Definitely enjoying it so far, although it is not at all what I expected based on reviews. I was thinking Marvel Heroes reboot when folks said “action-rpg”, but instead I should focused more on the Lara Croft lineage. It’s like they took that, and then bolted on MMO abilities with cooldowns and invisible gear. And quick time events because nobody likes those. And some really nonsense story. Definitely worth a free weekend play so far, although not sure if it’s convincing me to buy at all.
I too am enjoying the story campaign during this free weekend. Digging around in the inventory screens too much though and I quickly find I have to wash the F2P stink off of everything, why on earth would they sully what looks like such a good base game with such crass?
Not for me I don’t think. I can’t really remember what my multiple slightly different melee attacks are so combat seems a bit spammy and clumsy. The non combat parts have been filler so far, so… onto the next thing.
For me the story mostly gets cringier and the combat got better - lots of damage sponge everywhere, but otherwise I’m quite enjoying all the various spins on the melee and ranged. I guess the campaign is meant to be really an extended tutorial but all it really means is they tease all the Avengers at the beginning and then you get them slowly drip-fed to you whereas I would have rather they gave you all of them and drip-fed you more characters (but clearly they don’t have any more characters). Hulk grabbing one guy and using them to smash everyone else is still pretty awesome, Widow has a solid gun selection, Iron Man has unibeams and hulkbuster (and I haven;t even unlocked lasers and rockets but I see them in the powers screen), Kamala does a really good elastic stretchy one piece thing. I only got to play cap in the first bit but he had shield charges and shield throwing…I hope he’s not dead (I’m like 99% sure he must come back because their roster is already short so many avengers)
I did figure out what the costumes/skins remind me of now though. To fit the “down-on-their luck” gritty look and not-MCU looks, they went with grungy, more self-made costumes but coupled with the reminiscent but obviously different faces, you instead get porn parody Avengers, wearing dollar store reminiscent but definitely not copyright infringing halloween costumes. I unfortunately can’t unsee this now so figured I should share.
what f2p stink are you talking about? game is not f2p and has less micro than Assassin’s Creed for example.
Welcome to the new normal me I guess. I’m not used to seeing real money credit purches up the wazoo for cosmetics and hero card skips in a full price game. I do not play those types of games, so this is a bit of an eye opener.
cosmetics for real money are in almost every game these days, when I think of f2p stuff I think more along boosts and the like. Ass creed has all of that also though so even non-f2p has the same stuff anymore.
I don’t object to it being called f2p stink.
It might have infected full priced games too, but that’s where the business model took hold first.
It tried so hard to pretend to be terrible but I think after finishing the campaign last night it’s probably brilliant?! I was convinced it was just a simple button mashing brawler - but actually it’s one of those spectacle brawler things with air juggling?! I discovered that Widow is actually a better Vanguard Mass Effect Shepard, using her grapple line to throw herself at enemies to follow up with melee or weapon attacks right in their face. And the Avengers actually get better costumes by the end of the campaign, they just wanted to maybe force you to play for hours in the cheap homemade costumes to make sure you dislike their character designs. Pretty excited to play the Hawkeyes today, I’m actually now waffling a bit on buying it just to have a Marvel brawler game to boot up and bash things with. It would be a shoo-in if it had the variety of enemies and characters of a Marvel Ultimate Alliance game but it looks like it will be a looooong time before they get anywhere near that kind of roster so it’s more like is how badly do I want to play this subset of the Avengers.
And ewwww on the garish giant cash shop ad on startup and cash shop currencies and resource grinding.
I like this in a Tomb Raider kind of way, but holy crap there is just so much stuff. So many collectibles, so many skill trees, so many combat moves, gear, challenge cards? What even are challenge cards?
I mean, that’s probably a good thing to most people, but to me it is just bewildering. Pretty sure once the free weekend is over I’ll be happy to stop playing, rather than trying to decode all these pages, tabs, sub-tabs, grids, currencies, etc…
I bought it because I wanna finish the story.
I’ll play the single-player when it makes it to game pass. Or not, if it doesn’t.
