Marvel's Avengers Reviews

Introduction

A review of Marvel's Avengers at this point is kind of strange considering that the game will be delisted from digital stores in September 2023 and the "live-service" support will stop. I guess my intention with the review will be more about what Marvel's Avengers was rather than if you should buy it.

Personally I initially avoided buying the game for 2 reasons: I didn't care much about live-service games when the game was released and the PlayStation exclusivity for Spider-Man (the most popular Marvel character of all) was a huge turn-off. After learning that the game will be delisted and reading in the comments how much some players enjoyed the single-player campaign I decided to play it since it's was on GamePass at the moment of writing.

Story

The story is actually a bit of a mixed bag. It starts out with A-day, a celebration day for the Avengers where thousand of Avengers fans meet on the Chimera flying fortress where the Avengers will reveal a new element to the world which has the potential for endless power. Of course things go wrong, the city of San Francisco is destroyed and the Avengers are blamed for all of it.

5 years later the Avengers are disbanded, Captain America presumed dead and out of the ashes the organization AIM (Advanced Idea Mechanics) rises lead by Monica Rappaccini and George Tarleton to fill the power gap left behind with their army of robots. The A-day event resulted in several people getting super-powers. Seen as a threat to society these people are branded as inhumans and AIM are the ones hunting and imprisoning the inhumans (while the government apparently sees no problem with that).

One of the inhumans Kamala Khan (the biggest Avengers fan ever) who attended the A-day event and also developed super-powers goes on a mission to find and assemble the Avengers, prove their innocence and find out what AIM is truly doing with the captured inhumans.

It's somewhat difficult to care much about the story: Apart from Kamala (Ms. Marvel) and maybe Bruce Banner (Hulk) none of the other characters feel like actual people. The Avengers all behave like generic comic-book heroes doing heroic stuff and having some funny line to occasionally throw around. For example Black Widow runs around as a wannabe action-cyberhacker doing covert things after the Avengers are disbanded, Tony Stark mostly just cracks jokes and pulls off a MacGuyver-stunt improvising an invention out of nowhere when necessary. Thor just returns out of the blue without any explanation. None of the characters are really explored and therefore none of them are truly interesting. In the same way plot twists are somewhat predictable and whenever events escalate it's hard to feel an emotional impact if all characters react all heroic.

The same applies to the villains, they aren't interesting. The biggest issue I see is that AIM are the most generic evil organization I have seen in a game. And their intentions seems to change all the time - at first being in control of the inhumans, then building an army of robots with inhuman power, then creating some revitalization serum. Your told by the game that they are evil but the effects of their evil deeds are never shown except for a few brief moments or as generic mission objectives.

Additionally to Monica Rappaccini and George Tarleton (MODOK) there are only 1-2 more villains like Taskmaster (never heard of him) and Abomination, but their role in the story is very limited.

Presentation

Visually the game looks pretty good. A lot of effort was put into the tech to deliver a decent visual presentation with good effects, large areas and a lot of spectacle, and it performs well on Xbox Series X. Yet still it fails on some ends.

The characters all look fairly good, their hero suits are all iconic and faithful to the source material. The issue is that the designers tried to replicate the look from the movies without fully copying them - the end result looks somewhat off. At least the voice acting is quite strong featuring some of the more popular names like Troy Baker (Bruce Banner), Nolan North (Tony Stark) and Laura Bailey (Black Widow). The cinematic presentation often is on par with the best of PlayStation studios.

The character animations are big highlight. Both in cut-scenes and during the gameplay. Punching enemies has a certain weight to it with attacks causing a shower of particles. Pieces of debris fly around when Hulk slams the ground. Combined with the elaborate vibration features you can really feel the impact. It's great when fighting 2-3 enemies but it get's messy when fighting dozens of enemies or large bosses in tight areas combined with a bad camera resulting in frustrating moments.

The single-player campaign levels are decent classic linear levels with cinematic set-pieces. There are some highlights like Kamala being chased through the Chimera by the Hulk or the Stark estate being attacked by AIM while Tony Stark is trying to put together a makeshift suit. Unfortunately this is in contrast to the more generic live-service open levels. Usually these live-service levels start in an open, wide area like woodland, tundra, canyon desert or a city which usually lead to a closed, linear generic-looking laboratory or some generic bunker.

