal activities involving cultists trying to brand people or committing random acts of arson.

Gameplay is where Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 truly comes alive, with just about every aspect of the original two titles being improved in one way or another. Web-swinging is more fun than ever thanks to a bevy of new unlockable moves, and even combat gets an uplift with the addition of new powers for Peter Parker. The best new feature in purely gameplay terms, however, is the ability to glide through the city thanks to the new web wings that both Parker and Morales are equipped with. Interestingly enough, while the ability to glide through the skyline of New York is both fun and intuitive, the wings never feel like they make plain old web swinging obsolete. Rather, the wings feel like they were designed to work in tandem with swinging, since you can only really attain the heights and speeds that you’d need to make the wings work by building up momentum through swinging.

The combat side of things has also been given a major facelift from previous titles. Taking a page out of Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Peter Parker now gets in on the action of having special on-cooldown powers in Spider-Man 2 as well. This new system allows for a wide range of powers, ranging from sprouting mechanical spider-legs to aid in combat, to more situational ones like being able to throw all enemies into the air for longer combos. Interestingly, these new abilities do make the classic gadgets that Parker had from the first title feel less useful; not only are most of these gadgets much more situational than the new powers, but they can also be easy to forget about in the heat of battle.

"The only downside here comes for PC players: you might want to wait for a patch or two to iron out the technical problems."

When you get down to it, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 ticks just about every box a sequel should; it’s bigger and better in just about every way you can imagine. Even its main story manages to be more impressive, since it’s able to hit some great emotional and bombastic beats for two protagonists simultaneously. Both Spider-Man and Spider-Man: Miles Morales were tough acts to follow, but Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 managed this almost effortlessly. Even the new rogues’ gallery you take on during Spider-Man 2’s story and side-missions are more interesting, from both the gameplay and story standpoints.

The only downside here comes for PC players: you might want to wait for a patch or two to iron out the technical problems. While not all PC hardware is created equal, and you might have an experience like mine where just a couple of crashes throughout my time with the game were the only problems I had to deal with, it is worth noting that many more have reported quite a few severe issues. Even if you’re one of the lucky ones with few technical issues, you might also want to make sure that you have a decent controller lying around; a fast-paced third-person action game like Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 just doesn’t feel particularly good with a keyboard and mouse despite the studio’s best efforts at making a sensible control scheme.

This game was reviewed on PC.

After a fair bit of waiting, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 has finally made its way to the PC platform – with support from Nixxes Software. But how does it compare to the original release, what are the enhancements on offer, and most importantly how does it performance compare against the PS5 version? Without further delay, let’s just jump right in and find out.

What’s New?

Nixxes Software has proven itself to be a more than capable developer when it comes to porting PlayStation games on the PC platform. Insomniac’s in-house engine has already been ported to the PC multiple times, in the form of Marvel’s Spider-Man, Miles Morales and Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart, and despite the sheer fluidity all of those games displayed on the PS5, they have largely been excellent PC ports.

Spider-Man 2 on the PC platform is all about pushing the limits of what was possible on the PS5, and Insomniac has given quite a few options to enhance the image quality by a further margin. Chief among these options is the flexibility that comes with ray tracing, ranging from options such as DLSS ray reconstruction to modifying the draw distance for ray tracing and more.

Of course, you also get the flexibility to play in ultrawide resolution alongside options for DLSS 4.5, AMD’s FSR, and Intel XeSS to upscale the image. In addition to this, there’s also support for DLSS frame-generation which should help to create a smoother experience for a wide range of PC gaming hardware.

In broad strokes, the visual presentation hasn’t changed all that much from what we saw in the PlayStation 5 release. It’s an iterative upgrade after all, but that doesn’t make these updates any less important. Despite a few major fumbles, that we will later discuss in later sections, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 on PC is a mostly feature-rich rendition of the PlayStation 5 release.

Test Bench Specs And PC Graphical Settings

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 features a plethora of graphics sliders and quality control options that allow users to find the perfect balance between fidelity and performance. As previously mentioned, you can control everything from texture quality to ray tracing distance to upscaling options and much more. Helpful texts appear as you click on any setting which can guide you on what toggle or slider impacts what part of the visual presentation, however, having distinct meters for VRAM usage alongside screenshots would have made for a much smoother experience for tinkerers such as myself.

For our test purposes, we ran the game on a system comprising AMD Ryzen 9 5950X, Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti, 64 GB of RAM, and a PCI-e 4.0 NvME SSD to closely match the disk read-write speeds of the PS5. To put things into perspective, Insomniac Games recommends players have an AMD Ryzen 5 5600, 16 GB RAM, and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 to play the game at high settings at 1440p and 60fps.

Unsurprisingly, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 can be a highly demanding game for the PC audience, which has been the case, well, for almost all major AAA games for years. Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 flaunts a large and detailed open world with stunning character models and textures. It was a visual stunner on the PS5 so there will always be a concern about whether it can run at stable performance on the PC.

Either way, our PC rig satisfies the recommended requirements so we went ahead and tested the game on mostly maxed-out settings with ray tracing switched on and set to very high. We were running the game at a resolution of 4K, with DLSS upscaling turned to Quality mode.

