Marvel's Avengers - Square Enix, Crystal Dynamics, Eidos Montreal

Games
#249

Me three! And if MINE isn’t bugged, it probably isn’t. (If anyone’s wondering, I’ve gotten absolutely EVERY bug possible to have in AC Valhalla, and that is quite an impressive list. I’ve gotten a trophy for collecting them all. JK I haven’t, but I should.)

Picked this up on January sale and played it for a couple of hours (I’ve just recruited Iron Man).

Initial thoughts:

  • Why did the game want to throw me in multiplayer or DLC mode when first starting the game? I was really confused and almost gave up on it, until I realized that the campaign mode, including the tutorials, was hid in the back. Better now.
  • Is it just me, or are the battles (and especially the Abomination boss-battle) a little too hard on normal mode? I’m not used to being this reliant on perfect parries, dodging and basically being really mindful of what I’m doing in a battle. Even the HARM-room training missions were really tricky. This is also what makes me want to give up on the game early on.
  • Missions not saving mid-game SUCKS. Some of the missions are quite long, and if I quit the game during a mission (even after a part is “done” and you take an elevator to a new area), I have to restart all of it next time. WHY
  • Why can’t the stuff I pick up with one character be shared with my other heroes? This is ridiculous. Especially regarding artifacts (correct me if I’m wrong!).
  • The story is cute.
#250

Originally my friends and I bought this to play together. We had so many issues with trying to play the 4 player modes that we were eventually discouraged and quit. We played for 20+ hours WANTING to like this game, but never managed to finish a single mission with four of us not getting disconnected, dropped, bugged out, etc. Bugs are one thing, but when they happen in every run, on every map, with every character… it’s frustrating.

The shining light for me though would be Kamalah. I loved her abilities in game, and her character…

#251

Yeah, definitely in my wheelhouse both thematically and gameplay wise. I’m glad I waited a bit though, since it sounds like the game was kinda busted at launch, but I’m having a great experience.

#252

Yeah, I bumped the campaign down to easy pretty quickly. I’ve gotten better at it and I have upped the difficulty again, but learning the dodge timing and combat took a bit. Plus I’ve found that until you have a lot of your skills unlocked you just don’t have all the tools to play on harder difficulties.

If I had a complaint about the game it’s that they take too long to fill in the skill tree, given how needed some of that stuff really is to play the game. I know you don’t want to overwhelm the player to quickly, but at some point they should have just started loading you up with skill points so you can have all your abilities.

#253

I went to easy, yeah. Was gonna bump it back up cause I got tired of one shotting everyone, but then of course the boss fight with Monica Fettuccini came along.

At this point, I HATE the combat, but i love the story and the characters. Think I’ll stick to easy and just get it over with.

#254

I eventually started to like to combat, but it took me a bit to warm up to it. some of the timing just feels weird for combos and blocking.

#255

Just to got to this fight on xbox, holy shit, even on easy I’m having difficulty.

#256

Some heroes are better than others. And some don’t start to feel good until you unlock an ability or two. Oddly, I found Hulk to be the weakest of the heroes. And once the story was done I tried out Kate Bishop and love her.

Enjoy the story. The end game is far too grindy. Hopefully they release more content before too long.

#257

I got a good 12 hours out of the story, which is great for me. A 12 hour triple-A Avengers game with a great story, is a game well worth spending full money on for me. Its rare I complete games, but this one I did (The story, that is).

#258

If you haven’t yet, do Kate Bishop’s story arc in the operation Taking Aim. It continues the story.

#259

I did - loved it! And love Kate Bishop. Such an awesome character.

#260

For me, in the demo /beta the main issue was that I didn’t feel like a super hero. Some of it seemed to be response, some a lack of heft, speed, etc.

Spider man and Batman were far better at this.

I may give it another shot if it comes to gamepass or sub $15.

#261

The demo is weird - its part of the scripted sequences, that really isn’t anything like the actual game. Well, it is SOMEWHAT like the actual game, obviously, but the real game, even the story is a lot more freeform than the railroad you are on. Its basically the tutorial, and not in a very good way. The demo, that is.

#262

All the characters feel kinda weak and clunky until you hit max level and have skill points for everything you need/want. weird decision on their part but it is what it is. The game is quite fun coop with max level characters when bugs don’t happen. I am not a huge fan of the types of missions they are adding though, like the temporal ones where you are constantly racing to grab pickups and ignoring combat half the time. Feels weird to me.

#263

Back when I was playing, daily quests were a big deal and the danger room thingy was the most efficient way to do daily quests. The side effect of this was they forced you to do the funky parry, dodge, character specific moves, and link moves over and over. This made it so I really became quite effective with the subtlety of the combat mechanics.

@kristina about encounters
Early on, I was not too into the minute elements. But after the above, spending a chunk of hours with each character, and yes, as @Silent indicates, a few ability unlocks, I started to to really appreciate the tool kits that each character brought. All of them were strong and did their unique thing. This made carving up certain boss type fights fairly enjoyable. Which was good because I would be doing them again and again in the endgame-- and I did.

I went into Marvel’s Avengers not really into it as I picked it up on a whim. About 100 hours later, I was pretty happy with the journey.

#264

Right? I played this on easy as well, even then I had to try three times before completing it. Didn’t really help either that it was a boss fight with the newly introduced Black Widow with no skill points to spend.

I’m guessing I could get to that point as well, even though it’s a bit annoying that I’d have to play through over half of the main story to get to that part where I would like it (given that I’m on 40% now and still very much not liking the combat).

I might have already given up though. Last time I dove in and thought I’d give it another go, I did a quite long main mission. By the end of it, I’m supposed to clear out the area of enemies to be able to move on. Problem is, I’ve done that, but the game doesn’t let me move on. I ran around there for a while and waited for the enemies to respawn again, killed them, but still nothing.
Given that they won’t let you save game mid mission, I’m gonna have to do the whole thing all over again and that really killed it for me. It’s not the first time I have to do the same missions all over again because they refuse to use checkpoints, but this was probably the last.

Oh and another weird bug: the game keeps sending me on missions (edit: with companions) that I haven’t unlocked yet. In the main story, it sent me on a mission with Black Widow, long before I had unlocked her or even met her in the story. Same with Kate Bishop.

#265

Yeah, it’s really silly. Kate Bishop was one of my AI companions when I did the mission that was supposed to introduce Kate Bishop.

#266

I tried this one, and what i bounced off hard on was the ‘on the rails’ button mashing at set intervals, or the game reloads (speaking of the first Black Widow mission). Reminding me of Dragon’s Lair which isn’t what i wanted, I wanted to action rpg of building skills and powers. Not even in the same realm as Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3, So I’m out.

I’ll admit the story was entertaining but not enough to withstand gameplay style i dumped in the 90s

#267

Next gen upgrades and Hawkeye on March 18

#268

“With his bow and sword as his side”? Hawkeye uses a sword? That feels like cheating. Judges?

-Tom