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Digital Foundry: Marvel's Spider-Man 2 - Digital Foundry Tech Review - The Next Big Leap For PS5?

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?


Marvel's Spider-Man 2 sees Insomniac deliver its most technologically advanced game yet, increasing graphical density and realism, ramping up ray tracing effects across the board and leveraging the speed of the PlayStation 5's solid-state storage in a way that Marvel's Spider-Man and Miles Morales never could.
 
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adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
- Spoiler warning at the top. Don't watch the video if you want to go in with 0 spoilers.

- SM2 expands the scale and scope from the first game.
- 9 seconds from PS5 OS menu to game from in-game via 'game cards'
- LoD pushed out significantly compared to last game including dynamic objects (cars/pedestrians)
- Additional geometric details and variety added to city-scapes
- Proper occlusion added to foliage (dark areas under trees look appropriately dark)

- All visual modes in the game use RT, there is no option to disable it.
- Includes Performance/Quality and both have 120hz/40hz option as well.

- Quality mode (30/40hz) DRS from 1440p to 2160p.
- 40hz mode drops to 1440p mode often than 30
- Both can have single frame drops during traversal or camera cuts.

- Performance: 1440p to 1008p DRS.
- Performance is largely stable but alpha effects can see small drops.

- Game offers 3 in-game VRR options (off/smooth/uncapped)
- Off: Disables VRR and sees visible judder when FPS drops
- Smooth: Caps to 60 FPS
- Uncap: Unlocks FPS, performance mode between 65~80 average.
- Uncap Quality: 45~60
- Uncapped VRR can cause resolution to drop to lows of 936p

- John prefers the 40hz capped mode.

- Performance has lower LoD, worse shadow quality etc compared to Quality.

- RT reflections extend to all bodies of water (not just puddles)
- RT also includes 'secondary reflections' (reflections in reflections)
- Reflections are also higher quality than before.
- Interior spaces are rendered with checker board instead of cube maps like last game and stored within the RT BVH.
- Main characters use detailed strand-hair systems and Miles Morales's added muscle system
- Clothing and carpets are also well detailed.

- Nitpicks:
- Texture seams are visible in some areas, some bugs like T-poses seen in pre-patched state, some clouds look weird.

- Sound system also praised.
 
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skit_data

Member
Watching it now. Looks fucking awesome overall but oof those smoke/debris effects on screen when he says "not so great" in the intro. I'm really surprised so few developers still can't really nail stuff like fire and smoke. Anyway, gotta watch the rest.

Edit: Ok, this looks significantly better than 2018 and Miles Morales IMO. Fuck, I won't be able to resist the urge to buy it on launch.

Edit 2: Holy shit, those portals! That's definitely the next bar when it comes to swapping stuff out of memory. Makes the portals in Rift Apart look slow in comparison.

Edit 3: Insomniac are just wizards when it comes to graphical settings/options on console. Puts everyone else to shame tbh.
 
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RT reflections within RT reflections are usually very expensive to render, and it wasn't present on the previous games so this is very impressive.

I remember a while back NXGamer mentioned that one of the reasons we don't see a lot of RT implementations in games is not only because of hardware limitations, but also because of lack of dev libraries and immature RT pipelines. Seems like we're finally seeing developers like Insomniac overcome this and I suspect there's more on the way from other studios.
 
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T-Cake

Member
I love having those graphics options. I hope all AAA studios take notice and that becomes a standard. VRR and 40hz modes should be side by side with quality and fidelity options.

I don't. I'm sitting here with a fried brain trying to work out which option is best to pick. Quality mode, 40Hz, smooth VRR is my conclusion. I think.
 

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
I don't. I'm sitting here with a fried brain trying to work out which option is best to pick. Quality mode, 40Hz, smooth VRR is my conclusion. I think.

Yes. You get all the improvements of the Quality mode, the performance seems good with few drops here and there. But you get the highest fidelity.
 

setoman

Member
This is such a disappointing tech review. Not surprised since its John.
By not involving Miles Morale in the comparison and not actually doing real comparisons.
He's able to claim "leaps" that are simply NOT there.

For example traffic. The traffic in Miles is way denser than it is in Spiderman 1 (even remastered version).
The traffic in Miles and SP2 are very similar and not a "leap".

Disappointing "Tech Review".

