14 DAY TRIAL // Seeing the Marvel movie universe, many fans of the superheroes were asking for games that can replicate the success of the big screen productions. Even taking into account Sony’s Spider-Man, these games are rather late to the party, leaving the fans wanting. The next big hope is Marvel’s Avengers game published by Square Enix. The beta that took place this weekend on PlayStation 4, offered us a glimpse of the adventures which are supposed to make you say “Excelsior!”.
Unfortunately, this beta confirmed many of my fears related to this game. Marvel’s Avengers as presented in the beta is pretty chaotic, with a lot of visual and audio cues fighting simultaneously for your attention, while the feeling is somewhat clunky. Those who are expecting a smooth RPG experience will be utterly disappointed. Also, the game fails to make you feel like a superhero, and the greatest heroes from Earth feel like mercenaries whose performance is dependent on their gear.
One of the many reasons for the current shortcomings of the game is that the RPG elements do not feel integrated into this 3rd person action-adventure. There is a rapture between concept and implementation. Both the loot driven experience and the use of superpowers in combat feel somewhat unnatural like they do not fit completely with the rest of the gameplay. Also, I do not suggest that you should be overpowered but you should feel more like a hero able to handle small armies. The way you find these upgrades is also questionable: most of them drop not from enemies, but from smashing random objects in your path.
As a result, when you are not taking part in chaotic battles, you will be hunting down crates and boxes scattered in the levels, and smashing the decorum in hopes of gathering new equipment, or materials necessary to upgrade your existing gear. The fact that even the rarest loot does not change your look is a design choice rooted in greed, rather than being faithful to the comics. The heroes can change their look only by equipping different costumes that are available in an in-game store that uses premium currency. One cannot help but think about future microtransactions.
The fights as already mentioned are pretty chaotic. Crystal Dynamics envisioned the gameplay with combos and special moves that need to be adapted to different types of enemies. Also, you should prioritize different types of enemies, but all this is impossible in the middle of the chaotic encounters. As a result, you may see your hero vanquished by ranged enemies, while you were trying to get rid of the melee opponents swarming you. Often battles feel rather like a chore and do not make you feel like the God of Thunder who can annihilate anything in his path.
About the story, we cannot say very much, since it has been chopped for the beta. The introductory mission which takes around the Golden Gate Bridge, already shown in the first trailer of the game gives a good sense of the difference between the various heroes, both as playstyle and special abilities. Even from these first moments, it becomes clear that heroes like Iron Man or Black Widow who require precision, in the current state of the game, are less fun than Hulk with whom you do not have to worry too much about finesse.
Being a beta we will not hold against it the different errors and bugs, we just hope that the occasional technical issues will be worked out by the release of the final version. The graphics do not look bad, but they seem to be a bit outdated, Marvel’s Avengers looking like an early PS4 game. There is a level of detail, but the character models could have been better. Due to the many things happening on the screen it is a bit hard to focus and get yourself immersed in the world.
Conclusion
Being developed with a strong focus on the co-op part, Crystal Dynamics seems to have somewhat lost touch with what makes a good single-player game. Not being an exclusively multiplayer game, Marvel’s Avengers should offer an awesome single-player experience as well. For now, it feels like a collection of different gameplay concepts that do not work harmoniously together, but we hope that things will get better until release.
