I played two sessions of the Marvel’s Avengers over the two different weekends of the open beta on PlayStation 4 and I had vastly different experiences between the two. After the first two-hour session, my opinion was mixed but mostly negative. While my second, four-hour session was much more positive overall, I made the decision to not jump into the game when it launched on Friday, September 4.
I can admire the decisions developer Crystal Dynamics (Tomb Raider series) has made in creating a unique take on these beloved heroes, but I have a rather checkered history with games-as-a-service: if you’ve heard any of our podcasts, you’ve probably heard me discuss my disdain for the original Destiny and refusal to play Destiny 2. At the same time, I fell in love with Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 early this year. After my early playthrough of the content solo, it seemed to feel much more like Destiny than The Division, which weighed in heavily to my decision to wait and watch.
The Good?
- The Powers Look Cool
The beta does a good job of getting you into the action quite quickly and bounces you between the five main Avengers in the opening mission. While this might not be the greatest thing from a gameplay-experience perspective, it does a good job of showcasing the various abilities of Thor, Iron Man, Hulk, Black Widow and Captain America. While I didn’t love switching quickly between the characters in that initial blitz, it all looked very cool and on par with what you’d expect if you had just seen Endgame.
- Black Widow Encounter with Taskmaster
The high point of the demo to me was the opening mission’s boss encounter. I was surprised that my favorite character to control was Black Widow, and that impression owes a lot to this great dodging/parrying boss encounter with Taskmaster. Taking things up a notch from the lackeys with their shields fought prior to this, Taskmaster will full-on Cap-chuck his shield at you and get it back fast enough to block whatever bullets you might fire against him.
This encounter rewarded the player for directing Black Widow like she was designed – dodging at the last minute, firing when you’re far away, melee attacking when you’re close. And then later in the fight it works in a hurricanrana counter attack that would make Rey Mysterio Jr. proud – it felt fantastic to take on this tougher foe.
- Character Representation and Writing
After playing through the second mission – alternating between Hulk and Kamala Khan (Ms. Marvel) – there was a fantastic scene between the two that revelled in the awkwardness of these two near strangers trying to handle each other’s complexities.
Bruce Banner, uncomfortable in both of his skins, is struggling to console Kamala. The young hero is struggling with her super-powered identity/responsibility and the repercussions of that old adage to “never meet your heroes.”
The nefarious AIM has found a way to cure people of their superpowers. Kamala finds herself emotionally torn between wanting to go back to being normal again and the responsibility of trying to reunite the surviving Avengers.
Bruce, a fish out of water when it comes to dealing with an emotional teenager, struggles to find a way to console her. He has limited experience dealing with people and their emotions. He’s also contemplating his own inner conflict of what it would be like to be rid of his alter ego.
- The Characters Become More Distinct with More Playtime
Once I had a chance to play for a bit more time as each of the characters, I started to really get a feel and grow to enjoy playing as each one available in the beta. A lot of this was mostly helped with the HARM Room missions – the holodeck training environment that unlocks after the first three missions of the beta.
I was surprised how much fun I had playing the first mission, which I did four times – once as the four available characters in the beta. Out of all of them, Black Widow was still my favorite to play: her combat is reminiscent of Tifa in FFVII Remake only with full control of the combos and leaping and fisticuffs. The most fun was divekicking from enemy to enemy continuously in the air – not possible with realistic physics but a joy once you divekick between five different flying characters without touching the ground.
While I had my issues with the other three characters – Kamala Khan, Iron Man, and Hulk – more play time ends up patching up those feelings a bit. But, Hulk not feeling completely like the Hulk at times is concerning.
- Extensive Content for a Beta
Crystal Dynamics needs to be applauded for pumping in a TON of content into this beta. Having four fully fleshed out characters available to try out and level up, along with approximately 20 different missions of about five or six different types, there was a lot available to dig my teeth into. And I will admit, I was hoping to get back and replay a few of the missions again before the beta ended because I enjoyed them quite a bit and wanted to explore a bit more.
The Bad?
- The Initial Mission is a Haphazard Mess
In theory, the mission at the start of the game sounds super cool – you get to jump from Avenger-to-Avenger in a mad-cap race to try to stop the bay bridge from getting destroyed during an attack on the Avengers Day celebration in San Francisco.
In reality, you play so little as each of the Avengers, that you really don’t get a feel for them. In fact, you bounce so quickly between each of the characters that they end up feeling extremely similar. Aside from the aforementioned Black Widow vs. Taskmaster battle, it all just blurs together with the exception of one aspect, which does the work they did to make them play distinctly a massive disservice.
- Platforming and Floaty Controls Bogs Things Down
Emovement and traversal mechanics are so rough, especially in that first mission, that all it does is grinds the game to a halt.
The very first time you jump into the armor as Tony Stark, you are flying around and trying to shoot jet pack baddies and it feels atrocious. The flying itself feels like it doesn’t really have any weight or momentum to it, you’re really just moving a targeting cursor around the screen as Iron Man flies in the foreground trying to target these other dudes that are laying waste to the environment. It is disorienting in this short burst and you don’t really feel like you get a good feeling for it. Fortunately, when I had the opportunity to give him a better test drive in the HARM room and later scenarios, this feels a bit more responsive and I felt like the flight made more sense. Targeting was still a bit of a chore, so I’m not sure if I just needed to get more used to it or if it is rather cumbersome to shoot things when flying.
I also don’t understand the point of having platforming in a mission like this. At best, it is just something to make the player do as the game needs to load the next encounter within that level. At worst, it feels like an imprecise mess that serves no purpose other than to bog down the pacing to a crawl.
