Marvel's Avengers Review: Not a Mighty Game Right Now

Making a Superhero game is really difficult. Apart from all the Coding and Technical aspects, the developers have to keep in mind the fanbase of the Heroes. And when the trailer of Infinix Square's all-new Marvel's Avenger was released I was a bit skeptical about the whole concept. Avengers are the most popular, beloved superheroes on the planet right now. How could the developers meet the lofty expectations of Marvel Fans'?

With a short campaign and lack of optimization, the Marvel's Avengers is not the mightiest game, at least right now. 

In this post, I'll talk about how was my experience with Marvel's Avengers. Let's clear one thing right off the bat, my takeaway from Marvel's Avengers after completing its story campaign and playing its online multiplayer is that it didn't meet my expectations and I am sure it won't leave you satisfied either (😉, huh get that pun). It's ultimately a letdown.

Certain elements of Marvel's Avengers are really good but the game does not maintain the level of consistency everywhere. The fundamental flaws and lack of consistency keep it from standing alongside the likes of Marvel Spiderman and my personal favorite Batman Arkham series in the superhero pantheon.

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Marver's Avengers is basically divided into two game modes. The first one is your story campaign which is designed to be played solo. The story focuses on the hero's journey of would-be Avenger Kamala Khan (voiced by Sandra Saad). After completion of the story, the game transitions into Avengers Initiative online multiplayer mode of the game, which continues the story through single or multi-objective missions that you play with up to three other players. You are also presented with an option to skip the story campaign entirely and play the multiplayer mode. But then you will miss the stronger half of the whole Avengers experience.

The Marvelous Kamala Khan

If played on its own, the campaign (titled Reassemble in the Game) is a fun superhero action that tells a great story. But is it what the game has to offer right now, its campaign. Taking control of your favorite Heroes and striking back at classic evil Marvel organization A.I.M (basically the bad guys who use robots and science) is enjoyable almost every time, not every time, almost every time.

Kamala Khan aka Ms. Marvel is the core of the story

The enjoyment comes largely because of excellent writing and character interactions, which drew me toward this brand-new Avengers Story. I loved playing Kamala Khan aka Ms.Marvel, at the beginning of the campaign there is a whole segment where you control her and explore the Marvel Universe. All the Easter eggs and just seeing Kamal meet her heroes in flesh is such an enjoyable experience.

The story is great, I loved watching the Avengers deal with their failings of A-Day and rise up together to fight evil. Each hero might look like a cheap knockoff of the original at first look but the actors have done a really good job. All the heroes are well used in the story except Thor he is just there. There is not much for Thor story-wise. While the overall plot is really simple, this campaign feels like a Marvel movie in playable form.

If Marvel's Avengers is Iron Suit then Kamal Khan is the Arc reactor.

Each one of the heroes at some point needs validation and assurance and Kamala rises to the occasion and brings back the Avengers together in this really good campaign. The campaign is not only good because of the story it is also good because no one actually knew that it really existed.
The campaign is on the shorter side coming at around 10 hours or 12 hours if played really slowly. The missions are tailored around whatever hero the game gives you to control at the time. Some of the missions gave me the feel of Tomb Raider or Uncharted. But unfortunately, these special moments are a few, and the game repeatedly threw me into the same old labs or sort of open land that look almost identical. While the missions are a weak link in the game they are not very frequent to ruin the momentum of the story. It's really sad to see that such a simple thing is pulling down such a great story.

The Kryptonite of Avengers

Following on the concept of Destiny, Marvel's Avengers is a loot-based action game and that is its biggest weakness, at least it is right now. A fun story campaign can only carry it so far. The big chunk of the whole Avengers package is its multiplayer loot-based part that is simply not fun. The endgame loot grind that was supposed to be the yummiest part of this snack is overly repetitive and surprisingly super buggy.

There's just too much- too much insignificant gear and confusing numbers, too many recycled multiplayer missions, that require you to mindlessly mash buttons until the enemy's health bar is zero. 

The gear system of the game is confusing and in-game menus are hard to navigate

The gear system of the game is another pain. The game thrusts upon you all the numbers and wants you to care about what your enemy will drop when you finish him. I couldn't care less about all the heaps of trash gear that gets picked up in my inventory. I mean, if I already have a higher-level helmet then why do you pick up a lower-level one. Here comes another aspect to your inventory, you can disassemble the lower-level stuff to get some other resources that you can use to get some other high-level shit. If you don't do this the game shows you a message to clean up the inventory and you have to stop all the action and clean up, which just breaks the flow for me.

Why would you make a gear-based Avengers game? Only Iron Man and Black Widow would drool at cool gadgets. The fact that you need to get higher gear to level up the muscle fiber of Hulk which would increase its power level (btw power level and hero levels are two different things, you need gear to upgrade your power level and experience to increase hero level) means Jackshit to me. I just want Hulk to smash. And to do that you need to level him up, otherwise, he will slowly decrease the health of even the weakest of enemies. He is Hulk at least make him slightly strong.

This is another aspect of the game that I didn't like. All the heroes in the game are equally powerful. This means that Hulk's punch and Widow's punch deal the same amount of damage. I get that the developers needed to do this so that a single character does not feel overpowered. But it is just painful to watch Hulk slowly decrease the health of his enemy.

Gameplay & UI

Straight up the gameplay and UI are not at all optimized, at least for the PS4. I got the game for Playstation just for the comfort of playing it while sitting on my couch. But the experience is just not good. It might be because of the hardware limitations of the PS4 Pro or the game is just not well-optimized.

The drop-in frame rate is dreadful. As soon as there is a crowd on the screen the frame starts to drop and the game just becomes unplayable. I don't know if this is also the case on the PC and Xbox versions of the game but on PlayStation, the frame drops are not good.

Talking about the User Interface. The general in-game menus are really slow. I had to mash the L1 or R1 button 5-6 times to navigate. The other mission selection menu known as the War Table in the game is also slow to load and sometimes hard to navigate.

Talking about the gameplay it is buggy. Apart from the frame drops, the Audio also sometimes gets mixed up or overlapped like once I had to listen to Ms.Marvel and Bruce Banner talk over each other. The subtitles are also not of much help as they are also sometimes not in sync with the Audio. The loading screens are really long. I found myself waiting for a good ten minutes in the elevator waiting for the next segment of the mission to start especially on the multiplayer.

Verdict

This is not the Avengers game we deserved, but it is the Avengers game we got.

Marvel's Avengers is not a game for today. It has a glittery and joyous core campaign that can only manage to provide all the fun that it has to offer. All the heroes feel great to control and the actors have done a good job of humanizing their interactions. Some elements of the game stand out while others are just trash. Right now it feels like an Avengers-themed service. The game can also milk money from you in the form of cosmetic changes or when it introduces a new character. And the money-making point is proved by the fact that Square Enix has already announced Spiderman as a PlayStation-exclusive character.

All-in-all this game-cum-service takes up to much time and bandwidth (it is an internet-heavy game) and ultimately cripples its chance of a great Avengers game. If you are not a big fan of Marvel then do not get it, at least for now give it a pass maybe after some time it will be good when they add more content to the game.

The game is available to play on Windows, Playstation, Xbox, and Google Stadia.

Buy the game for PC at Steam or Get the physical copy at Amazon.

    

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