Comparison With PS5

We compared some sequences on the PC at the aforementioned settings against the PS5’s Quality mode, and the results are, well, as expected. The first boot of the game takes some time to load which is most likely due to compiling shaders to optimize performance for further runs.

Once you get into the game, some improvements are immediately noticeable over the PS5’s Quality mode. Textures are a bit crisper which is most likely a direct result of better upscaling thanks to DLSS 4.5. Character models and material quality seem to remain the same across the board.

Coming to the ray tracing, reflections look better on the PC as compared to the PS5 Quality mode. Additional bounce lighting adds more depth to the scenes, and the difference is especially noticeable in cinematics where close-up lighting helps bring characters to life. Post-processing effects don’t show much noticeable improvement over the PS5 quality mode.

We turned ray tracing reflection distance to a higher setting, and that results in more detailed scenes with better attention to detail in faraway objects. Shadows are also similarly cast at far distances, giving scenes a lot more depth. World streaming works pretty well for the most part, but there are some pop-in issues that come in the way of moment-to-moment gameplay which can be a bit off putting since high-speed movement is such a big part of the Spider-Man 2 experience.

PC Performance

As for the framerate, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 on PC was running at 60fps during some sequences. That being said, there were plenty of dips during computationally demanding scenes which knocked the frame rate to the lower 30s and sometimes even to around 25fps. DLSS frame generation and upscaling do help with smoothing out those rough performance figures by some margin, but it wasn’t a locked 60fps experience.

The lack of a stable frame rate is a pretty big deal given that Spider-Man 2 is a fast-paced experience and the significant performance drops impact the moment-to-moment gameplay. Furthermore, we also noticed a few bugs and glitches during our tests, such as one during an initial scene where Norman’s eyes seemed a bit weird. These bugs and glitches are mostly visual and don’t impact the gameplay all that much, but it’s still worth noting because these issues don’t exist on the PS5 release. At the time of writing this analysis, there are a number of reports highlighting crashes and several other errors while running the game. In fact, it’s something we witnessed as well while reviewing the PC version. Suffice to say, Spider-Man 2 isn’t exactly off to a stable start on PC.

Conclusion

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 on PC can be a mixed bag. While it doesn’t disappoint in terms of PC-exclusive features, it definitely leaves a sour taste in the mouth with performance and optimization issues across the board. Right from long shader compilation on the first boot to unstable performance and bugs, Spider-Man 2 on PC could greatly benefit from a post-launch patch that could fix such issues.

Again, what makes the whole ordeal surprising is the fact that Nixxes Software has previously done similar ports with much better results. However, the silver lining to it all is that fans finally have a way to experience Spider-Man 2 on PC – albeit with issues. Let’s hope that all of those will be sorted out in the near future.

Sony has announced the removal of mandatory PSN account linking in select titles on the platform. Specifically, Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered, God of War Ragnarok, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, the upcoming The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered (contrary to a recent confirmation) will no longer need PSN accounts for those who wish to play them on PC.

Instead, those who do link their accounts will get free bonus in-game rewards. In The Last of Us Part 2, that will include an in-game skin for Ellie based on Naughty Dog’s upcoming sci-fi title Intergalactic. You can view the full list of rewards for each game below.

Whether we can expect Sony to take a similar approach with all future releases remains to be seen. One would certainly hope that’s the case with how unpopular and controversial the PSN account linking requirements have been thus far.

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 launches for PC on January 30. The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered will follow on April 3. Check out the former’s system requirements and platform-specific features.

Later this month, the Insomniac Games-developed Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 will be releasing for PC. To commemorate the port’s launch, the Advanced Suit 2.0 – the default suit Spidey starts the game with – will be available as an in-store unlockable in Marvel Rivals on January 30. By the looks of it, the suit will be available to players on all platforms, not just on PlayStation. Check out NetEase’s tweet below for a glimpse of the suit and what it’ll look like in the hero shooter.

Marvel Rivals is available on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC – check out our review. Meanwhile, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, which is currently available only on PS5, is set to release for PC on January 30.

🕷️ The Advanced Suit 2.0 Arrives to Celebrate the PC Launch of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2! 🕸️

Take the first look at Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 (2023) in Marvel Rivals, the Advanced Suit 2.0 blends Otto Octavius’s science with Peter Parker’s genius. Crafted for the toughest battles, it… pic.twitter.com/LiyXRzkjcI

— Marvel Rivals (@MarvelRivals) January 15, 2025

Specific targeted enhancements have been made in both games, though the headlining improvements are similar across both. Chiefly, Insomniac has added new Fidelity Pro and Performance Pro modes in both games for the PS5 Pro, while also making ray tracing tweaks and improvements. Check out the videos below for finer details on both games’ respective enhancements. 

The PS5 Pro is due out on November 7, with 40-50 games confirmed to be enhanced for the console upon release. Meanwhile, as recently announced by Sony, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is also coming to PC on January 30.

There’s also Fidelity Pro, which targets 30 FPS and features increased pedestrian and traffic density alongside increased hair detail. It also exclusively features the new RT Reflections and RT Key Light Shadows toggles. The former renders at half the resolution for improved performance on Medium, while High delivers full-resolution reflections and smoother reflection animations.

