The Avengers game was announced in 2017 via Marvel's YouTube channel with a cryptic video. All it showed were the remnants of the Avengers and the hashtag #Reassemble, but that was enough for me to lose my mind. A triple A, Square Enix-published, Crystal Dynamics-developed Avengers game? Holy shit, count me in! Two years later, at E3 2019, Square Enix divulged more information about the game. This is where we found out what the gameplay loop was going to be - it was to be a multiplayer games-as-a-service type title. Needless to say, I was skeptical about how this would all shake down, especially since I've been burned with these games before (ehemmm.. Anthem), but I had faith in Crystal Dynamics. They did, after all, give us the magnificent Tomb Raider reboot.
Despite the rocky development and iffy marketing journey, the game has since launched last September 4, 2020. How does it stack up? Before I get into the actual review, you have to bear in mind that I am a life-long Marvel fan, so despite my best efforts to be completely objective, there will be a little Marvel fanboyism bias sprinkled in there.
Campaign
I absolutely love the campaign. It feels like you're playing an Avengers mini-movie. The right story beats are all there and it has something most superhero games don't have - heart. More than just bringing superpowered people together and kicking collective ass, it's also about acceptance and family and forgiveness. It's about as much as the Avengers' complex interpersonal relationships than it is about their powers. The little character moments between the cast really made it special.
As for the way the story is structured, it is told through the eyes of a young Inhuman girl, Kamala Khan, who is pretty much one of us - a fangirl. Her room is like most comic book geek's - filled to the brim with toys and statues and comics and posters. In my eyes, that makes her a little bit more relatable. She reacts to Avengers things pretty much the same way I think I would have reacted. She got to live the dream of all Avengers' fans - and we got to go along for the ride.
The basic premise is that after A-Day, Terrigen mists spread throughout San Fransisco creating people with random powers called "Inhumans." Inhumans were treated with fear and hatred because they were thought to be dangerous and different. AIM takes advantage and starts creating Adaptoids with powers harvested from "missing" Inhumans. If this sounds familiar to you, that's because this is the same basic plot device used for mutants, but the story for this game was probably written way before Marvel was able to reacquire the rights to the X-Men.
As you play through the main single-player story missions, you're often given control of specific characters to use. This lets the developers craft the specific missions to the movement and fighting style of every individual character. There are Hulk missions where you can jump around across a vast wasteland and an Iron Man mission that lets you fly through corridors with tons of turrets firing relentlessly at you. There were times when it felt like you were playing an Iron Man game or a Captain America game, and it felt amazing. However, this is less true for Thor. Thor could've used more good bespoke gameplay moments with him going up against giant enemies all by himself.
Unfortunately, the worst thing about the campaign is that there isn't enough of it. The full campaign, if you don't go around messing around with the HARM room or any multiplayer stuff, is around 10 to 15 hours. The bulk of the game is the repetitive multiplayer stuff.
Combat
Despite having similar skill structures, each character seems to play slightly different from each other. Kamala is all about the support and the AOE. Hulk is about the grabs and the wide AOE smashes. Iron Man is strongest as air support, leaning more heavily on ranged attacks. Cap is all about parrying and blocking and shield throwing. Thor is somewhere between Cap and Iron Man. Black Widow is about escaping and getting out of aggro, as well as agile fighting. It's a fun brawler for the most part, with some room for some finesse at higher difficulties. It's nothing groundbreaking but the heroes play as you'd expect.
My issue with combat is the enemy diversity - there are minions, flying ranged, adaptoids, exo suits, human ranged, and a tank. Going up against hordes of the same enemies over and over gets pretty boring after some time. And get this - there are only THREE super villains.
No Villains
The Avengers in the comics have no shortage of baddies. You don't even have to pull out big names like Ultron or Kang the Conqueror. You could have some punching bags like the Serpent Society or the Wrecking Crew. But no - we get Abomination (Hulk's enemy), and Taskmaster and MODOK. That's literally it. There are a couple more boss battles, but they're against MODOK's robots and ships. If we can pull enemies out of every individual Avenger's list of baddies, each one of them has a rogue's gallery as long as your arm. Cap has Baron Zemo, Red Skull, Crossbones, Batroc. Iron Man has Ghost, Mandarin, Blizzard, Whiplash, Crimson Dynamo, Dreadknight. Thor has Loki, the Frost Giants, Malekith the Accursed, Hela, Surtur, Ulik, Absorbing Man. You get the point - there's a LOT of material to pull from. But instead, we get just 3.
This mechanized spider-bot thing is technically considered a boss fight
Of all the superhero video games, this has the least number of villains to fight. In Batman Arkham Asylum, the very first game in the Arkham series, you had Joker, Ra's Al Ghul, Clayface, Killer Croc, Scarecrow, and a bunch of others I can't remember. For this Avengers game, we get THREE!? Are they holding back for more content down the line? That seems like a pretty shady practice.
The Grind
The main gameplay loop, after the campaign, is Destiny/Anthem-like. It's a looter brawler. Since I haven't hit level 50, power level 150, I still find finding loot quite rewarding. However, given the lack of unique things to do at the moment, after you hit 150, what the hell are you grinding for? There are challenge missions to fill out your challenge cards for some cosmetics, faction missions to help you build your faction score so you can buy really good loot, vault missions for goodies, villain missions for DNA keys but there are literally two villains but the problem is the maps and locations and mission objectives are just recycled over and over and over. Every AIM base in every location literally looks the same - there's probably four or five AIM building maps used over and over. It gets old really fast.
The gear system isn't all that rewarding either. You get legendaries with higher stats and that's pretty much it. Would've probably liked some cosmetic alteration, but with the option to transmogrify to keep a uniform look. That would make for a pretty interesting grind.
