It’s time again for another Diaries From series, and it just so happens that the week that I planned on discussing Marvel Heroes was the week of another big update. There is no winning in this world.
First, a disclosure. I talk a lot about how great Marvel Heroes is because of how much content you can access for free, so before I blow into my latest experiences, I feel the need to disclose how much I have spent on Marvel Heroes and what exactly I have purchased with that money. The answer is I have no clue. My account history (which goes back to its creation) shows one purchase of gs, $5 worth, back in May, but I have no idea what I spent it on. My best guess is that I spent it on fortune cards, because I know for sure they weren’t used to buy heroes or costumes, and I have nothing to show for it. Money well spent, obviously.
I also have four random hero unlocks that were obtained through in-game events, with two of those resulting in duplicates heroes. So out of my roster of eight, one was unlocked by default, two were unlocked by promotional hero codes, meaning I have unlocked five heroes through obtaining eternity crystals in regular gameplay. 175 crystals per random hero box, with twelve hours of total game time on my account. Not bad.
So let’s talk about Marvel Heroes, a game closer to my heart than it is to my wallet. It isn’t that I don’t like the game enough to pay money into it, but I promised way back when Marvel Heroes launched that I would see if it was feasible to unlock all of the characters without sinking a single penny into buying them. At launch, it was evident that that was not the case, so I stopped playing for a while until Gazillion Entertainment introduced eternity shards and made it a whole lot more possible. My plan is to get to a point where the random hero token unlocks a duplicate three times, after which I will start buying heroes directly at a more expensive price.
Marvel Heroes is one of those games that markets itself toward a very specific group of players, specifically those who favor the loot treadmill. It is a game of getting up to level 60 by smashing endless waves of enemies on a rather linear track, collecting shinies with slowly increasing stats, and ticking boxes on a skill tree to give your character additional powers. The shinies you don’t need can be sold or donated to vendors for gold or experience respectively, with the latter leveling them up to offer better shinies. This is a genre that people either love or hate, there doesn’t seem to be much in between.
What sets Marvel Heroes apart from your Diablo and Torchlight is that the game has nearly forty to unlock, with more added every few months, and yet (in my experience) none of them feel like clones. Captain America handles differently from Hawkeye, who handles differently from Moon Knight, who handles differently from Iron Man. It may not be as drastic as it was back at launch, where some characters were effectively useless in certain situations, and every character can generally handle their own, but everyone has their own groove. I actually laughed when I found that Colossus has a special move that throws Wolverine at an enemy, who then fights with you for a few seconds.
If you haven’t played Marvel Heroes since it looked like this, give it another go.
My current roster:
- Black Panther (level 1)
- Captain America (level 12)
- Cyclops (level 3)
- Hawkeye (level 54)
- Iron Man (level 9)
- Moon Knight (level 20)
- Storm (level 4)
- Taskmaster (level 10)
This list doesn’t include the heroes that were added up to level 10 for trial purposes: Black Widow, Collossus, Human Torch, Luke Cage, Punisher, and Rocket Racoon.
MMO Fallout 