Gameplay

On a surface level the gameplay can be described as a 3rd person action brawler. Each character has light attacks, heavy attacks, a dodge ability and a ranged attack. Additionally you can trigger special abilities which are on cooldown. It would have been great if it weren't for the fact that all enemies are damage sponges. Also once you fight against several enemies the whole thing gets messy. You can level up characters and unlock new abilities like certain combos and special attacks. There is a dodge button which did offer a sense of skill for precisely timed input but you can mostly get through the game via button-mashing and the game is nowhere as player-skill-dependent as for example Devil May Cry or Ninja Gaiden.

The characters don't feel all that different in action since they all share the same basic move sets with closed and ranged attacks. Some like Iron Man and Black Widow have a stronger focus on ranged attacks while other like the Hulk or Captain America are better suited for closed combat. During traversal the flying characters Thor and Iron Man have an advantage over the others.

The single player levels guide you in a similar fashion like Gears of War or Uncharted through mostly linear levels where you get to do some platforming or some easy puzzle solving between battles. At some point the game will require you to play some of the open "live-service" levels in order to progress the story. The game starts with Ms. Marvel/Kamala as the only playable character but after a few hours you will unlock Hulk, Iron Man, Black Widow, Thor and finally Captain America.

The base of operation is the flying helicarrier called "Chimera". The further you get into the story the more it gets restored to a fully operational level and the more features (factions, vendors, training ground, character selector, etc.) you can unlock.

As typical for "live-service" games you will find loot/gear and crafting components for your character either dropped from defeated enemies or from strongboxes (chests). There are 4 gear types which can be equipped to your character in order to increase certain stat numbers and your power level. The power level is used as the strength of your character and based on that number the difficulty is scaled. There are 4 difficulty levels with easy being 5 levels below your current power level, normal at the same and hard 5 above your power level (don't remember what the last level has to offer). The problem with the difficulty is that no matter how "strong" your character is, the enemies scales based on your power level, so there is hardly any sense of you getting any "stronger" through progression lowering the sense of the "power-fantasy". Additionally each character has their own power and character level meaning that once you unlock a new character, your other characters are already of a higher level making the choice of playing a lower-level character much more difficult.

Live-Service

The big elephant in the room - the "live-service". Now during the last 4 years I did play some live service games including Sea of Thieves, Halo Infinite and Apex Legends. I'm not in a position anymore where I would generally call "live-service" games bad, some might even say that Marvel's Avengers end-game is pretty good for a live service. The problem is that compared to the 3 other live-service games which I listed, Marvel's Avengers couldn't convince me to play the game even after finishing the campaign since the base gameplay is average at best and the end-game grind is very unsatisfying and very repetitive.

The game allows you to play in coop with up to 3 other players, here you could show off your cosmetics. You would play through those generic live-service levels where you move first through an open level and then through generic corridors to tackle some generic task (like "defend this area for some minutes", "destroy 4 generators" or "defeat the boss"). Some levels have a minimum required power level before you can even start them.

The loot system also contributes to a negative aspect of the live-service game. Each loot/gear you find to improve your character's stats does nothing visually. A new shield for Captain America or a new core for Iron Man only changes the stats numbers. Combined with the auto-scaling enemies it feels like you are playing a game for an Excel sheet rather for a power fantasy.

The cosmetic variance comes from unlocking new customs for each hero by either completing grindy challenges, you can focus on unlocking new items via each character's own battle-pass or by buying them directly from the store with a premium currency. The market store is also a main entry in the menus making clear that the aim was to sell as many cosmetics as possible. Some people might be more sensitive to these premium currency in-game stores, but personally I managed to ignore the cosmetic fashion aspect of the game.

Live-service games also need continuous content updates in order to be successful, but apparently this was a huge let-down in this case. There are 3 additional campaigns: Kate Bishop's search for Hawkeye, Hawkeye's future imperfect campaign and Black Panther's War for Wakanda. Each has a new story and War for Wakanda even has a great new location with the typical Wakanda design which felt fresh after hours of tundra, woodland & canyon desert. Also 5 additional characters (6 on PlayStation) were added post-launch. Unfortunately that's all the content added during 3 years since launch and those 3 campaigns can be finished in a few hours. That is not enough to keep players attached to this game.

The achievements also depend on the grind of the live-service. While around half of it can be achieved in the single-player campaign in around 12-15 hours, the other half require a huge time investment (100+ hours to complete everything), something I decided not to do. 53 hours and 39 out of 50 achievements unlocked is where I ended my journey with this Mavel's Avengers

Conclusion

In the end Marvel's Avengers is a game with a lot of unfulfilled potential satisfying no one. Marvel fans looking for a casual cinematic comic-book heroes game like Marvel's Spider-Man or Batman Arkham City will be let down by the baffling live-service aspect of the game. Gamers interested in decent live-service games will find their hook elsewhere with much better free-to-play games like Warframe, Destiny 2 or Genshin Impact.

