Out-of-Box Experience

On SteamOS, Marvel's Spider-Man 2 works well out of the box. After you install and run the game, you won't be greeted with the launcher like on Windows, which isn't a negative since you can change every graphics setting in-game. You don't have to restart the game to apply the changes, which is always a plus.


The game runs well (read: without bugs or visual glitches) with the latest version of Proton, and you don't have to manually select the experimental version of Valve's translation layer or degrade to an earlier version. There's no shader compilation step before you're taken to the title screen. While you cannot skip introductory videos the first time you launch the game, pressing the B button on the controller will skip the videos during subsequent launches. Nice.


On Windows, the story's the same. Once you download it, the game launches without issues. This time, however, you're greeted with a launcher that allows you to fine-tune in-game display and video options. The good news is that you can disable the launcher.

You'll also be greeted with a notification informing you that the ROG Ally's graphics driver is out of date each time you launch the game. There's nothing to do about this until ASUS provides a driver update, unless you're ready to manually update the GPU driver with the one from AMD. If you want to do this, there's a slew of online tutorials explaining the procedure.


Again, the initial launch comes with unskippable videos, which you can skip by pressing the B button on the controller the next time you run the game. Note that we experienced a number of crashes and freezes that required us to force shut down the device by holding the Power button. Considering that many PC gamers have been reporting similar issues, it seems like the problem stems from the game itself or Windows, not the outdated graphics driver.

As for controller support, this being a PlayStation 5 title means that Marvel's Spider-Man 2 plays wonderfully with a controller, and you shouldn't encounter any issues on Steam Deck or ROG Ally.