The latter replaces cascaded shadow maps, delivering ray-traced sun shadows. It can be turned on or off and offers the most impact in cityscapes. With VRR and 120 Hz Display Mode options, players can effectively tune both options based on their frame rate preference.

Finally, there’s RT Ambient Occlusion. Turning it off improves performance, while Medium “augments” screen-space ambient occlusions and High adds screen-space global illumination bounces.

Check out the full update notes below. Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is available for PS5. It’s also coming to PC on January 30th, 2025. Unfortunately, Insomniac doesn’t have any additional story content planned.

Version 1.004.000 Release Notes

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 version 1.004 adds support for PlayStation 5 Pro, including new graphic modes and toggles. Please read below for more information!

THE NEW GRAPHICS MODES

PERFORMANCE PRO (Default for PlayStation 5 Pro)

• This mode targets a smooth 60 frames per second while retaining the image quality of the standard Fidelity mode through the use of PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR). All ray-tracing (RT) features are on, including ray-traced reflections, ray-tracing on water, and ray-traced window interiors. This mode is recommended for most players.

FIDELITY PRO

• This mode targets 30 frames per second for players who want to experiment with new ray-tracing graphical features. These new features can be tuned individually to reach higher intermediate frame rates, especially when using the “VRR” or “120 Hz Display Mode” options. Pedestrian and traffic density may be increased in some areas, and fine hair detail is increased.

NEW GRAPHICAL TOGGLES

RT Key Light Shadows: Off (Performance) / On (Fidelity default)

• Use ray tracing to calculate sun shadows at mid- to far-distance, replacing cascaded shadow maps. This improvement is most impactful on city views. Only available in the “Fidelity Pro” graphics mode.

RT Reflections & Interiors: Medium (Performance) / High (Fidelity default)

• Set the quality level for ray-traced reflections and building window interiors. The “Medium” setting ray-traces at half render resolution, and the “High” setting ray-traces at full render resolution. The “High” setting will also improve the smoothness of animation in reflections and interiors. Only available in the “Fidelity Pro” graphics mode.

RT Ambient Occlusion: Off (Performance) / Medium / High (Fidelity default)

• Use ray tracing to compute additional ambient occlusion lighting information. The “Medium” setting uses that information to augment screen-space ambient occlusion. The “High” setting also adds a screen-space GI bounce for additional ambient lighting information. The visual impact of this feature will vary greatly based on the scene.

There will, of course, be a Standard Edition, which, in addition to the base game, will also include all updates that have been released for it over the past year. That will entail Photo Mode, Mission Replay, New Game Plus, additional suits, and more.

In addition to the Standard Edition, a Digital Deluxe Edition will also be offered, which, in addition to all of the above, will include five exclusive suits apiece for Peter Parker and Miles Morales, early in-game unlocks for one suit apiece for both, early unlock for the Web Grabber gadget, extra Photo Mode items, and a bonus 5 skill points to spend in-game. Pricing details have yet to be revealed.

Meanwhile, Nixxes Software – which is in charge of bringing Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 to PC – is also promising “a suite of enhanced features, including enhanced ray-tracing options, to take full advantage of a variety of setups and configuration.” More technical details will be shared closer to launch, including the game’s system requirements.

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is available on PS5, and launches for PC on January 30, 2025. Insomniac Games says it has no additional story content planned for the title.

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 was recently announced for PC, and in the PlayStation Blog post announcing the same, Insomniac Games revealed that it has no new story content planned for the game, but provided reassurances that all previously released updates for the game will be included in its PC version.

“While we have no additional story content planned for Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, we’re delighted to bring all of our previously released post-launch content to the PC version,” the developer says.

As per the aforementioned leak, Insomniac’s alleged post-launch plans for the game entailed three free DLC drops over the course of 2024, as well as a Game of the Year Edition re-release for the title. When those plans were dropped – or if they were ever even solidified – is anyone’s guess.

That said, Insomniac has confirmed that the paid Fit N’ Fresh Suit Pack DLC that it released for the game on PS5 earlier this year in collaboration with Gameheads will also be made available to all players for free this October, as previously promised.

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is available on PS5, and launches for PC on January 30, 2025. Head on over here for details on its editions.

Announced at Marvel’s recent New York Comic-Con panel, the open-world title will be available for PC on January 30, 2025 via Steam and Epic Games Store, with Nixxes Software handling the port. Like all Sony releases on PC over recent months, it, too, will require a PlayStation Network account, in spite of being exclusively single-player. 

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 launched for PS5 last October, letting players play as both Miles Morales and Peter Parker, and allowing seamless and instant swapping between both Spider-Man superheroes. The game starts the likes of Kraven the Hunter and Venom as its primary antagonists, and boasts improvements to its traversal mechanics, combat, and more. 

In our review of the game, we awarded it a score of 9/10, saying, “Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is exactly the sort of sequel you’d want it to be, and though it stumbles here and there, ultimately, it improves on its predecessors in almost every way that matters most.” Read the full review through.

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 has sold over 11 million units worldwide as of April 20.