Hopefully this will be a big reminder for the industry that chasing trends and betting on aggressive monetization in popular franchises isn't always the best idea.

HISTÓRIA:

Embora os “Vingadores” já existissem antes a história da campanha parte do Dia A (Avengers Day), nele temos a inauguração de um aeroporta-aviões que é alimentado por uma tecnologia renovável experimental e uma nova base em São Francisco (EUA). Durante a festa, algo acontece com essa tecnologia, fazendo-a oscilar,sendo que isso acaba causando um acidente terrível e destruindo parte da cidade. Desde então, os Vingadores restantes se sentem culpados pelo ocorrido e ficam separados até que uma menina-fã deles e cheia de esperança consegue reunir os heróis novamente para enfrentar o(a) verdadeiro(a) inimigo(a) e causador(a) de todos esses danos.

JOGABILIDADE:

Marvel’s Avengers não é inovador, aliás, ele segue uma linha de ação com alguns elementos de RPG, algo que vem sendo muito comum nos últimos anos. O jogo realmente abusa dessa ação,principalmente no seu multiplayer. Resumidamente você vai passar quase o tempo todo derrotando inimigos e cumprindo alguns objetivos importantes – outros nem tanto – e assim vai progredindo na história, que é totalmente linear.
O que chama atenção são os combos, onde podemos adquirir habilidades extras que são vistas nos filmes e nas HQs, além disso, o game ainda possui algumas novidades. Infelizmente ele é muito repetitivo, faltou mapas ou uma melhor elaboração por parte do estúdio. Um ponto que entristece bastante é que mesmo lutando com personagens diferentes, ainda sim o jogo é igual – mesmo tendo as habilidades já mencionadas anteriormente- tirando o Thor e o Homem de ferro, todos os demais são extremamente repetitivos de jogar e quanto aos que voam a mecânica simplesmente não agrada. Onde estão os super-vilões? O game basicamente só entrega inimigos simples.
Sendo bem honesto com vocês, jogadores, o jogo quase não agrega nada quanto em novidades, ele é basicamente um jogo genérico, inserindo o contexto dos Vingadores para vender, o que acaba salvando o investimento de tempo por nossa parte é que a história é original e interessante, mas o maior pecado foi não utilizar outros hérois famosos no game, deixando-o meio vazio de boa parte dos grandes nomes da Marvel, além disso, alguns dos personagens presentes precisaria de uma significante melhora na Gameplay, algo que poderia ter ajudado, e muito, na evolução do título. The Avengers é um game com a proposta de você não pensar para jogar, só vai sair batendo em tudo e todos até ele acabar. O game conta com um modo multijogador, mas segue o mesmo padrão de missões com os mesmos tipos de combate.

AMBIENTAÇÃO e GRÁFICOS:

Os gráficos e ambientações possuem certa complexidade, mas apesar de bonitos em uma primeira visão, não são diversificados como deveriam, assim como as texturas dos inimigos, que parecem sempre os mesmos. O game peca na falta de detalhes. Infelizmente toda a qualidade conhecida das empresas envolvidas não apareceu aqui. Voltando para a sua ambientação, a falta de cenários mais relevantes e/ou conhecidos pelos fãs acabou deixando o jogo perdido em um limbo onde ele não queria se aproximar muito dos filmes, mas também não focou nas HQs. Os mapas também deveriam ser destrutivos com os golpes, mas isso se resumiu ao de sempre, só veículos e itens menores sofrem danos consistentes.

CRÍTICAS E BUGS:

O jogo foi esperado com muito entusiasmo pelos(as) jogadores(as), afinal, além de estúdios muito capacitados, a Marvel estava desembolsando muito dinheiro, pois seu universo cinematográfico estava a todo vapor e um game de sucesso só iria beneficiar ainda mais a marca. Todos aguardavam um jogo fabuloso, mas infelizmente acabaram recebendo algo genérico, que dá uma sensação de “mais do mesmo”. Ele não é um jogo péssimo, ele só não atendeu as expectativas altíssimas e acabou sendo mais um daqueles jogos que a gente termina e deixa lá, esquecido.
A falta do Gavião Arqueiro na história original é bem frustrante – principalmente por seu alívio cômico – assim como a ausência de outros notáveis Vingadores que poderiam pelo menos fazer uma participação no jogo e mais para frente serem adicionados, mas isso não aconteceu, até o momento o game recebeu apenas o Pantera Negra, sendo que personagens como Gavião e Kate nem conto, já deveriam estar lá desde o início. Recentemente oficializaram o Soldado Invernal, quem eles pretendem chamar ao jogo assim? Teriam que ser heróis queridos do público.
O game, mesmo após quase 3 anos de lançado, ainda conta com bugs bem irritantes: inimigos – e você – ficam presos em texturas, se você está próximo de mecanismos de ação – terminais de abrir porta, por exemplo – o jogo não entende que você está em meio a uma batalha e fica perdido, você precisa se posicionar longe deles para não ter esse problema.

