The best $60 beta test I've ever played...
Marvel's Avengers is incredibly interesting in that what's there is great, but boy howdy could this game have used an extra sox months to a year in the oven.
SINGLE PLAYER CAMPAIGN
The single player campaign is easily the highlight of this game. It's shorter than I would've liked it to be, but it was good. Kamala Khan is one of my favorite protagonists in years and she is the perfect character to introduce the player to this new Marvel universe. We are playing through her initiation into the Avengers as she gets the whole gang back together. So any time you, the player, want to nerd about something, Kamala is right there with you. She's unfortunately under-utilized in the second half as focus shifts away from her to the less-interesting "We're the world-famous Avengers!" story. Still, I thought the story was great overall.
COMBAT & GAMEPLAY
The combat system in the game is great. It initially comes across like a bit of a mindless button-masher, but the combat does flesh out with the added depth of the hero skill trees. You're still not going to get Arkham combat, but what's there is fun. They manage to make each of the 6 heroes feel unique, while still remaining common enough to be able to easily swap between them. I'm excited for them to expand the roster in the future.
MULTIPLAYER & ENDGAME
The multiplayer and "games as a service" potion of the game that you're supposed to enjoy after finishing the campaign is where Marvel's Avengers ultimately falls flat. Instead of learning from the success of Destiny and failures of Anthem, it seems like they were determined to blaze their own path ignoring all the lessons of other "lifestyle" games. Ultimately it fails in the same ways Anthem did and Destiny has a couple times before evolving into the game it is today.
The loot grind is completely meaningless, and there's honestly no real end-game content worth doing. You can run the same 4 villain sectors over and over again with horribly stale boss fights, or you can fight through the same interior environment over and over again in Hives. I've never played a game with this level of recycled content before that has the audacity to treat each thing like it's "new".
The monetization in the game is pretty bad. Probably the worst I've seen in an online game in recent memories. It's one thing to charge $20 for a skin on a hero in a paid game, it's another thing for that skin to just be a recolor of a skin you already have. I guess the one good thing about the cosmetics being garbage is I'm not tempted to spend any money.
BUGS AND OVERSIGHT GALORE
I could write an essay and the number of bugs in the game, and the number bizarre oversights that exist from a game design perspective, but there's no point. There are dozens and dozens of reddit threads on everything from reset character progression and broken trophies, to inaccessible doors and incompetent AI.
The shipped state of this game was completely unacceptable. It was broken, incomplete, and sometimes unplayable. There was a whole week I couldn't progress the story because of a bug. Two months later and I still don't have my Platinum trophy because I have 2 bugged trophies.
FINAL THOUGHTS
The silver lining of all of this is that Crystal Dynamics seem to be pretty dedicated to fixing bugs, listening to player feedback, and improving the game as much as possible. The question is - is it too late? DLC dates have slipped, the player base is dwindling, and there's still no roadmap in sight.
I really do wish the best for the future of this game. The bones of a great game are there, they just need to build around them more. We're getting new playable heroes, new villains, and new story content in the future all for free. I'd love to see a world where they do a massive content update in a year that breathes new life into this game. I'll come back every few months to check out the new content, but it's hard to recommend this game in the current state it's in.
Marvel's Avengers is incredibly interesting in that what's there is great, but boy howdy could this game have used an extra sox months to a year in the oven.
SINGLE PLAYER CAMPAIGN
The single player campaign is easily the highlight of this game. It's shorter than I would've liked it to be, but it was good. Kamala Khan is one of my favorite protagonists in years and she is the perfect character to introduce the player to this new Marvel universe. We are playing through her initiation into the Avengers as she gets the whole gang back together. So any time you, the player, want to nerd about something, Kamala is right there with you. She's unfortunately under-utilized in the second half as focus shifts away from her to the less-interesting "We're the world-famous Avengers!" story. Still, I thought the story was great overall.
COMBAT & GAMEPLAY
The combat system in the game is great. It initially comes across like a bit of a mindless button-masher, but the combat does flesh out with the added depth of the hero skill trees. You're still not going to get Arkham combat, but what's there is fun. They manage to make each of the 6 heroes feel unique, while still remaining common enough to be able to easily swap between them. I'm excited for them to expand the roster in the future.
MULTIPLAYER & ENDGAME
The multiplayer and "games as a service" potion of the game that you're supposed to enjoy after finishing the campaign is where Marvel's Avengers ultimately falls flat. Instead of learning from the success of Destiny and failures of Anthem, it seems like they were determined to blaze their own path ignoring all the lessons of other "lifestyle" games. Ultimately it fails in the same ways Anthem did and Destiny has a couple times before evolving into the game it is today.
The loot grind is completely meaningless, and there's honestly no real end-game content worth doing. You can run the same 4 villain sectors over and over again with horribly stale boss fights, or you can fight through the same interior environment over and over again in Hives. I've never played a game with this level of recycled content before that has the audacity to treat each thing like it's "new".
The monetization in the game is pretty bad. Probably the worst I've seen in an online game in recent memories. It's one thing to charge $20 for a skin on a hero in a paid game, it's another thing for that skin to just be a recolor of a skin you already have. I guess the one good thing about the cosmetics being garbage is I'm not tempted to spend any money.
BUGS AND OVERSIGHT GALORE
I could write an essay and the number of bugs in the game, and the number bizarre oversights that exist from a game design perspective, but there's no point. There are dozens and dozens of reddit threads on everything from reset character progression and broken trophies, to inaccessible doors and incompetent AI.
The shipped state of this game was completely unacceptable. It was broken, incomplete, and sometimes unplayable. There was a whole week I couldn't progress the story because of a bug. Two months later and I still don't have my Platinum trophy because I have 2 bugged trophies.
FINAL THOUGHTS
The silver lining of all of this is that Crystal Dynamics seem to be pretty dedicated to fixing bugs, listening to player feedback, and improving the game as much as possible. The question is - is it too late? DLC dates have slipped, the player base is dwindling, and there's still no roadmap in sight.
I really do wish the best for the future of this game. The bones of a great game are there, they just need to build around them more. We're getting new playable heroes, new villains, and new story content in the future all for free. I'd love to see a world where they do a massive content update in a year that breathes new life into this game. I'll come back every few months to check out the new content, but it's hard to recommend this game in the current state it's in.