14 DAY TRIAL // 
The Marvel cinematic universe is proof that the passion of countless fans, often referred to as geeks or nerds in a demeaning manner, had the chance not only to become mainstream but to produce true blockbuster movies. Although the initial enthusiasm turned somewhat into annoyance among many film fans, Marvel’s next strategic step includes after conquering the silver screen, an assault on our home displays. Following the huge success of Spider-Man, the time has come to unleash the Avengers to the world of gaming. Read on to find out if Crystal Dynamics' newest game is worth the call to action.
The beta did not leave us with too much confidence, as you may have read in our impressions. It presented itself like a soulless, cash grab attempt from Square Enix, that seemed to capitalize on the popularity of superheroes. Now that the full game has been released and we had the chance to play through it, we have to reconsider our verdict, at least partially. The final version feels like a corrupted execution of a project with soul, a game born from the best intents, but derailed by corporate trends and greed.
What made us change our mind is the campaign of the game, a moving tale about family and overcoming odds by focusing on what brings us together instead of our differences. It's a family story, that many of us know, can be messy and complicated. The Avengers are a family made up of stubborn superheroes that will take the domestic quarrels to a new level. And the main reason behind the fights among the super-sized egos is the tragedy of A-day, the event that quickly turned from the celebration of opening a new East Coast headquarter in San Francisco into a nationwide tragedy.
After Bruce Banner's testimony, all seem lost. The Avengers, are not only disbanded but branded as villains and all the people who manifest superpowers, the so-called Inhumans, are presented as a serious threat to humankind. But in the middle of AIM’s witch hunt and political manipulations, there is one youngster who does not give up hope.
Kamala Khan, one of the biggest fans of the superheroes, manages not just to find the scattered members of the mightiest bunch but also serves as the glue that manages to keep the group together. During the campaign, told through 16 missions, each iconic superhero gets a role to play, and you will see Kamala evolve from a fan-girl to a fully-fledged member of the team.
It's is a heart-warming tale, with predictable twists, that will capture the entire audience, not just the comic book fans. It's a tale you have to experience for yourself, without spoilers, since it contains masterfully crafted moments. You will see that the producers put a lot of passion in it, trying to combine the personalities of the different heroes, with light-hearted humor and several climaxes to tell an adventure worthy of the best printed or animated storylines.
Not everything is perfect though since the story despite its best efforts has odd pacing and feels rushed, especially towards the end. Some heroes get a lot of screen time, like Hulk who serves as a mentor figure for Kamala, or Tony Stark who has a big role in finding the others, while Thor is more like a footnote of the main campaign. You cannot help but wonder how the game could have turned out if the focus remained on the single-player campaign instead of turning Marvel Avengers into a live service.
Each hero has its own story arc, that feels ripped from the main campaign, and then glued back on as an additional activity together with training and challenge missions. There is still a lot to after finishing the main questline, but the additional missions are less fun and less polished, the numerous bugs and lack of variety being a real deal-breaker.
Many of the shortcomings of the beta are still present in the final version. Even after several patches, the framerate is shaky at best, the lip-sync is bad to a degree where the mouths of the characters may not move at all, the collision detection is all over the place, textures take a lot of time to load and the loading times themselves are not justified by the dimensions of the levels. The last aspect is somewhat hidden by fully animated screens that soften the blow of this frequent process.
The intermissions on the Quinjet with limited dialogues and the option to personalize your hero reduce the fatigue caused by the long loading times. But if you chose to reload a checkpoint you will have to stare at the same tips and tricks for quite a while. Even more unforgivable are the technical issues from the perspective of those who bought the Deluxe edition. They were granted 3 days early access along with some generic skins and nameplates, but they are the ones who experienced the full weight of the different bugs, many of them still present after several patches.
But while the technical errors can be corrected somewhat easily, the level design and game mechanics are issues much harder to fix. Marvels Avengers lacks variety in every aspect. There are only a handful of different locations, enemies, and structures. After selecting your hero and assembling your party, only the story missions present some deviation from the basic recipe. All the other missions follow an invariable path: you are dropped in an area where you will have to infiltrate an AIM base, discover secondary points of interest, and scour for hidden chests and resource containers.
The secondary objectives are always the same: a person in need of rescue, an elite AIM team, and a rare resource and/or equipment cache. After you are done with these, you will take an elevator to the belly of the compound where you will have to best a more or less boss like confrontation, destroy some crucial equipment in the middle of enemy waves or guard several zones against enemy waves. When all is done your performance is evaluated, you are granted some gear and then you are sent on a different mission to do the same tasks.
It will become quite tedious even if you play with your friends since you will do the same things over and over again in locations that feel the same. The only thing more exhausting than these missions is the simulated training encounters in which you have to battle waves of enemies in a sterile holographic room.
The only thing that keeps you going is the promise of the loot, and this is the point where Marvel Avengers shows its most controversial aspect. Advancing in the story and missions you will get new equipment, granting different bonuses. No matter the rarity of the equipment that can be inserted in six different slots, the look of your hero will not change. The only way to alter the appearance of your character is by equipping skins. A few of these are granted throughout the campaign, but most of them require farming resources, completing daily and weekly challenges, or buying them through microtransactions.
