Who hasn't ever dreamed of a perfect superhero group game?
Have we ever had multiplayer co-op super heroes games? Sure! Now let me rephrase that. Have we ever had Multiplayer co-op super heroes games that are not a 2D beat em up or a isometric dungeon crawler??? huh! Guess not. it’s the year 2020 and we haven’t had that. And even the isometric ones, where are they? MUA 1 and 2 delisted from several platforms, Marvel Heroes (2015/Omega) had been shut down, MUA 3 exclusive to Switch. I myself can’t even play Marvel Future Fight on my iPhone 5 right now because it was updated which makes it crash all the time. Even so MUA 3 had a huge hype only to fall flat when people got their hands on. It was too samy. More of the same old and too little too late.
But at least we have had some great single player superhero games, right?
What do we love about them? How they make us feel like the character. Good combat and traversal. The overall gameplay feel. Oh and of course the world. A living open world that makes us realise the power fantasy of that character even more.And a great or at least good story to carry us on. I believe I can say for sure that Batman and Spider-man games are on the top of that “genre”. But have they clicked for you just like that right out of the bat (no pun intended)? Do you actually remember how it was to play it for the first time? Now hold that thought.
Ok so now, to have a superhero group game
We just need that… but multiplied by the number of different hero characters and add another technical challenge with online interactions to that mix. doesn’t sound easy right? I mean you could do that with more ease on a Bat-verse since the characters actions don’t vary that much. it can be made with some minor changes. But when you have really different characters, one that flies and shoots, one that swings around and melee, one that jumps around and wreaks havoc. Makes it sound a bit more tough, right? Well yes, making this game is one big challenge!
Putting development into context
I don’t know how long after their last Tomb Raider they started development on Avengers, but Cristal Dynamics has been working on it at full force for no more than 4 years. God of War took 8 years, The Last of Us 2 took 6 years and these are just the BEST games ever made. They showed Avenger’s for the first time last year and now we are already playing it! Sounds like I'm making excuses but actually I just want to put things into perspective.
So let’s dive into what matters. How does it play?
Well to answer that let me address directly some of the stuff I heard about this game. Now sure everybody is entitled to their own opinion. But a rushed out careless opinion of some “influencers”/Games media personalities might make or break a game’s “reputation”. Since we can play it ourselves to have our own opinion this shouldn’t be a big issue but I am still seeing people go about saying “oh, I heard some bad things about it, saw a couple of videos.. it doesn’t look good, I have no space in my HD, I'm not even gonna go through the trouble of downloading and testing it myself.” that’s just stupid but hey, Do what you will.
Now let’s take a look on those opinions:
“it feels.. weird! this feels weird, guys.. this feels weird.”
Really? Is that all you can elaborate on that? I mean you can not know what the problem is. Not knowing why it doesn’t feel right right away. But remember that thought I told you to hold? How did it feel to play Batman Arkham Asylum for the first time? Do you remember? I do. For me when I first played it it was the demo and it was like..
Man this doesn’t feel right. Why the hell he is soo slow? Why he looks soo bulky? He just.. walks? slowly. Why is this so stiff and clunky? You have to hold a button to stealth crouch.. nothing new here but when you do that you move.. faster!? that's odd. oh there is a button to run! a face button? So I can’t turn the camera as I run? Why is he so stiff? Now here we go, the stealth section. Damn why did I die with so few shots? And what the hell is that POSE he does when I press triangle in the face of an enemy that is shooting me?? WTF!? Oh now that it’s the part where I have to beat a bunch of unarmed tugs IF I'm already doing good (building up combo) THAN he start to jump around like a ninja from enemy to enemy!? THAN I can finish off/takedown just ONE of them quickly? Why? Why is this so “arcade-ish”? For Christ's sake he is the Batman! why can’t he finish off every enemy in the first counter move I make?
See what I'm saying? It doesn’t even look like I’m talking about the same game that we all love and uphold like the pinnacle of gaming! Why do you think that was? Yes the game didn’t feel at first as what I wanted a Batman game to be. He was so bulky, slow and clunky I remember calling it Gears of Arkham! I also was too used to some other popular game combat system. In the case was the Assassin’s Creed that at the time required only that you counter your enemy at the right time to just finish him off. Batman not doing the same felt… wrong. See there were many reasons for people to not like it at first sight. But if you accepted the game for what it was instead of desiring the game that you idealised. If you had the time to learn how to play, if you insisted on it. You would start to enjoy that narrative and not only that, when the controllers finally clicked.. you finally became the Batman, seems like nothing could ever have felt better. From that moment on you were the Batman and a believer. Nobody could convince you anymore that that wasn’t the game you wanted!
