Comparison of loading times for Marvel’s Spider-Man: PC, Steam Deck, PS5, PS4

Wonder‘s Spiderman is a great superhero game for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 players. And with its recent PC release, it’s available to a whole new legion of Spidey fans.

Since Marvel’s Spiderman Now that it’s playable on three platforms (and Steam Deck, which is basically a platform in itself), we decided to do a little testing. How fast does Spiderman Loading on PC vs. Steam Deck? How about the PC vs the original PS4 version? How does the PC stand up to the PS5?

Let’s run some tests to answer these questions and see just how fast Spidey can really be.

How fast is the fast travel load time?

Swinging through New York as Spidey comes in pretty quickly Marvel’s Spider-Man. But do you know what’s faster? Instantly teleport from one side of Manhattan to the other using the game’s fast travel system.

For this test I set up the remastered Marvel’s Spider-Man on my work PC (Intel i7-10700K processor, 32 GB DDR4 RAM and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 graphics card), my Steam Deck (loading my Samsung EVO 512 GM microSD card) and my PS5. I also set up the non-remastered version of the game on my PS4 Slim.

For the test, I quickly traveled back and forth between the Harlem police station and the fast travel point for the FEAST homeless shelter in Chinatown. I started my stopwatch the moment I initiated fast travel (after holding down the button to confirm where I wanted to go) and stopped it once I regained control of Spider-Man. I ran each test at least five times until I had a consistent range of results with no major variance.

Here are my results, from fastest to slowest:

• PC: 2.8-3.5 seconds
• PS5: 3-3.1 seconds
• Steam deck: 6-8 seconds
• PS4: 17-20 seconds

My PC and PS5 were very close in these tests, with PS5 being the most consistent platform.

What about the boats?

For the second test, I wanted to see how quickly the game could kick me from the start menu into the open world. I started my timer when I hit the next button and stopped it once I regained control of Spider-Man.

I used the same gear for this second test as I did for the first, always making sure to load Spider-Man in the same location (the FEAST roof). I loaded from the menu at least 3 times on each platform until I had a consistent range with only one major variance.

Here are my results, from fastest to slowest:

• PS5: 2 seconds
• PC: 2.9-3.35 seconds
• Steam deck: 7-13 seconds
• PS4: 35 seconds

The deviation mentioned above for this test was the initial loading process for my Steam deck: when I first booted up the game for the test session, it took 22 seconds to start. Every other time it was at least nine seconds faster.

So which platform is the fastest?

My PS5 and PC were tied on both tests. Both are great places to play the Remastered Marvel’s Spider-Man. (While both are comparable in load times, PC gets the added benefit of Steam Deck’s cloud save feature, so take that as you will.)

Speaking of the Steam Deck – it worked pretty well considering how big it is Marvel’s Spider-Man is. It’s obviously significantly slower than a good desktop PC or modern console, but when running an SD card, I was impressed by how little time I spent waiting.

PS4 clearly comes last in these experiments, taking almost three times longer than Steam Deck to load into the same area. Marvel’s Spider-Man is still worth a look at PS4 – despite aspects that haven’t aged well at all – even if it’s just a stepping stone to excellence Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales.