Marvel's Avengers Review

In early 2017 Square-Enix announced a partnership with Marvel for multiple AAA games set in the Marvel universe.

The Marvel franchise has had huge success in the movie industry over the last 10 or so years but it has never done much in the gaming industry other than the odd Lego crossover or cheap cash grab.

Square-Enix has brought in Crystal Dynamics, known for their quality in the recent Tomb Raider games, to co-develop with them a game which has the intention of providing a quality AAA experience set in the Marvel universe and their first try at this is with an action role-playing brawler, so let us see how they fared.

The story starts with you in control of a young Kamala Khan as Ms. Marvel at the A-Day convention where the current Avengers consisting of Captain America (Steve Rogers), Hulk (Bruce Banner), Black Widow (Natasha Romanoff), Thor and Iron Man (Tony Stark) are announcing their second headquarters in San Francisco and their new Helicarrier, the Chimera which is powered by a new power source, the Terrigen Crystal.

As with most superhero stories something goes awry and thus begins the story of the campaign.

View Full-size

Telling the story through Kamala Khan’s eyes was a great decision.

As stated earlier, the game at heart is an action role-playing brawler and does it very well. You perform combos by using a combination of square for light attacks and triangle for heavy attacks; holding down the triangle button performs a power attack and circle performs a dodge. You have a light attack combo which has a light attack finisher and a heavy attack combo with a heavy attack finisher. Every character has a ranged option such as Captain America throwing his shield to Thor throwing his hammer which is done by holding L2 to aim and R2 to throw.

All the characters have three abilities which are themed around the hero including a buff ability which can be anything from raising attack power to going invisible and taunting your enemies. The second ability is a ranged ability with the third ability being a special (think Supers from Destiny). They also have an Intrinsic gauge which does something different depending on the hero, for example, Hulk has a rage Intrinsic which builds up attack and as it fills up you can hold R2 whilst attacking to regain health whilst Iron Man uses his Intrinsic to shoot out lasers, rockets or his repulsion charge. Black Widow gets a straight damage buff when her gauge is full whilst Thor gets Odinforce which slowly regenerates over time and allows him to negate damage as well as power up some of his attacks. Ms. Marvel gets Polymorph which allows her to dodge incoming blows as well as enlarge her which increases her damage and finally Captain America’s Intrinsic allows him to block projectiles and attacks, with more Intrinsic energy the more he can block.

View Full-size

Abilities look and feel powerful giving that Superhero feeling.

As you go through the campaign missions you will find a lot of enemies to fight and by defeating them they will reward you with experience as well as some loot or upgrade resources. Experience is needed to level up (with level 50 being the cap) and with each level up you are granted a skill point.

There are a plethora of skills to choose from in the three trees which consist of Primary, Secondary and Mastery. Some of these will be passives and some will upgrade your combos or make them stronger and some will even change how a skill works.

The Gear screen is where you will see your stats, what resources you currently have and what gear you are equipping. There are four main stats which are Melee, Ranged, Defence and Heroic and each of those have sub stats like Valor, Precision, Resolve and many more which you can view by pressing L3 in that menu.

The loot that you can get starts off as white which is basic and then rises up from green, blue, purple, yellow and finally exotic which is orange. Each piece has a chance of a perk which can be unlocked by boosting the power level of that individual item which consumes resources, thus creating unique build opportunities.

Each mission will normally start with you being told where to go with an objective marker - as you head towards it you can see strongboxes and other objectives highlighted around the area by pressing up on the d-pad which works much like eagle vision from Assassin’s Creed.

When you get to the objective markers you will usually be greeted by a group of enemies which you will have to kill to access the objective. Once done, you will normally have to do one of around four different tasks which are: destroy the turbines; a control-type game mode; defeat the high-valued targets (enemies with shields) or destroy the servers and this is where the game starts taking a turn for the worse.

The mission variety is poor to say the least and every mission is a variation of that which you will be doing from mission one until the end of the game. However, in spite of that, the game is still fun to play because the core combat is incredibly solid and the heroes all feel different enough that you don’t think about the actual mission objectives as much as how enjoyable it is to pummel enemies as a superhero.

When you start the game you have an option to do the campaign or the Avengers Initiative - the game’s multiplayer mode - but we would recommend starting with the campaign as the story in the multiplayer carries on after the campaign which the game will tell you at the title screen.

The level design is uninspired as most areas feel the same but with a different coat of paint and once you’ve played a few of them it feels like you have done it all before. While they are beautiful to look at, how you interact with them becomes reptitive. It’s also a real shame that you can’t replay the campaign areas again though the developers have recently said this feature will be added. Additionally, the last mission in the multiplayer mode you unlock is single player only and seems an odd choice as you take A.I companions in with you regardless.

View Full-size

Multiplayer is fun when it works but the mission variety lets it down.

Multiplayer leaves a lot to be desired as there isn’t really an endgame at the moment but it is still a lot of fun to play with your friends or with someone online and with some content updates it could be very promising. For the time being, you will have several mission chains which will involve either defeating a boss which you would’ve killed in the main campaign, going to a lab and doing one of the four or so objectives in there or Vaults.

Vaults are missions where you will have to find a hidden vault in the map by using a radar - once inside, you will have to unlock the vault which houses the loot by inputting a code of three to four numbers by standing on a machine with the correct number. There are three separate codes and after every input you will have to stand outside the vault door whilst dealing with waves of enemies until the blue gauge gets to the end.

Another activity available to you is the Hives, which has you entering the same lab you have been doing all game but there are now multiple floors (around five or six) with the random objectives you were already doing before. You also have HARM challenges which you can do solo or multiplayer and this will have you fighting 10 waves of enemies in a VR-based arena. That is pretty much all there is to the multiplayer at the moment.

For the most part the gameplay is really fun mainly due to the combat system but the mission variety and level design could do with a lot of improvement in the future. With future patches which will hopefully address the lack of variety, Marvel’s Avengers could be a game people come back to for a long time.

The graphics are fantastic, with every hero and villain well designed and with the realistic art direction much like the movies, it’s on par (if not better) with the recent Spider-Man title. The hair animations impressed me, especially Black Widow’s and the lighting looked great as did the shadows and the particle effects. One notable effect is the electricity that leaves lines on the floor when Thor smashes his hammer down. This attention to detail goes a long way to making you really feel in control of a mighty superhero.

Animation is also top-notch from how every hero has their own distinct animations to all the individual attacks and moves they have at their disposal. It looks fluid for the most part and the only real issue is climbing over obstacles can look jarring with the occasional clipping through objects.

View Full-size

I really enjoyed the relationships between the characters.

The soundtrack feels uninspiring with no standout tracks but if you are a fan of the film franchise, it doesn’t feel out of place and has captured that same tone.

Crystal Dynamics nailed the sound effects with every thump and clang sounding really metallic and heavy, bringing the Avengers to life. Enemy robots have the feeling of weight behind each footstep as they stomp around, the explosions created really ring in your ears and the lasers they fire have an intense power with every shot.

The voice acting is perfectly executed by the voice cast of Jeff Schine (Captain America), Nolan North (Iron Man), Laura Bailey (Black Widow), Troy Baker (Bruce Banner), Sandra Saad (Ms. Marvel) and Travis Willingham (Thor). The cast have managed to make the heroes sound similar to the film actors while adding their own distinctive take on the character so there is a level of familiarity present. The script and writing definitely captures the spirit of the comic book characters alongside the excellent voice acting. Even outside the main cast, the voices are all quality which brings everything together.

A lot of fans were curious how the story would turn out considering that Crystal Dynamics opted for an original story instead of using one found in the film franchise, which might have been an easier thing to do. Fans didn’t need to worry because they pulled it off and this story fits well into the Marvel universe. I look forward to see where they go with it in the future.

The story of the campaign is a nice length, running for around 12-15 hours depending on how you play and it is told through a mission format. You start missions from a war Table found inside the Chimera (the Avengers’ ship) which acts like a hub of sorts where you can access the campaign, side missions and other activities.

There are plenty of twists and turns throughout filled with emotional scenes as Kamala (the protagonist of the story) must handle her life being turned upsidedown, all while being on the run and trying to fit in with her idols as a member of the Avengers. The banter with Tony Stark in particular drew plenty of laughs.

Overall, I really enjoyed the story and I look forward to more, in spite of how lacking it was in the post-game and multiplayer. I was quite surprised at how much work was put into it and you could really see that AAA budget at work.

View Full-size

Loot has useful perks but it’s disappointing that there’s no visual changes to the characters.

There were quite a few technical issues that I encountered where I had some frame drops, especially when there were a lot of enemies on screen and I was using all of my abilities at the same time, notably in multiplayer. This happened a few times but not enough to impact my enjoyment of the game in general.

I also encountered a bug a couple of times where I was moving in slow motion but thankfully that wasn’t often and entering a cutscene would remove it. Expect long loading times unless your console is equipped with an SSD. Subtitles have a bug where closed captions are displayed even with the option turned off in the settings as well as sometimes displaying the wrong subtitles altogether.

I also had several smaller bugs but they only happened once during my playthrough. These included a couple of NPCs in The Ant Hill who would keep repeating some of their lines, Thor got stuck in a hover animation and I also got stuck in a wall but managed to get myself out by repeatedly pressing buttons.

Additionally, the last mission that you can unlock still has several bugs, where I couldn’t complete a floor because an enemy was trapped behind a wall or another object. This meant I couldn’t complete the objective so had to reload the floor and start over.

On the multiplayer side I frequently had difficulty connecting to more than one player at a time and occasionally I had trouble joining or inviting a friend. The matchmaking is a big problem as it stands which is a shame because the multiplayer could be a great addition later on down the line.

All in all, Marvel’s Avengers has some great foundations but needs a fair bit more work to get it up to the level where it will rival similar games in this area. The campaign is a refreshing compliment to the Avengers franchise but without a well-defined postgame cycle, fans will move on quickly.