Of the game.
It’s time to talk about Marvel’s Avengers, the latest game to come out of Square Enix and Crystal Dynamics. Can Earth’s Mightiest Warriors hold up in 2020? Let’s find out together.
1. A Tale As Old As Time
Marvel’s Avengers is about as Marvel and Avengers as humanly possible, so I don’t think anyone should be surprised by the arching main story line. It’s an Avengers story, so of course we have to have the singular event that rips the Avengers apart coupled with a multi-year time jump and the spunky young hero who will bring them all together and show them the meaning of friendship. Something like that.
You know maybe the world of the Avengers does suck, considering these people can literally save the planet a hundred times a year and yet the public turns its back on the Avengers pretty much at the slightest mistake or whenever an obvious villain shows doctored footage that says the Avengers are secretly evil. Couple that with the fact that its members have a habit of immediately turning self-loathing and attacking each other because Tony Stark made a sarcastic comment, and it’s amazing they’re not falling apart every episode. Actually they kind are.
I mentioned this in the beta impressions but Avengers is definitely a victim of its own marketing. I don’t think anyone would believe that Crystal Dynamics has the cajones to kill off Captain America even if this game has no bearing on any other multi-verse, but placing so much marketing around the concept is just condescending. This is “pull my finger” levels of suspense, and it doesn’t work when your dead character has an entire page full of cosmetics dedicated to him. Just my thought.
My favorite part of the Avenger’s base story is watching the slow creation of MODOK, because with the game’s graphics it’s actually really disgusting.
2. The Marvel Cinematic Game-iverse
My favorite part of the story mode is Kamala Khan, who plays the role of hype man and the one who brings the Avengers back from their exile. It’s obvious from the get-go that Crystal Dynamics is going for an MCU motif with at least the launch characters and their behavior.
That does make it interesting when you consider that little of the MCU villain roster is in the game presently. You do have MODOK as the main villain as well as Taskmaster and Abomination who set up the concept of villain locations where you can go back and keep grinding them as boss fights for rewards. Taskmaster will have an appearance in the upcoming Black Widow film. Abomination was in the 2008 Hulk film nobody remembers.
If it sounds like I’m crapping on the story, that’s not what I’m trying to do at all. Generally when it comes to Destiny-ish games you don’t expect much out of the story. Thankfully Crystal Dynamics actually made some endearing moments for our characters. It’s certainly better than I would expect from a looter shooter. There aren’t any gasp-worthy twists and you basically know how it’s going to go from start to finish, but it’s still a fun romp seeing the good guys coming together to punchisize the bad guys faces for free.
There are a lot of references to heroes that will definitely probably maybe certainly be coming to the game at some point in the future. Because this is Marvel and we need subtle in-your-face references and hints.
3. Your Date With Destiny…The Game
If I had to compare Marvel’s Avengers to any other game on the market, I would point toward Marvel Heroes and Destiny and say they had a love child. Or a hate child, whichever works best for you.
Every hero in Avengers has their own style of play and that comes with its own caveats. I’ve seen some people talking about how all six heroes are pretty much the same and that couldn’t be further from the truth. Each character falls somewhat into the realm of the holy trinity of RPGs. You have the Hulk who is a tank with crowd control techniques, who can also mitigate damage and heal himself. Compare that to Natasha who is an agile character with no self-healing to speak of who needs to stay mobile and block/dodge/counter attacks because she’ll get knocked out much easier than Hulk.
Every character has two special attacks and one ultimate in addition to their standard melee/range attacks and combos. As you level up you get points to unlock better combos and various other doohickeys. Loot is basically a constantly rising system of numbers that have seemingly little impact on the game outside of preventing enemies from beating you into chunky salsa because their numbers are arbitrarily bigger than yours.
One big problem I have with the abilities is that they take way too long to regenerate. Destiny 2 nearly has it perfect with the cooldown periods although that’s in a constant state of balance. Avengers takes the horrible approach of letting certain enemies DEPLETE your bars. And not even by special attacks, just specific enemies can deplete your abilities with their standard attacks. I was ready to put my controller through the TV screen when I lost a heal as Ms. Marvel because I got randomly struck by a ranged attack from halfway across the map.
