{Editors note: Avengers is a live game, and the content of this review reflects the state of the game at the time of publishing. If things change and new information is added, you’ll find it in dated annotations at the top of this article}
Marvel’s Avengers is a confusing game. On the surface, it’s easy to dismiss. I mean, who could blame you? The marketing made it look about as bland as it can get at it’s lowest. Every time Avengers does something great and blows you away, a baffling bad choice is waiting around the corner to make you question who would even make this. Cap and friends have the potential to be great, but in its current state, Avengers leaves the player frustrated and wanting.
Marvel's Avengers (PC, PS4 [reviewed], Xbox One)
Developer: Crystal Dynamics
Publisher: Square Enix
Released: September 4, 2020
MSRP: $59.99
Let’s start with the surprisingly good stuff. The mostly single-player campaign, the stuff that was pushed the back of all the marketing surrounding this game, is great. It plays it safe for the most part, telling a pretty by the numbers superhero story. Kamala Khan makes for an awesome protagonist and comes as a breath of fresh air in a universe quickly established to be filled with older and resentful Avengers like Iron Man and the Hulk.
The main focus of the campaign is Kamala reuniting the Avengers with the help of Bruce Banner. The team separates after a catastrophe in San Francisco five years earlier that results in both the creation of super-powered Inhumans like Kamala and the apparent death of Captain America. The early hours really focus on the mentor-mentee relationship forming between Dr. Banner and Kamala and you spend most of your time swapping back and forth between playing as Kamala or the Hulk. The five years earlier intro gets you a feel for the entire Avengers team, but it takes some time to slowly integrate them all back into the main plot.
Reforging the broken Avengers is about as predictable as a large portion of the comic books this game is based on, but it’s an insanely fun ride that’s only bogged down by the constant loot drops that remind you what sort of game you’re playing.
After a few hours, the environments start to feel a bit stale. You’ll jump around from Jersey City to AIM facilities, to the wilderness of the Pacific Northwest and back again. There’s nothing particularly bad about any of it, but it all looks mostly the same which only adds to how exhausting the late game grind is.
Combat is serviceable if uninspired. You can get by on button mashing especially with characters like Kamala and Hulk who are built more like classic action beat’em up characters. Each of the six available Avengers feels different enough but only once you’ve unlocked a significant amount of the abilities on their individual skill trees. Which leads us into how exactly that post-game grind works.
Each hero has essentially two numbers that you constantly want to be going up. Their base level unlocks an action point to pump into that character skill tree and that’s basically it. Late game the only real number that matters is your power level. If you’ve played other live games you’ll recognize this as a gear score, similar to Destiny’s light level. It’s an average of the score of every piece of gear you’re equipped with and the loop here is simple and mindless. Make those numbers go up. Get better gear then get even better gear.
You can also spend some of the games many resources to level up the aforementioned gear. I’m here with a pro tip, fucking don’t. Gear drops so often it’s all but completely pointless to waste resources you might need later on leveling up Iron Man’s latest repulsor drop. If you find yourself barred out of running a mission by a small gap in your power level, I’d suggest just running a lower level activity first because the loot flows like water here.
Playing the PS4 version, I encountered more than a few performance issues. Enemies clipping through environments and getting stuck behind walls, and some pretty intense hitching on late-game cut scenes. It’s strange for a game that looks like this. Don’t get me wrong. Avengers doesn’t look bad. It looks fine, but that’s it, fine.
I know why you’re all here, though. You want to hear all about those heinous microtransactions. Well, as things stand now, they’re pretty inoffensive. Square and Crystal Dynamics did stick to their guns on one thing. Any money you dump into the game is solely for the less than stellar cosmetics. The pricing is a bit outrageous, though. One legendary skin adds up to about fifteen dollars of real-world currency.
The character-specific hero passes are free for each of the characters in the main game but will cost ten dollars for any heroes added post-launch. These passes aren’t bad, but they’re an insane and grind filled undertaking filled with daily and weekly objectives for each character. It gives the players goals as well as character-specific “iconic” missions that are pretty fun. Still, it’s hard to imagine myself taking the time to grind them out for every character, especially as that roster continues to grow.
Verdict: Avengers isn’t bad, but it is kind of a mess. As it stands right now, this game is hard to recommend. If you absolutely adore Marvel, the campaign might be enough to satisfy you for now, but a lot depends on how this first additional character fares in bringing new content to the game. Right now, Avengers isn’t worth the investment, but in the age of live games, things can change a lot in a matter of months.
Skip it