After a first play session during Gamescom last year and recently de beta, lies Marvel’s Avengers finally in stores. During the last beta, the game showed its potential, but there were certainly doubts about the implementation of the combat system and the somewhat limited loot. Will the final game resolve these doubts?
The first part of Marvel’s Avengers will be the single player campaign for everyone. By means of a clear warning, the developers let you know that the multiplayer contains significant spoilers for the campaign and that it is advisable to play them. It would also be a shame not to do this as this is also the best part of the game.
In the campaign we follow Kamala Kahn, a teenage girl who loves the Avengers. She can indulge herself during A-Day, the event where the presence of the superheroes is celebrated. However, while demonstrating a new technology, something goes terribly wrong and that has disastrous consequences for superheroes. These will be banned and the mysterious organization AIM ensures that people with special powers are tracked down and cleaned up. They seem to want the best for humanity, but Kamala finds evidence that the Avengers have been set up. It is her task to bring the superheroes back together and resist this great threat. The story will not win any Oscars in the end, but enough to keep you captivated for the entire campaign of about twelve hours. A special mention is for Kamala, who turns out to be a particularly sympathetic character who clearly outshines the somewhat flat other Avengers.
You immediately notice that while playing Marvel’s Avengers comes from the same studio that was also responsible for the latter Tomb Raidergames. The platforming elements, combat situations and quicktime events seem to have come straight from Lara’s adventures. Fortunately they were Tomb Raidergames more than okay and the same goes for the gameplay of Avengers. It does feel like you’ve done everything before.
The cool thing is the differences between the superheroes. Where the Hulk is mainly very trivial and must have raw power, as Black Widow or Captain America you have to have a lot more of agility. Iron Man and Thor can also attack from the air. The variation in playing styles is very nice and it ensures that the game remains varied. The campaign also ensures that you get the hang of every Avenger and that you can start the multiplayer well prepared.
The multiplayer of Marvel’s Avengers has been marketed with great ambition; it must be comparable to Destiny become a game as a service, with new content and loot being continuously added to keep players glued to the game (and of course investing some extra money where necessary). We currently doubt whether this will work, because we are less impressed by the multiplayer component than by the story.
The first problem is the missions, which actually always come down to the same thing: go to a certain area and retrieve something, protect something, or destroy something. In the meantime, you are harassed by the AIM army of robots that you and your friends must expertly help to the other world. It feels like a lot of the same and the fun you should get from the fact that you can defeat large groups of enemies with your friends and do that while working together. In the meantime, you earn skill points with which you can expand the skill tree of your superheroes. In addition, loot can be found at every location.
The loot is currently the biggest problem in our opinion. The power of good loot is that you collect things and occasionally come across something unique. In Destiny that is clearly visible in the appearance of your character, where finding exclusive weapons is also very cool. In Avengers you don’t notice much of this. The loot doesn’t actually affect the appearance of the characters and that’s a shame. The way to make your Avenger look different is through unlockable costumes, but this doesn’t have nearly as much of an effect as visible and noticeable differences in equipment. That is another problem of the loot: you notice so little of it. You are better protected against certain attacks or you do more damage, but it is not that you feel much of a difference, so equipping your Avenger basically ends up on nothing more than selecting the best items everywhere.
The above sounds negative, but does not alter the fact that there is certainly fun to be had with the multiplayer. Fighting in a team will keep you fascinated for a while and the first extra content will be coming soon. However, in order to become a game that needs to keep the attention in the coming years, Square Enix and Crystal Dynamics still have to do some work.
It is worth it for the campaign alone Marvel’s Avengers to bring home. The story is fascinating and the gameplay is also fine. The multiplayer currently suffices, but is far from a mode that will make you return to the game regularly. The loot part in particular is still too poorly developed for that. That does not mean that it cannot come, because also Destiny was only finally welcomed after a few extensions.
We played Marvel’s Avengers on PlayStation 4. The game is also available for Xbox One and PC and at a later stage for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X.
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