4. Marvel’s Avengers Is A Busy Game
My biggest gripe with Marvel’s Avengers is that the game is visually busy. It’s disgusting how bad the sensory overload in this game gets from time to time. Avengers is a game that relies heavily on your ability to dodge, parry, and counter attacks and that’s pretty difficult when there are thirty thousand enemies on screen shooting lasers and rockets and blowing things up, creating AOE circles, etc. Obviously I’m being hyperbolic with the thirty thousand comment.
I tried to get a shot of how overwhelming the game gets from time to time. I didn’t do a great job. This is about 30% peak Avengers sensory overload.
It also doesn’t help that your heroes tend to stagger a lot from minor blows, leading to instances where enemies pinball you and keep you stun-locked to death or just instantly kill you. You’ll spend most of your time in a maneuver of dodge, duck, dip, dive, and dodge only to get staggered to death because in addition to the fifteen guys mobbing you on a front level you’ll have ten snipers taking potshots and laser turrets with auto-aim knocking you over.
It’s incredibly frustrating. It isn’t terrible, it just needs some quality of life tweaks to git gud.
5. PS4 Not So Professional
I’m very disappointed to see the performance issues that Marvel’s Avengers has on the PlayStation 4 Pro. The frame-rate tends to get hit hard when you have your heroes running around a crowded base with a lot of explosions and laser fire going off everywhere. Hopefully this gets addressed in the early patches, but a game that relies so heavily on timing should not be having these issues with performance.
6. A Look At Things To Come
I don’t review games based on their potential, and right now Marvel’s Avengers feels like Phase 1 of the MCU. If you presented me this and said “Connor, this is what the game will always be like and it will never receive updates” I would probably suggest waiting until it hits the $30 bin which it will presumably do regardless because games do not hold their $60 value outside of Nintendo’s first party titles these days. Otherwise I would say that there is a full game here, even if a lot of it is a Diablo-style grind of gear and levels.
If you’re into the Destiny or Diablo style of looping gameplay and vast collections this is going to suit you just fine. Those looking for a PS4 Spider Man style intensive experience should go play that game. It is worth picking up at that $30 bargain bin price that I mentioned just to play through the story line which is full of fantastic character voice acting.
7. The Investment Theory
One thing I will say positively about Marvel’s Avengers is that the game handles FOMO quite well. In a different world with a shadier developer handling this, you’d probably see every character not just having their own battle pass but each battle pass being on a timed cycle. Every character has their own battle pass, but the passes are so vestigial that the dailies can be knocked out in a few minutes and you never have to worry about being on a strict timeline.
As a long term investment game, Marvel’s Avengers is one of those titles that is going to get more overwhelming to new players as it ages. Right now there are six characters to level to 50 with a 150 gear rank, each. There are two factions to rank up to 50 through daily quests. We know there are new characters coming out at a regular pace, and likely new factions as the game continues its story. There’s a ton of grinding to do and that’s not even considering the impending release of multiple heroes in the next couple months alone.
Imagine the daunting prospect of buying Marvel’s Avengers in 2022 when there are twenty plus heroes each with their own rank and gear score system and personal missions and costume collections and battle passes and dailies and weeklies and comics and whatever other collectibles the game adds in the meantime. It’s nuts, and that’s the kind of thing that made Marvel Heroes a daunting prospect for new players during its heyday of having dozens upon dozens of heroes. It’s just a feeling that those who come in late are going to have a hard time catching up.
8. In Conclusion
About a month ago I expected to review Marvel’s Avengers and say “oh it’s a big stupid mess, but the foundation is there and you should wait six months to dive in.” That happens a lot in this live service genre. Thankfully Marvel’s Avengers is not a big stupid mess. The biggest detriment to the game are the performance hitches, and because of that I highly recommend especially those playing on PC maybe sit it out until those issues are fixed.
Marvel’s Avengers feels like a love letter to Marvel, one that will continue to be written for a long time to come.
MMO Fallout 