Moreover, the mission structure gets really lame, really fast. The majority of the mission objectives include simply killing off x buffed up minion enemies, or capturing points, or standing and defending a spot until the meter fills up. Those aren't very fun things to keep doing, unfortunately. We don't have a horde mode, which I think would make this game much more fun. We don't have a boss rush since there aren't any goddamn villains. We don't have any other fun game modes. Just those rehashed and recycled objective modes.
Multiplayer Mishap
For a game with so much focus on team-based multiplayer, there are a lot of things that are just all wrong. For one thing, matchmaking is incredibly slow. For you to get into a game, you have to pick a unique hero, and all be queueing up the same match. You have to tick a few too many boxes to find a game. Would be cool if you get matched up first, and then pick the heroes, and then vote for the missions. I also find it incredibly weird that there is no other way to communicate except for voice comms. There are no comm wheel and no ping system. The only way to communicate to your teammates without using voice comms is the emote system, which is essentially meaningless. Not everyone can talk with a mic. I sure as hell can't because it'd wake the baby up. I really wish it had a very simple ping system, at the very least. Even Anthem had it eventually.
Technical Issues
I tested the game on PC (i7 9700k and GTX 1080) and a PS4 Pro, and on both systems, there are some massive frame drops, especially when all four Avengers are present on-screen and all using powers. The big maps also pull your framerates down, enough for it to immediately be noticeable. But that's not really the worst of it - I can forgive framerate issues, but when a bug literally impedes your progress through a mission, then it becomes a problem. There were a couple of times when enemies you needed to kill fell through the geometry, making them unkillable, and therefore halting your mission progress. You'd have no choice but to restart the checkpoint. Then you have costumes that have previously been unlocked getting locked again, faces melting off, power levels displaying the wrong stats, and whole list of other issues. Just head over to the subreddit to see what new bug people are finding. It's a bit of a technical mess.
You have to kill this exo suit enemy to progress in the mission but he decided to live in the geometry so, better luck next time, Cap.
Presentation
Some of the best things about Marvel's Avengers are the voice acting and motion capture. The cutscenes, especially the ones that play on their family dynamic, are all amazing. You've got top-shelf talent like Nolan North and Troy Baker giving amazing performances, especially if you can unhear Nathan Drake and/or Deadpool speaking as Iron Man. The animation is pretty spot-on, too.
As far as graphics are concerned, it came a long way since the E3 reveal, where everyone looked like cosplayers. It may just be the effect of the dissonance between the game models and the MCU that everyone grew accustomed to, or it could very well be that the models just weren't that great to start, but regardless of the reason, they looked so off at the reveal. Upon launch though, Black Widow's face got reworked, and everyone started ditching Captain America's skin right away for the much better default skin you get as soon he's playable again. In fact, most of the cast got really amazing skins that can be unlocked just by playing. I guess except Thor. Thor's skins are kinda terrible but I guess that's kinda subjective.
Ms. Marvel in the Starktech suit that you get absolutely free after playing through the campaign
Sound effects are a mixed bag. I love how Cap and Thor's weapons sound when they smack an enemy in the face, but I can only hear "There is a chest with gear nearby" and "Theo, work your magic" so many times.
Microtransactions and DLC
So, let's start with the good stuff first. Each character has a battle pass-like system called a Challenge Card. The Challenge Cards are free for the first 6 characters. There is also no time limit to complete the Challenge Cards, which is great for people who don't have much time to play. Each character needs 200 points to get everything, and you can earn a total of 64 points every week. There are 2 daily challenges worth 3 points each, and 2 weekly challenges worth 11 points each. So, you can earn everything in about 4 weeks of continuous playing (unless you cheese it, but don't do that). Each character has a number of skins that you can get for free - either from the challenge cards, random in-game items you exchange at the fabrication unit, just for playing the game until level 50 or buying them from in-game vendors with in-game currency you earn through playing. Some of these free skins are pretty good; the best one I can think of is Iron Man's because of course it's Iron Man and Cap's classic skin. However, a bunch of the free skins are simply recolors. The more premium skins, like Iron Man's classic skin or Kamala's Throggy costume, can only be bought with real-world money from the marketplace. Each legendary skin costs about $14. It's a bit pricey, but it is just cosmetic, so it shouldn't be too much of an issue. There are free earnable skins that are just as good or sometimes even better.
Iron Man's Starktech suit is straight up 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 and totally free
That said, I go crazy for cosmetics so...
This skin cost me $14.
There are a few planned heroes to be added at no extra charge, but their Challenge Cards most likely won't be free. That's another $10 if you want their cosmetics. The next hero to be released will be Hawkeye, Clint Barton, and then Hawkeye, Kate Bishop. On the PS4/PS5, Spider-Man is set to be released soon as well.
Verdict
Because I am a Marvel fan, this game gets an 8 out of 10 for me just for my preexisting love for the characters. However, if I try to look at the game objectively, the score drops down to a paltry 6 out of 10.
- Good campaign
- Combat is pretty fun
- Mission structure, enemies, and maps are recycled over and over and are incredibly repetitive and get progressively duller over time
- The grind is essentially meaningless because of the lack of endgame content except for a 14-floor Hive mission
- Microtransactions are merely cosmetic but are pretty pricey
If this were a different IP, it would be straight up hot garbage. It's essentially Anthem all over again.
6Overall6Gameplay8Presentation4Value
It can potentially be an AMAZING game once all the new characters, more missions, and more villains are added. But I think the practice of charging full price (with microtransactions) for the promise of a good game should really stop.