The first two methods do not guarantee that you will get what you wish for, and can require you to invest long long hours. The only bulletproof method to get your heart desires to spend real money on cosmetic items, a thing that many fans will be tempted to do. And this is the most eloquent example of Square Enix’s greed: not only counting on the passion of the fans but pushing them to pay extra for a visual they like. Yes, they are not mandatory, but what is the point of the long hours sunk in the game if you cannot do it without your hero looking the way you like?! The list of cosmetics is quite long containing not only skins but emotes, takedowns and nameplates as well. Those who refuse the microtransactions can acquire these along with equipment pieces from the two faction vendors residing in the two hubs of the game.
The better equipment is necessary to be able to face more powerful opponents, who in return grant better equipment and so the circle of the live service game keeps spinning. Just like the objectives, the number of enemies is quite limited, except for a few infamous villains who serve as bosses. Most of the bad guys are variations of the same types. In dealing with them next to the power level calculated based on your gear score, is important is also the hero level that is given by the quantity of experience you have gathered. Each skill point you earn can be invested in a tree consisting of three main branches: primary abilities, specialty moves, and mastery. The different subbranches can be accessed after reaching certain levels.
For example, Kamala’s ability to stretch her arms, snatch up an opponent, and squeeze the hydraulic oil from them is locked until she reaches level 15. The first 10 levels or so fly by quickly, but after the level increase, it becomes a chore, mainly due to the chaotic battles. Even on lower difficulty levels, you have to be aware of your surroundings, because you can be easily overwhelmed by the sheer number of opponents. It does not matter that you are supposed to be a superhero if you focus only on attack and neglect parrying and dodging you will be downed quickly, a fact that will affect the final rating of the mission. Still, even after you get used to the combat mechanics, you will find your biggest opponent in the camera and the lock-on systems. The first is a real pain in the butt, despite the many settings found in the options menu.
Even after meticulous tweaking, the camera will be useless if you end up fighting in corners, or among various terrain, obstacles presenting anything but the enemy pummelling you. Also, the lock on function mysteriously tends to focus on enemies further away rather than the one in front of you, an issue that becomes even more frustrating when you have to deal with aerial or teleporting enemies.
Diverging from the usual shooter based live service games, Marvel’s Avengers presents you with heroes who have three different superpowers along with several combos you can pull. Each hero has different abilities and requires a different game style. The Hulk relies on sheer force and can use his rage not only to crush his enemies but also to heal up and feels best in the middle of enemy hordes. On the other hand, Black Widow can’t take so much punishment, but she can execute takedowns more quickly and needs a different approach to combat, dividing, and conquering eh opposing forces.
Thor can be as powerful on the ground as he is formidable in the air after you find some better equipment for him, while Captain America feels a bit overlooked, since his acrobatics do not feel as powerful as Natasha Romanoff’s, but he also can’t take too much punishment. The most versatile in the current setup is Kamala, who is great at close combat brawls, at ranged confrontations and who can heal not just herself, but the entire party. Although after finishing the campaign you will have access to the full roster of heroes, the party you will lead into missions will consist of only four members. If you travel the single-player path next to the hero you chose the AI will randomly select three other heroes. If you prefer the co-op approach you can invite friends or let the matchmaking fill the roster of remaining empty seats.
Finally, although it is still at the start we have to say a few words about the Avengers Initiative that represents the multiplayer part of the game. For now, matchmaking is a hit and miss, often taking forever to find you, party members. Also, the aforementioned technical issues plague the Initiative part as well. Mission objectives are the same, but they are more enjoyable if you chose to approach them with humans rather than relying on the help of the AI, which does a half-decent job. Although it can get through you most of the missions, the AI-controlled characters tend to activate their best moves when there are only 1-2 enemies around, leaving themselves exposed to the tougher sections of the battles. Still, the Avengers Initiative part requires more testing before we can give a final verdict.
The technical issues persist when it comes to graphics and audio as well. We already mentioned the textures that take forever to load and the inconsistent collision detection system that causes opponents to get stuck in various objects or walls. These are coupled with an inconsistent framerate, that can plummet even during cutscenes, the character models are all over the place, and different wardrobe items are displayed in odd ways. For example, at certain moments Cap’s shield is reduced to a red light streak, or the hats of different crew members are paraded at their feet acting like small sized dogs.
It is a shame because many times the game looks fabulous. If the developers would have focused as much on the visuals as they did when building the ceremonies for A-Day, Marvel Avengers would have been a visually stunning endeavor. The same can be said about the audio part. The lip-sync is often out of sync, many times the lips of the characters not moving at all. The subtitles are out of sync in the same way, and many of the sound effects tend to disappear suddenly in the middle of the missions. The voice actors do a good job in general except Nolan North who’s performance as Tony Stark sometimes resembles too much Nathan Drake from Uncharted.
The Good
- Excellent main story line
- Nice atmosphere with lighthearted humor
- Complex skill tree
The Bad
- Monotonous and repetitive level and gameplay design
- Chaotic battles with a nerve wrecking camera
- The cosmetic system coupled with microtransactions
Conclusion
But even these moments cannot make me forget about the technical issues, and the sacrifices made to turn the game into a live service. The lack of variety may get addressed by future free or paid updates, but you remain with the feeling that if the effort would have been invested in focusing on a single-player experience Marvel’s Avengers could have been truly great. Instead, we received a mixed bag of experiences that vary from great to downright monotonous.
