MARVEL’S AVENGERS
For: PS4, Xbox One, PC
From: Square Enix
Rating: (M) ★★★+
REVIEWED BY SIMON BISHOP
The Marvel film juggernaut has rolled on for the past decade, and shows no signs of letting up. So, its been a bit of a mystery that the only videogames we’ve had of any real note have been Lego adaptations of the films.
That changes with this game and spells the beginning of (hopefully) an exciting period of superhero games, although this is far from a perfect experience.
Marvel’s Avengers is a tale of two games effectively - a brilliant single player campaign, and a highly-repetitive post game loot grind multiplayer experience, in the vein of Destiny or The Division.
I think it perfectly encapsulates the feeling people get when they watch the films - the whole premise is just cool. It ties into the feeling you had as a kid when you met your idols for the first time. Obviously, this is a superhero game, so it’s not long before it all goes pear-shaped: the Avengers get publicly shamed, and you end up unwittingly gaining super powers.
The story then follows an arc of reuniting the Avengers, to take down a global threat. The concept isn’t exactly Pulitzer Prize-worthy, but its entertaining and engaging enough.
In terms of gameplay, Marvel’s Avengers campaign plays into the tried-and-true methodology of being a tutorial for the multiplayer stuff. Star Wars Battlefront did the same thing - give people a taste of what playing as each hero is like, and then gently nudge them into playing the endgame content.
You have light attacks, heavy attacks, and character-specific power moves that give you the edge in combat. It plays similarly in a sense to the Batman games, but is more dynamic. Enemies range from pesky drones, which shoot you from above, to tank characters, which take a considerable beating before they succumb.
During the campaign you’ll play predominantly as Kamala, Ms Marvel, but you’ll also spend periods playing as each individual Avenger. It’s all really well done: each Avenger feels different, and you’ll pretty quickly find whichever ones suits your play-style more. Hulk is obviously for those who just want to smash everything, whereas Iron Man is more for those who want to utilise the air and ranged weaponry.
Within that, there’s a gear system where your power is defined by the equipment you have, and as you play you pick up progressively more powerful and situation-specific equipment. That said, the equipment upgrades are so minuscule you’d be forgiven for not noticing them at all. I just hit the ‘‘choose best loadout’’ button every time and rolled with it, but it just felt exactly the same throughout.
I know there are people that get a massive kick out of this sort of game, you only need to look at the success of The Division and Destiny to see how many there are. But it leaves me cold. I don’t have the desire to grind repetitive missions over and over to increase my power level by 2 points. And herein lies the issue with Marvel’s Avengers - that is the entirety of the multiplayer experience.
It’s entirely based around completing missions in groups of 4 (either AI controlled or your friends), travelling the world to fight off the AIM enemies in the quest for upgraded gear. Once you’ve played a couple of missions though, you notice the fundamental lack of depth and, for me, it all got too samey.
I just wish there was more of the single player. The missions are fun, the dialogue between the characters is really well done, it just feels right. The combat is fun, albeit reasonably simple, and the game is beautiful to look at. A more fleshed out experience here would’ve been vastly preferable to a grindy co-op experience. But, who knows, I could be in the minority.
All in all, this is a solid step in the right direction to kick-start the new era of Marvel games. I just hope that they put more focus into the single-player experiences going forward.
