When I’d originally seen this game announced last year at E3 2019, I wasn’t really sure what to think about it. As time passed and I’d seen more footage of it online, I began to grow more and more fond of the game and what it was trying to do. A game that lets me play as the Avengers in a realistic-looking way? Sign me up.
Once I’d played the beta, I was completely sold on it and highly anticipating launch day. Having played the entirety of the story, I can say that while I’m in love with how the developers brought each character to life, I wish that different ideas were thrown around for the story. Being that the game has been out for a month now, I’d really like to talk as much as I can without holding back, so SPOILERS ahead.
STORY
The story centers around the events of a catastrophe known as “A Day” and what follows in the wake of its destruction. On A Day, San Fransisco is struck by an explosion that releases radiation that either turns everyone at the scene into Inhumans or kills them. Captain America has disappeared as he was at the heart of the blast and thought to be dead. Now Inhumans are being hunted and detained as the world sees the Avengers as terrorists. Being that they failed the world, and Cap, the Avengers disband and go their separate ways.
The main part of the game picks up five years later (like in Endgame) from the point of view of Kamala Khan, aka Ms. Marvel. She’s looking to find herself as someone directly affected by the events of A Day, leaving her with a rubbery disposition. Working as a teenage resistance fighter, she comes across certain information that places a target on her back and propels the story.
She has a mission: find the Avengers and save the world.
I certainly found the story completely well-written and well-acted. That being said, you’ve seen this story done before a million times and kind of comes off as a Marvel version of Star Wars: A New Hope. Just like the Jedi, the Avengers failed the world and go into hiding. Inhumans are hunted down like the Jedi too. The big bad guys use electricity and want immense power but are taken down by a young new hero who’s come full circle in their use of the Force… I mean, superpowers. There are enough flourishes to differentiate it but if you were to give the overall story to someone it does sound unoriginal.
GAMEPLAY
Marvel’s Avengers in my opinion is a hybrid of the old button mashers like Marvel Ultimate Alliance and Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects intertwined with RPG elements. You’ll take the helm of one of six available Avengers each with unique powers and abilities that can be improved upon. Although the story mode focuses on Ms. Marvel for the majority, online levels and challenges will allow you to choose whomever you feel like playing as. Each character can be leveled up and their power level will be affected by the armor set that you decide to fit them with.
You’ll acquire skill points that can be used to further your attacks and finishing moves as you progress with each character. There’s truly no shortage of really awesome looking attacks that uniquely fit each hero. No two heroes fight the same and whenever I felt like a change of pace, there was always another I’d take up on my next mission. There’s a real push for figuring out your favorite heroes and sticking with them to hone your skills. Once you play as each one, you’ll find that there’s a specific hero you just click with.
While I do have great things to say about the combat in the game, it starts to outstay its welcome. It got kind of old for me to grind through each area of the levels. Most of the time you’ll be fighting wave after wave in a tight area that made the game seem like a slog. This may have flown a few years ago but I for one am getting extremely frustrated with how game designers throw wave-based enemies into all of these types of games. I’d rather play something like Dark Souls where the enemies are brutal than having wave upon wave of cannon fodder coming at me. When you beat an enemy in Dark Souls, you feel accomplished, when you beat an enemy in Marvel’s Avengers, you feel bored.
The game is kind of separated into two parts, there’s the story mode and the Avengers Initiative. The story mode while primarily focusing on a single-player experience, can at times include multiplayer functionality. I never used it on my playthrough, as I really wanted to enjoy the story without someone running ahead of me or slowing me down. It’s nice to have this feature but ultimately I feel as if it hindered the story mode in a way but I’ll get to that later.
The Avengers Initiative is the online multiplayer experience where you and up to three other players can be the heroes you wish to play as and complete missions at the varied locations that the game has to offer. Some offer some narrative pieces and some are mostly just a normal dungeon crawl type of thing. This is the penultimate way to play the game, as it feels more organic to have real people taking the mantle of these characters. It makes it feel like a true Avengers team and I think the multiplayer eclipses the story mode completely.
Playing through the levels, there’s more to them than just the combat. Some are small open-worlds, each filled with chests and crates for you to cleanout. You can find new armors, resources, and units (in-game currency). The resources can be used to help upgrade your armor and its capabilities. The armor itself may grant you additional benefits such as resistance to gamma or cryo weapons. The units can be used to purchase the previously-mentioned items at stores as well as cosmetics for your Avengers.
Going past the actual meat and potatoes of the whole game, there are a couple of other points that I want to talk about that revolve around the “games as a service” motif that this title falls into. Now, there are both good and unsavory parts to what I’m going to talk about, so I’m going to start with what I do like about the “service” this game offers.
There’s something called “Hero Challenge Cards” They’re essentially a divided version of a season pass that never has an expiration date. All six Avengers at launch have 40 tiers of loot for you to unlock just for playing as each one, they’re completely free, and this includes the premium items. You can unlock nameplates, cosmetics, units, and more. What I don’t particularly like is the fact that with each new character added to the game, the premium items of their challenge card are going to be held ransom behind a $10 paywall.
Another ghastly thing that’s been added into the mix is the presence of credits that you can buy. I don’t really mind that some outfits have to be purchased using the credits and mostly everything locked behind real-world money is just cosmetic items. It’s just the fact that some outfits can be bought with in-game currency while others are stuck behind bullet-proof glass unless you pay the fee. I don’t really see a need for there to be any types of microtransactions like this in a superhero game.
It’s not a horrible corporate scheme like the infamous Star Wars: Battlefront II debacle but it is a sad day when you see such innocent things get turned into something that companies think they can milk for cash from loyal fans.