My point is that you shouldn’t always expect things to click right away for you. Give it some time and thought before expressing your opinion. But that is what happens in this day and age of live streamers, right? Anyway.. I can say for myself that the game felt too much on rails on the A-day bridge segment. Then Hulk felt ok. I mean I had played the PS2 Hulk game that is still the best Hulk game ever, so no harsh judgment there. Kamala was surprisingly fun! But the moment I played Black Widow that insta-clicked for me! Just perfection! Again that clicking might not happen to everyone right away and not with the same character. Later on I started to play Iron man… it felt good on the floor but odd while flying…. till I got used to it, unlocked more moves and weapons then it clicked! BAMN! I'm Iron man BITCH!! Woooo!!! Damn so much fun! I thought I was gona main the Widow.. Now I'm too spoiled with flying!
“it’s too repetitive. bored me too quickly”
This is going to be a quick one I promise. All games are repetitive at some point. there isn’t an infinite number of actions or activities you can do in any game. Considering that the point is: are you enjoying it? And that is totally subjective. For that reason I will not accept a guy that plays FPSs, that plays Destiny forever, come up and say “Avengers is too repetitive”. For crying out loud! You play a game where you basically only run, shoot, punch and throw a grenade! How is that anymore less boring and repetitive than a third person action game with shooting, many melee combos, flying, dodging, parrying, etc!? As I said it’s subjective. To me Destiny is too damn boring! I only endured so much on it to socialyse and play with friends. But now I don’t have to anymore. Now I have an actual FUN game to play while doing that.
Still on that topic. When a game has, extermination mission, hack mission, rescue mission, sabotage mission. That is variety. Not only that, but when you have one sabotage mission where you have to destroy databanks, that is one thing, one level design. than another sabotage where you have to destroy an ark reactor.. that’s a whole other room. with another level design, different layout, objective points, enemy structure etc. that’s variety even within the same mission type whether you care to appreciate it or not! The point is don’t come throwing empty words like “boring” and “repetitive” at this game especially if you are an FPS player.
“it’s too shallow, button mashy.”
C'mon guys just play the game. I really like to see you go through all those shield and staff enemies with just button mashing. And if you are lazy enough to not even care to try and prass all the buttons on your controller to see what it does then what’s the point? don’t you want to see the super hero do all that amazing stuff they do on other media? if not then why are you playing it? Also no wonder you think this game is boring and repetitive if you are playing it like that, pressing just the same couple of buttons over and over.
“they seem like MCU knockoffs.”
Well this I get it. I don’t agree but I get it. I actually think it’s worse than that. They don’t look like MCU knockoffs. They look the most generic as possible! And that is for you to not care for their faces only for the outfits. because that is what they will be selling. MCU outfits.. not proper skins, not with actor’s likeness no. So their faces have to be the most bland and generic as possible. The ones that have a bit more personality to them are Banner and Stark.. both you don’t play with their faces in the model. Iron man has the head always covered and Banner turns into the Hulk so. The single one that has actual character and personality, distinct facial traits is Kamala… which is the new character and “protagonist” so she can and has to be more unique. Again this is just my take and opinion on the metter.
“ I wanted a more single player narrative focused experience.”
“ I don’t want a game as a service type of game.”
Ok, ok you can want what you want. Let’s not meddle there but let’s talk about single player focused versus game as a service.