CONCLUSÃO:

Marvel’s Avengers não chegou aos pés do que era esperado, criou-se muita hype em relação ao potencial das imagens que foram saindo, mas na hora da Gameplay viu-se um game totalmente arcade, linear e sem identidade, abusando de uma fórmula cansada de tão explorada (porrada, porrada e porrada até o final), não é um jogo ruim, mas também não é um título digno dos Vingadores e das desenvolvedoras envolvidas. Sem dúvidas é um game que deve ser jogado, especialmente por aqueles que são fãs e querem ver seus heróis em ação, principalmente se gostarem de ação frenética, mas infelizmente não dá para esperar nada além do que já mencionei.

https://goxboxnews.com/marvels-avengers-uma-analise-do-jogo/

Marvel's Avengers, hero, or menace? That's the question to be asked when looking at this title. Is it time to suit up, or have the Avengers lost their endgame?

In the main story, players take control of Kamala Khan, a diehard fangirl of Earth's mightiest heroes. But on a day unlike any other, Captain America is killed during a battle and the Avengers dissolve. Years later, a group of humans present at that battle begin developing their own powers, and they become known as Inhumans. Kamala, being one of these people, sets out to fight the injustices they face and at the same time, reunite the Avengers.

Gameplay is both where the game shines and where it falters. As the story progresses players are given control of the different Avengers. The controls for these characters were amazing. It was insane how unique each character felt all while being in the same engine. You could feel the power of Thor each time you threw the hammer, you felt just as fast as Iron Man every time you took flight. Unfortunately, in terms of objectives, this game has one thing to offer. Go to point A, fight the enemies, go to point B, hit a button, fight the enemies.

And the next huge fault comes from the level design. Get ready to feel closed in and restrained. Because every level is essentially you being barrier-blocked into one area at all times. Even outdoors, where it looks wide and open, there's really nowhere to explore or go to. Taking flight as Iron Man is immediately met with an invisible barrier as you realize there is nowhere to go but where the game wants you.

The game's music was also pretty underwhelming. It just felt so generic and repetitive. And for a game as grinds as this one, that needed to be different. The music made me feel like a superhero, not an Avenger. Speaking of repetition, this game has it in spades. Every. Objective. Is. The. Same. You will play in the same default room 50 times. You will fight the same enemies to no end.

But to me the biggest downfall to Marvel's Avengers is the creative decisions. I don't broadcast this much, but I do read some Marvel comics. And while I understand Kamala Khan does have a following and some fans, as a character it is such a bad idea to build the story around her. Because she's not the type of character that should be focused on. She's a wannabe, a fangirl, she's not fun to play as because all she is, is us. We are the fangirls. We want to play as the Avengers. And you can't even really make fun of her either, because then it feels like a "take that!" at the fanbase. She's annoying and at times she can be very cringeworthy. The main character of your story can't be taken seriously when they're making you feel uncomfortable.

But that's not all. One of the best feelings is at the start of the game, you are rapidly switching between characters getting to control them. It feels like you are taking part in a huge battle and every movement counts. This is never revisited. You cannot switch between characters mid-gameplay again and it feels very restraining because of that. Then there's the fact that Captain America is killed off immediately. Then you have the fact that out of the huge rogues gallery the Avengers have, there are only three villains to fight in boss battles (during the main campaign). THEN you have the fact that Spider-Man, the most popular character, released as a PlayStation exclusive character (truth be told I don't know who's to blame for that). THEN you have the fact that all the other DLC characters for the most part are echo-characters and somewhat boring to play as. What made the initial lineup fun was how unique everyone was from each other. Why not add Carol Danvers or Stephen Strange to the game? Danvers is even teased towards the beginning and I believe the end. Instead we got two archers, another guy using guns, and another version of Thor. Even Black Panther kind of played like Black Widow.

Usually the only thing I ever hear anyone mention with Marvel's Avengers is that it bombed. That should tell you all you need to know. This game had potential to be great. Instead it will only be remembered as just that, a title with potential that will never become part of a bigger universe.



Total Score: 28/100