Well I managed to finish the campaign, just in time (it is near midnight here and I go to work tomorrow).
7/10
Not great, not terrible. I liked Kamala, the gorgeous graphics and setpieces, nice cutscenes. The script is typical mediocre marvel fare with some funny good moments, and some cringe moments. Combat was messy but ok.
Overload of stupid live service microtransaction crap, every costume hidden behind a paywall…well I am glad I played it during free weekend.
I have zero desire to continue playing though, eventhough there are some expansions.
BTW does anyone know who is Monica the Antagonist modeled after? I feel like I have seen her somewhere but cannot place her.
A Chernobyl quote calling out the rippling consequences of incompetence would be my review of this game as well!
-Tom
Well this sure is a good example of the gaming business model dichotomy if it is anything at all. You’ve got the single player campaign which I finished and fully enjoyed. I’m not going to disagree with anyone on the quality of the story, but I am here for all the superhero schmaltz. The characters all felt significantly different at the end once they had some of their powers, and I really enjoyed the flying, and Black Widows light saber was magnificent!
But at the end of the (checks Steam) 12 hour campaign I’d estimate my Avengers have about 20-30% of their powers unlocked, and less than 0.01% of the collectibles collected, so I guess I am expected to just grind war table missions over and over for infinity to collect that stuff and power up my characters to max level? There is the ugly, and nothankyousir.
I do feel kind of naughty for finishing a game I haven’t paid for, so I imagine I will buy it when it is on a bit of a steeper discount so I can do the extra campaign missions, and maybe by then there will be some more DLC missions too.
Boughtened, just to have a PC Marvel brawler game. I probably would have gotten Ultimate Alliance(s) but none of them are available on PC (1&2 removed from sale and 3 is only console AFAIK) - is this the only solid superhero brawler on PC?
On the other hand, it’s got legs for a casual like me who doesn’t care about minute technical details. I just like to do cool looking combos and use iconic weapons and moves - playing it as Marvel vs Capcom brawler. Cool things I (re)discovered:
- Captain America can just shield charge just by running around and holding down the parry button. And he has a takedown that looks like a finisher I saw in a comic book (a two handed shield bisection slam) that I always thought looked awesome if maybe a bit overkill
- Stark has the Iron Man 2 lasers that he can use both as a ranged weapon and in melee. This is a must-buy (and the rockets are also a nice touch) - you need to at least try them out even if you like the repulsors (I find those pretty weak).
- Hulk grabbing a mook and using it to bash others is great. I just saw there’s an upgrade to let you grab a second one mook - how did I miss this?!
There are actually a lot of different enemy types - I’m still unlocking new types. The actual issue here is that they decided to make them all variations of the same basic types - when I saw cryo adaptoids I was thinking they could have had different theming for these like Thor/Viking mythos frost giants. When I saw the “super adaptoid” in my head I was thinking they’ve basically recycled the Super Skrull idea.
Story is still wonky but I think it’s because I probably wanted an Avengers story and this is more an XCOM2 story with the Avengers as the underdog, except Marvel kinda had the mutants as the “hated by the public underdogs” - but maybe mutants are still out of favor in the Marvel universe?
Depends on what you are looking for as a brawler. I really enjoyed Injustice and Injustice II and would recommend checking them out, especially since now they go on sale for very cheap.
I picked up Injustice 2 a couple years back and really enjoyed playing through it - although that is a full on fighting game, but two thumbs waay up on that just for the visuals and deep character roster. That one also had a great mix and match visible costumes/loot system which made for wildly different looks. I never played Injustice although I do have a copy - felt that playing through the sequel kinda covered it. Does remind me that there’s also DBZ Fighterz and Kakarot though (although that’s not really superheroes anymore). There was a bit of a rumour that Nether Realms might do a Marvel game though…Sad I didn’t bite on the Ultimate Alliance 1/2 double pack before they delisted on Steam, gotta be careful about license expiration when waiting for bargain bin sales.
Playable Squirrel Girl or GTFO.
-Tom