The Last of Us part 2 is the best videogame ever made. I'm not discussing an opinion now. I'm stating a fact. I'm not talking about the narrative. You may not like the narrative but the actual gameplay, there is no denying it. Those Naughty Dog guys have been perfecting the “realistic third person action/adventure” gameplay for 20 years now. They never tried to make you fly or anything that crazy. They just focused on realistic movement, walk, run, jump, tumble, crawl, punching, shooting.. all very grounded and ultra polished. They did just that for 20 years! Of course TLoU2 is the best game ever in that sense. Nothing comes even close. And I don’t believe it will anytime soon. It is a great video game right? But 30-ish hours later we are done. There. The best game ever made, best gameplay in that genre that won’t be matched even in years from now. And the only way for me to experience that great gameplay again is if I play the game again. I don’t usually play a game from beginning to end more than once especially nowadays. But TLoU2 made me do that. Not only because I enjoyed gameplay but the story too. Such a dense heavy story. I had to go through one more time to digest it better. ok, now I'm done. The story is too heavy and dense. I don’t want to keep going through that. But I would love to be able to keep playing a game with that perfect third person action shooter gameplay. Now what? Wait another 6-8 years for the next Naughty Dog game? What if there was a way to keep enjoying that? Create a new character in that world.. with little story and just survive in there. raid places, get resources. Fight off others (players or npcs). just an excuse to play it.
Games as a service, MMOs, Online games, PvP modes, give us the joy of being able to keep enjoying that thing that game that you cherished the most. it is a way, an excuse, to let you keep playing that that you loved. This might make a lot of sense for some people and no sense at all to others. The way I see it, those that don’t want this kind of experience they are not looking for their perfect game to play. They don’t want a perfect game to keep playing. They just want the next big thing. When a game comes up and it’s awesome they enjoy it and quickly move into the next big thing. “Oh I just played TLoU2 it was awesome but now I’m playing Ghost of Tsushima.” This kind of person can exist. But to keep consuming every game that comes out or you must be rich or you must be working on games coverage. I believe that this mentality of wanting to jump into the next big thing over and over is a mindset of someone that has easy access to games/content. Which is not the reality for most of us. Maybe we can only buy one game every couple of months. Maybe we need our games to linger a bit more. Most of us can’t keep jumping into the next big thing.
Sure, a single player focused game might be more fine tuned in some aspects but it also might mean that more parts of it will be on rail cinematic set pieces. For example an single player avengers game might have had cooler looking flying segments for Iron man that feel “really good” inside that set piece. but the game actually doesn’t have fully fledged flight mechanics. it’s just an on rail segment! While an open world or persistent world or game as a service game will need to actually nail down the flight mechanics! So a Single player game more often than not takes control away from you instead of giving it. Not that it has to be like that, but it’s what happens more commonly. And sure a game as service will have more “fat” in it. That content you will keep repeating it. But hey this game has a story! Wanting it to be “single player story focused” is egotistical because you want to play, be done with it and move on. We don’t! We want to keep playing it. We want to stay in it because we like it. Because we care about the Marvel universe enough to hang in there a couple of months to see a Skrull invasion down the road. or Thanos or Ultron… probably eventually all of them! We don’t want to play this game and be done with it for 6 years until it comes to a sequel where Thanos finally comes! If you don’t want the game as a service, play the story and move on! don’t stay for the service! Simple as that!
Anyway this got a bit long but I just can’t stand people criticising this game so much, calling it the next Anthem, like wanting it to die out already just so they can move onto their next headline and stop talking about it.
“I don’t know… I just don’t feel it. This isn’t the game I wanted.”
Really? Really?? Then what the fuck do you want? A Third person action game that pretty much takes lessons with Spider-man, Arkham, Destiny, Warframe… take what works for all these successful titles and try to improve on it. isn’t that good enough for you? I believe people don’t even know what they want. The abstract idea of an Avengers game, a superhero group game done right, that’s just too outlandish too utopic for people to actually realize what they want from it. That’s the only reasonable reason I can see for all this unsureness. People are not even giving it a chance.
Something I just can’t stand is people playing the game and complaining about the gameplay while praising similar games. Then tell me. Tell where this gameplay, where this traversal, this combat, is any worse than in Spider-man or Arkham? It just looks like people want to be picky about it. Games that had more time to nail just one character, and a game that needs to nail 6+ pretty different characters. And people can’t seem to appreciate just how they actually did it. it just bothers me.
Onto valid criticism, technical aspects do worry me. frame rate specially. I had a lot of fun with it, I hope it does well, I hope it lasts long. but mainly I hope the basics get fixed. The things that are actually problems get fixed. technical, performance etc. Content, visible gear, this all can be changed at a later date if really needed, but the basics need to be fixed.