Lastly, I want to talk about the really anti-climactic ending that happens in the story mode. I feel that this level in particular truly encapsulates what is wrong with the gameplay. You fight on a totally uninspired location that offers no maneuverability for you to fight in with these amazing characters. It’s almost like an on-rails-shooter at times. You’ll fight a couple of baddies, then move to a weak puzzle segment. Rinse and repeat. Finally, the battle against Modok comes along, and it starts to actually feel like an Avengers battle that you see at the end of the films.
Each character gets a chance to shine and you get to switch between each one, but then you realize that it’s completely shallow. Each hero really only gets a couple of hits in before they swap to the next. I wish that when Modok takes over the Kree Sentry that they had allowed me to play as Iron-Man or Thor, flying around and fighting off this gigantic beast. Instead, they force me to play as Hulk and fight more of the nonsensical enemies that spawn in waves. They then spit in my face by making the battle that I do get to fight the Sentry in just a quick-time event.
Are you kidding me?
You make me leave the real battle to fight off the fodder while the big kids take on the bad guy but then try to make it up to me by implementing a quick time event? Why not allow me to take this guy on one-on-one like Godzilla and Mothra?
VISUALS
The visual performance for me felt very well done in most aspects. I do agree with most that a lot of the character models used felt a bit generic or slightly off. The ones that stuck out the most were Captain America and Iron-Man. The fidelity was great for the characters but they really felt like knock-offs.
The costumes on the other hand are wonderfully done and have a beautiful look to them. Enemies, while very cool in aesthetics, will start to be a bore as you fight the same looking ones from start to finish. I’m not too sure why we don’t see a big variation in their looks throughout the story. After the half-way point, they do throw 3 new enemies at you but they too are close in appearance to the baddies you fought 8 hours earlier.
The environments you’ll play through in the entirety of the story mode feel like a rollercoaster. For every cool looking and functioning level you play there’s a derivative and boring one to follow. The opening scene of the game is probably the best one and that’s pretty unfortunate. There isn’t much going for this title in terms of fun superhero friendly spaces to traverse. Most of the time you’re in a forest, desert, or a completely uninspired research lab type of place. It feels like a cop-out. The areas look pleasing on first, second, and third glance but it starts to wear on you when you realize you spent $60 on a copy and pasted dungeon crawler.
AUDIO
The sounds you’ll hear in the game are very well done and the voice acting too is top-notch.
You have powerhouses like Nolan North (The Uncharted Series), Laura Bailey (The Last of Us: Part II), and Troy Baker (The Last of Us: Part II) who really bring their characters of Iron-Man, Black Widow, and Bruce Banner to life.
North, specifically, as Iron-Man absolutely steals the show every time his character is on-screen. Besides the voice acting, the sounds in-game are mixed very well and everything has enough of a comic book feel without being too unrealistic.
REPLAYABILITY
I can boil this down to one key factor and that is its use of the Avengers. While playing this alone can feel like a slog at times, jumping into a game with friends or randoms helps to bring the game’s main idea to life. By teaming up with others, you do get a real sense that you truly are playing as the Avengers. With the different powers and capabilities of each character, you will bounce off of each other as they do in film and comics.
You may also enjoy grinding to find materials or new armors to max out your character as well, but I don’t really see this as being someone’s reason to come back immediately to this. There is the quality of life elements implemented as well, in the form of new characters and challenges coming to the game shortly.
WHAT IT COULD HAVE DONE BETTER
What would’ve helped with making this a less tedious experience were its level designs and enemies. I don’t want to play as an Avenger in the desert or in the wooded mountains. If I wanted to be in either of those locations, I’d be playing Red Dead Redemption 2 which is a game that fully realizes the use of those two locations.
The Avengers are mostly in sprawling cities, so why don’t we see more of them? The cities that we do get to see actually felt off to me. The New York levels feel nothing like the city at all. I think the level designers were completely out of touch or not in their wheelhouse at all on this one.
The enemies don’t offer enough for players to warrant a returning value. This game lives and dies in its multiplayer features solely because of the group experience. I wouldn’t recommend this game to someone looking for a singleplayer superhero game because, for the most part, there isn’t one. The story is well done, but the gameplay loop loses steam about half-way through.
Being that this game came out a month ago, you’d really think that the major bugs would’ve been smashed out by now. That isn’t the case and while most aren’t going to hurt your game at all. Like in the above photo, most times you’ll see issues with enemies hovering or floating while they fight and after they’ve perished. I’m surprised that little things like this haven’t been patched up since launch. It comes across as completely sloppy workmanship.
You may run into sequences like I did where the game crashes completely. This happened to me once but it did so at the very end of a mission during the final cutscene. Thinking that I’d be ok, I booted the game up, only to find out that I had to play the mission again. It’s things like this that make the levels feel disconnected due to their “mission” based structure of always making me play in a multiplayer fashion. Had this been a truly singleplayer story mode, you wouldn’t have to worry about things like this as the game would autosave and pick back up where you left it.
VERDICT
Marvel’s Avengers puts so much effort into making each hero feel completely and utterly satisfying. Everyone fights differently and this is the highest amount of character detail I’ve seen in any game period.
With that being said, that doesn’t mean that the game is perfect or even very fun at the end of the day. Your time with this is what you make of it and for me, I believe any fan of Marvel would find enjoyment in this title if they played it with someone who enjoys the franchise as well.
It can be extremely monotonous at times when playing alone, and I don’t really think that playing this alone was the goal for its developers Crystal Dynamics, but it should’ve been stressed in the marketing. Even though I have negative things to say about the game, I actually do like it. The thing is, it’s disappointing at the same time. I just don't think it hit the mark on what it was aiming at in the overall scope of things.
A step in the right direction on icy pavement.