 
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mansoor1980

Member
amazing , an improvement on the prequel in every way

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GymWolf

Member
This is such a disappointing tech review. Not surprised since its John.
By not involving Miles Morale in the comparison and not actually doing real comparisons.
He's able to claim "leaps" that are simply NOT there.

For example traffic. The traffic in Miles is way denser than it is in Spiderman 1 (even remastered version).
The traffic in Miles and SP2 are very similar and not a "leap".

Disappointing "Tech Review".


Were you expecting real inquisitive journalism from DF? :lollipop_grinning_sweat:

I bet he doesn't even make character rendering comparisons with some ps4 games, let alone crossgen games like hfw.
 

gothmog

Gold Member
I don't. I'm sitting here with a fried brain trying to work out which option is best to pick. Quality mode, 40Hz, smooth VRR is my conclusion. I think.
I'll probably pick that as well after trying others to see what I'm missing out on. There's a sense of speed that I want as well.
 

winjer

Gold Member
Correct, but it uses RT BVH to store 'interior' rooms in buildings as well, which were cube maps before.

John really doesn't know what a BVH structure is.
We never see the BVH, as it is only a bunch of boxes used to define where rays are cast.
 

Darsxx82

Member
Insomniac proves that it is an exceptionally well-guided Studio. Clear ideas, a well-designed work culture and their own technology that they know how to use, adapt to the times and that makes their developments much easier and that is why they are so prolific.

Congratulations on another fantastic result.
 

Fake

Member
Shame about not option to fully disable RT. Would make performance mode hold more higher resolution.

edit: Insomniac became the best studio Sony had at the moment.
 
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Trying to avoid spoilers so not watching but I have a question, is the 40hz mode is automatically enabled if you're playing in a VRR compatible TV in Quality Mode or do you need to enable it in options?
 

skit_data

Member
Peter Parker's Spider-Man has the best rendered male ass in gaming history. Best rendered female and ass overall still goes to Chloe Frazier in Uncharted 2 with Catwoman in Arkham City as a runner-up.
Don't know if Black Cat shows up in Spider-Man 2 but if she does she'll stand tall above the others. Can't remember ever thinking of a video game character as "hot" for real before her appearance in Spider-Man 2018.

Edit:
Seems Insomniac has confirmed her making a return in Spider-Man 2
Approve South Park GIF
 
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Xtib81

Member
Um? Spider-Man is an open world game with a lot of little details needed to make it seem alive,that means smaller worlds can have a gross amount of detail in them.

I can hardly tell which is which between spiderman remaster and SM2. The game looks good, there's no denying that but it's so far behind the matrix demo for example. I expect more from these machines.
 
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HeWhoWalks

Gold Member
I can hardly which is which between spiderman remaster and SM2. The game looks good, there's no denying that but it's so far behind the matrix demo for example. I expect more from these machines.
Key word is demo. Let's see a full game running on that graphical level (save for reflections, where Spider-Man 2 walks all over it), at Spider-Man 2's performance level, and then we can revisit this.
 
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setoman

Member
Um? Spider-Man is an open world game with a lot of little details needed to make it seem alive,that means smaller worlds can have a gross amount of detail in them.
Lots of little details? May I ask What these small details are? Because there are no small details. This isn't GTA, Watchdogs or RDR. The open world is just a backdrop. Everything in the world is static. There's virtually no AI (other than fighting). There's no simulation... so what are these small details?
 
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Hugare

Member
As expected, I'm not really impressed by the final result, but the density and RT stuff are really cool.

The LOD is also really impressive. That scene where Sandman throws spider-man far away at a high speed and the LOD pop in keeps up with the pace is awesome. It's a great addition that adds to the game's design.

The game uses baked lighting but it has so many flaws. Look at that part where Peter is traversing the bridge to fight Sandman, how under the bridge it is "glowing" where it should be baked in shadows.

This is a game with fixed time of day, shit like this shouldnt exist.

Still, looks like a decent generation bump from the past games
 
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I can hardly which is which between spiderman remaster and SM2. The game looks good, there's no denying that but it's so far behind the matrix demo for example. I expect more from these machines.
That demo wasn't even running at 30fps and was an unnoptimzied mess. Here you have a game running at 30 / 40 or 60 fps...all of them at different resolutions and all with ray tracing.

The Matrix demo wasn't even a game...
 
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