So, after months and months of waiting, we finally have a release date for the Marvel’s Avengers game. And going by the hype the announcement has generated, September 6 is going to be a jam packed day at your local gaming studio. A new hour long video, which had just about 30 mins of content, featured new trailers, more gameplay, and an idea of what the end product would look like. So without further ado, let’s dive right down to it.
First and foremost, the game isn’t open world, and yeah, that sucks. I understand that creating a world where you traverse as one of the avengers, all of which have different skill sets, different methods of travelling from point A to B and completely different personalities, is a task that’s nearly impossible. The Spiderman world was tailored just for the needs of Spiderman and even that was an arduous task. Nonetheless, one can hope. But after you get over that stumbling block, the game has quite a lot to offer.
The only thing that we had from Square Enix so far was the A Day gameplay, which is kinda like the prologue to the game. The footage was criticised for having low quality graphics, with some even comparing it to something out of a PS3 title. However, the game seems to have improved leaps and bounds since then, and the results look really good. I wouldn’t compare it to the Spiderman title, but still, quite impressive.
It seems like the developers are huge marvel geeks, and fell in love with this project. The game embraces the long history of Marvel comics, even featuring custom costumes from the comics that can be bought from the game’s online market. There are some costumes that can be unlocked from just playing the game, so it’s not a complete cash grab.
Now diving into specifics of the story, the events of A day led to a world where the Avengers were disbanded, and where the world is now overrun by “Inhumans”, which are essentially people who got superpowers by the A day toxic leak. A.I.M is an organisation that promises a safer world, and a ‘treatment’ for these Inhumans. However, the philanthropic practices are just lies (big surprise), and the organisation is secretly conducting experiments on Inhumans.
The game also introduces M.O.D.O.K, who is essentially a giant floating head. Modok is the last person you’d expect to feature as the big bad in an Avengers game, but it shows that the developers know their Marvel.
The game is divided into multiple parts, including Hero Missions, Co-Op and WarZone. The new gameplay footage puts you in the shoes of Thor, who is fighting with his fellow avengers to stop A.I.M from dropping a helicarrier from the sky. Pretty usual stuff. The gameplay, looks phenomenal, if I so say. The enemies? Not so much. You can land a 10 hit Mjolnir combo on robots that looks exactly like every other robot from every other game.
Nonetheless, the combat is great. Moreover, you can also level up as you progress, unlocking different skill sets and new moves. Moreover, you can equip items from the Marvel universe that have varying effects. For example, shooting an enemy with Pym particles will shrink them down, which sounds like something I wanna try right away.
Then there’s multiplayer modes, the Co-Op and Warzone, which let you play with your friends and take on bad guys in groups.
The combat system is also broken into 3 parts: Assault, Support and Ultimate. Assault, as the name suggests, is for head on attacks. Support gives you and your teammates additional perks, like invulnerability or extra damage. Ultimate is when you just wanna wreck everything up, and clear the screen in a climatic attack.
The developers also plan to add new stuff in the game in the future, including new content, characters, and more, all of which will be free.
After the success of Spiderman PS4, it’s clear that Marvel games sure have a market. And while the Square Enix game doesn’t belong in the same universe, one can assume that it’s going to be as big a hit as the former, if not bigger.
The game launches on PS4, Xbox One, Google Stadia and Microsoft Windows on September 6.