Good platforming in a third-person view, as seen in Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order last year, is either a puzzle of getting from point-A to point-B that is rewarding to work out, or a series of options that gives the player a choice as to how to approach it.
Especially in the first two missions of Avengers though, it’s just a stop-gap that doesn’t feel like you ever have complete control over the character. In the first mission, you literally run to the red ramp, jump and either land on the other side or in a cutscene. Then as the Hulk, seeing as you are strong and have huge fists, you can jump and grab onto walls and then hang there and try to wall jump over to the other side, stop and angle yourself towards the end of the pointless platforming.
In the second mission, Kamala Khan’s grapple arms also didn’t feel very precise yet. There are times where it feels I should have a grapple point but don’t, or if I enter a grapple at the wrong angle I have nowhere to land but down an endless pit and to have to wait to spawn and try again.
The only consequence for failing the platforming is you respawn and try the jump/swing again. Failing breaks the immersion the game is going for, and gives no reward other than not getting frustrated. It really feels like the team loved the traversal stuff they did with Tomb Raider and were like “We should do that, but with Avengers,” but never really developed the idea past that thought.
I will say, the traversal and platforming actually does land much better in the first larger environment mission. Sprinting and jumping around as Kamala Khan in the frozen tundra is a ton of fun! And with the platforms going to higher vantage points and some hidden loot locations, it all has a purpose and makes a lot more sense.
Unfortunately, there aren’t many missions that are as wide-open as this mission. In fact, many of them are really just glorified monster closets.
- Mission Variety in Beta was Miniscule
While I enjoyed the HARM room missions and the more open-ended Russia and Eastern Seabord missions quite a bit, the rest of the missions – which are supposedly snippets of the end game content – are fairly limited in scope. These missions were actually of a couple of different types, but they were so similar in design they didn’t distinguish themselves enough for me to tell them apart.
The general design was to start in an entry area made of up a couple of corridors and a main middle room and some side rooms filled with various bad guys for the theme of the mission. Once you finish out that floor, you take an elevator down to the real objective, which will either have your team control some points or do damage to different pieces of the environment until the mission is complete. They were, for lack of a better term, completely underwhelming. They weren’t really difficult at the base level and were quite short and forgettable.
My initial reaction the first time I played one of these in one of the areas was that it was a decent palate cleanser from the other things. But then I played more of them and even though I was in a different part of the world, it just seemed like I was doing the same thing over and over and over again. If this is really a snippet of the end game content, it doesn’t hold a candle to what I hear Destiny 2’s is – and is nowhere near as fun and interesting, or at least as difficult, as I’ve experienced in The Division 2.
- Combat Lacks Impact / Doesn’t Feel Right
Along similar lines, there is something about the combat that just doesn’t feel like it lands as heavily as you’d expect. The melee attacks don’t feel like they have the heft that they should, whether it is with Hulk’s fists, Cap’s shield or Thor’s Mjolnir.
It’s the same thing with the ranged attacks too – a huge-ass boulder should have a significant heft, but it felt the same as Kamala’s extendor-fist or Black Widow’s guns.
It’s some combination of sound, visual and rumble design that just isn’t there yet. And there doesn’t feel like there’s much difference between the types of attacks. Mjolnir is closest to feeling like the God of War’s Leviathan Axe. And Kamala’s arms do have a look like old school Kratos’ Blades of Chaos – but they are just a bit off to me.
In the Pacific Northwest story mission, this goes deeper than just the impact of the blows not resonating. The majority of this mission has you playing as the Hulk fighting against a large amount of baddies eventually leading up to a boss clash with Abomination – a classic matchup.
However, the Abomination boss battle was particularly frustrating. Similar to other enemies, he has heavy, unblockable attacks. When an enemy is making an unblockable attack, there is a red flash around them or on the ground where the area effect is going to happen. Before leveling up, the only way I could really deal with it as Hulk was to dodge roll out of the way. Tell me – has there ever been a time that you’ve ever seen Hulk dodge roll away from anything? One of the first abilities I unlocked was a quick strike after the dodge roll, because it helped to address a weakness.
This just felt wrong. The Abomination fight has a ton of unblockable attacks. Whenever I’d see red, I’d dodge and do a quick attack, which rewarded me with doing a high amount of damage.
That’s when I realized – I was blasting through this fight like I was Black Widow against Taskmaster. It was basically the same experience: see attack, dodge roll, attack quickly, rinse, repeat. And it just felt wrong. Even more oddly, after the fight, Hulk grabs a tank on the wall, brutally smashing Abomination with it multiple times. It felt out of place, though it shouldn’t have, because Hulk is supposed to be about raging and smashing, but it did because I was still in Black Widow combat mode.
The Verdict?
While I enjoyed pieces of the beta, I ultimately decided to take a “wait and see” approach with this game. If this were a single-player experience, I’d probably pick it up near launch and jump in – the game was enjoyable enough and the story intriguing enough for me to justify spending $60.
However, with a games-as-a-service game, it isn’t just a $60 investment; it also entails convincing at least a couple of friends to spend $60 and invest evenings together playing through the game. With this in consideration, the game didn’t impress me enough to try to convince others to put their money, time and faith into the project. I could be wrong, and if so, convincing them in six months to spend less money on a more proven quantity is something I am much more comfortable with personally.
What are your thoughts? Have you played the beta or the final game now that is has launched? Do you agree with my praise or criticisms? Lets converse in the comments below.