Marvel’s Avengers

(Available for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC and Google Stadia)
(PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X versions to be released later)
(PC version used for review)

With Covid making it impossible to go to the cinema for most of the year most of us haven’t had our MCU movie for this year and if Disney decide to delay Black Widow again, 2020 might become the first year that there will be no MCU movies released since the venture started. Sqaure Enix and studio Crystal Dynamics have stepped up and have finally released their long awaited Avengers Game after several delays. Now the game already has some bad press following the beta for the game that acted as a preorder bonus but going into I was hoping it would be better with a campaign that would at least come close to Spider-Man on PS4. The game has a single player campaign and a massive online multiplayer game similar to that of the Destiny games which feels tacked on to add microtranscations to pay off the incredible licence fees it. must have cost to get this off Disney. The story revolves around the Avengers being brought together by Kamla Khan (AKA Ms Marvel) to bring the avengers back together after a distar that creates a toxic cloud which makes Inhumans and the vilanious organisation AIM is attempted to capitalise off it and stir public opinion against the Avengers. The whole thing is a nice alagory for racism issues that feel very topical now and making Kamala the main character is a wise descion. I was stoked when she was announced for the game since her comics have so far been fantastic and I am a big fan of the character so I’m glad the game portrays her well and she adds to something to the group dynamic. Apart from MS Marvel the playable characters include Captain America, Iron Man, Black Widow, Thor and The Hulk each coming with a slightly different play style though I have some opinions about that for later. if you’re worried about no Hawkeye there don’t be he’s already confirmed to be the first of several DLC characters to come into the game, Spider-Man has also been confirmed however rather annoyingly for everyone not on a Sony platform he will only be available for the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 versions of the game.

Pros

• Ms Marvel’s story and gameplay: her arc is great and she really takes centre stage with some awesome moments. She’s been one of my favourite superheroes in the comics for the last few years and this game really does her justice. When I got more missions as her it really reminded me why I like the character and the devlopers seem to have that in mind with her gameplay since she’s the best character to play as by far and controls the best.
• The cinematic campaign missions: those missions really make you feel like you are in an Avengers movie and they are sometimes enjoyable especially the first mission

Mixed

• Playing as any character other than Ms Marvel: they really vary in quality but if I were to rank playing each of the characters from best to worst I would go with Captain America, Black Widow, Thor, Iron Man and finally Hulk. The key point though is all of them have fundamental issues with there gameplay design such as Iron Man having to do more punching than ranged attacks and him being put in mission that don’t suit that. none of them are terrible but each of them feel very samey to not overcomplicate controlling

Cons

• The Story: it’s a story that feels barren by the end if it wasn’t for Ms Marvel’s arc. The rest of the Avengers feel like cut-outs with little devlopment and the villains feel like they had something more in mind but was cut at the last minute
• Very greedy microtransactions : this game has some of the worst asking you to pay up for gear and cosmetic to cut down your grinding time. You also can’t buy what you want you just have to hope it’s up that day and it completely sucks and I was unwilling to pay but given how
• Boring level design: the missions outside of the main story are all so dull. It’s do the same dull things to the same dull enemies and is just a grind and you need to do this to get the characters up to the standard to actually feel like the charcters they represent. Not to mention the level design is the same open spaces with no character to them which are boring to explore
• Boring boss fights: I hate the boss fights. There’s only 3 Marvel villains in the game (when Batman Arkham Asylum over a decade ago had double that many iconic villains) and the rest of the time they’re generic robots with obvious weak points and barely put up a fight. The Marvel villains aren’t much tougher and it was just a slog to get through overall
• Consistent graphics and frame rate issues: I ran on a PC with very good ram and a 1 tb SSD and I was still getting terrible frame rate issues, graphic error, tons of glitches and a few times it straight up crashed. I’ve heard the console versions run better but I don’t care to play this again to find out and the players for those systems said that they were runninginto the same issues just not as often
• Multiplayer: it’s exactly the same and is once again boring to play, it sets up this to be a sort of MMO similar to that of the Destiny game. now inherently that’s not to bad and the Marvel universe could suit that style of game but man does this turn it into a very droll experience with you doing tons of repeated missions to get more loot. I actually thought single player was worse for several reasons as well but with how multiplayer focused this game is it bore mentioning
• The camera: I hated this camera it’s so counterintuitive all the time and needs constant readjusting. It cost me so many lives
• Checkpoints: this game gives you barely any so expect to do a lot of the same things over and over again until you get it perfect
• No way to replay campaign missions after completing them: great so the only mission I enjoyed I can never do again unless I completely erase
• Spiderman is going to locked to PlayStation 4 and 5: I know Sony has a grip on Spider-man but given how Sony gave Nintendo the rights to use the character in the Switch exclusive Marvel Ultimate alliance 3 it come off as petty.

Overall thoughts

Not going to lie I hated playing this. This is one of the dullest AAA releases I have played in a long time . I had very little fun playing this game and as soon as I had done the bare minimum to do this review I immediately uninstalled this game to get the blight of this game off my PC. If this game gets better down the line like Destiny did I won’t be there for it because this game is so BORING!

Score 5.5/10