Review: Marvel’s Avengers
About a month ago, I wrote an article detailing my impressions of the closed beta for Marvel’s Avengers. I was not a fan. I didn’t care for the overall look of the game’s characters, the combat came off as mostly gimmicky, and the entire experience was just not very fun. With that said, forget that I said any of that. The retail release of Marvel’s Avengers is out now, and it is phenomenal.
Usually, the open beta route works the other way around. Take Bioware’s ‘Anthem’ for example, during the open beta, that game seemed to show a lot of promise. Then the actual game came out and it bombed. It seemed like Avengers wasn’t even going to get to that point. Since the game was first shown off at E3 a few years ago, the majority of the gaming community had concerns that limited their expectations. The combat looked like it was a slight step away from being a quick-time event, the overall design seemed questionable, the story didn’t look all that intriguing, and the fact that it was going the games-as-a-service route turned a lot of people off. I suppose that the best way to tackle this review is to see how each of those concerns played out.
The Combat
Nearly 90% of the gameplay footage shown for Marvel’s Avengers has been set during the A-Day sequence, which is a level set in San Francisco and is the very beginning of the game. During this early part of the level—which was also the start of the open beta—you jump between various members of the Avengers. You are Thor for a moment before you jump over to playing as Iron Man. From there you will jump to playing as Hulk, and then Captain America, and then you wrap up the mission as Black Widow. As you are briefly playing as these characters, there is a glorified tutorial that is showing you the abilities of all these superheroes. Even though these characters and their powers are all very different, from a gameplay perspective, they didn’t feel all that different from one another. All of the melee attacks felt similar, every power that you would use felt similar, and it didn’t feel and play like you imagined an Avengers game being.
I will gladly eat crow on this one.
While I stand by that original assessment, the combat—and the feel of each character—is unique and extraordinary, and it is the best thing about this game. That early sequence that I wasn’t impressed by takes place in this restricted area that doesn’t truly allow you to see the full range of each character. That is why they all felt so plain, I suppose. Once you are outside of that, you can really appreciate how hard Crystal Dynamics and Eidos Montreal worked to make these characters feel like you would expect them to. Insomniac gets a lot of credit for making a Spider-Man game that makes you feel like the web-crawler—and as they should—but Marvel’s Avengers manages to do that and then some. Tackling missions as Hulk, Captain America, Thor, Black Widow, Iron Man, and Ms. Marvel is a different experience every time, and it only gets better as you start to unlock new abilities and craft them into someone that fits your play style.
The Design and Story
Let’s knock out my original concerns over the story real quick: Since the debut of that Marvel’s Avengers trailer at E3, the characters have all been tweaked a bit, but the developers didn’t give in to the criticism, and I’m now glad that they didn’t. With the Marvel movies so fresh in our minds, it’s weird to see Tony Stake not look like Robert Downey Jr. and for Thor to not be a handsome Australian. But that’s fine. You quickly get used to the new designs, and if you still don’t like them after that initial impression, each character has dozens of skins to choose from so that you can find something that suits your tastes.
As for the story, holy shit it is way better than you would expect it to be. That original trailer painted this picture where Captain America has died, the Avengers have split up, and you play as Ms. Marvel. It is not the most appealing setup when you are coming off the high of Avengers: Endgame. Especially when it comes to Ms. Marvel. Why on Earth would she be included? Just trust it. I would go as far as to say that the story and the acting are better than most of the MCU films. It is a story about a world where the Avengers have gone their own separate ways, and a kid, Kamala Khan, has to bring the team back together to stop AIM, a government-funded tech conglomerate that is up to no good. It’s a great story, and I’m excited to see where the add-on content takes it over the next few years. Also, be ready to become a Ms. Marvel fan. For as annoying as she came off in that beta, she is the heart and soul of this story. I don’t know that this story (or game) works without her.
But is it fun?
It’s so fun! Now whether the games-as-a-service route is the right approach for a game like this is still to be seen. I was able to knock out the game’s campaign over the weekend, which took 8-10 hours. The multiplayer/endgame content that is currently available doesn’t feel like a microtransaction-laced time-filler like I was worried that it would be. Instead, once the credits ran from the campaign, I loved that there was something else to dive into immediately, and once I did, I saw that I had only scratched the surface of what this game had to offer. Square Enix has already announced a lot of planned support for 2020 with new characters to play as and worlds to explore, so there is no reason to think that they won’t deliver.
Conclusion
What a welcomed surprise this game turned out to be, huh? I had zero expectations for Marvel’s Avengers before booting it up, and now it’s a game that I can see myself investing dozens of more hours into—if not more. Aside from framerate issues in the New York level and the tediously long load times when you die, I don’t have a whole lot of negative feedback that I can throw at Crystal Dynamics and Eidos Montreal. They have done a hell of a job. A loot-based, Destiny-style Avengers game shouldn’t work, but it does. It really does.
