What a boring slog full of repetition, a cliché and uninteresting story and exceptionally dull characters. I mean a good handful of the Avengers are a pack of pretty boring heroes to begin with (if we are comparing to the full roster of Marvel creations), but this is a serious low. Thank god Kamala was there to bring this up a notch, but once the repetitive combat and mission structure really kicks in, even she can't save the game. I'd kill for a quality single player story driven game starring Kamala, but I suspect this is probably the only video game love she'll get, sadly.

I'll be up front, I don't love loot shooters. I like loot, I like a grind, but I need more. I don't mind grinding for gear in an MMO like WoW or FFXIV, because I can hang around anywhere in those worlds with groups of friends and shoot the shit wearing my awesome gear. Marvel's Avengers is limited to places like the Chimera and tiny sandbox levels. There's no world, nowhere to hang out, no reason to grind for gear to deck your cool character in stylish duds. It's just a game designed to convince you to commit to a endless and boring cycle in the hopes that at some point you buy cosmetics to replace the generic crap in the game.

Mechanically this is a sound game, and it's not a bad game from that standpoint. But it is devoid of heart and soul, and no amount of loot can compensate.

After enjoying their take on Guardians of the Galaxy and seeing it on a deep sale, I decided to give Square Enix’s Avengers a try. I knew going in this game had a less than stellar reputation, even those more positive of the game were still only giving lukewarm opinions.

The biggest issue with this game for me is it’s set up like one of those Marvel Mobile games. There’s about 5 different currencies to manage and only 2 of them are useful, one of them being the units you have to pay real money for. There’s in game stores that have items for sale for close to ridculous prices. And one thing that personally irked me about those vendors was if you didn’t buy anything their goodbye dialogue would be something snarky or pleading with you to spend money. It felt a little shady. Also, like a mobile game, your character has three different stats that all sorta matter and don’t matter. You have your power level, which is effected only by the gear you have equipped, basically just make sure you always have the biggest number. Of course, any enemy more than a few levels over you is a bullet sponge. Then there’s the traditional exp level system. As you play the game you earn exp and that is used to unlock skills and new moves. Luckily, the game is not as grindy when it comes to handing out exp as I thought it might be. I was able to get a lot of fun upgrades only after a few rounds as a hero.

Even this far out from release, the game is a bit buggy. I had at least 2 crashes and there were several times a new objective wouldn’t load because the last enemy had spawned under the ground, so you’d have to reset to the checkpoint.

The main story campaign I have mixed feelings about. The levels are glorified multiplayer objectives, but at least they are in unique world spaces. Some of them are inadvertently challenging because the map was obviously designed for a 4 player team and you have to complete it solo (looking at you Tony Stark Arc Reactor mission). The actual story is somewhat interesting, but it felt rushed. It’s the kinda superhero story I enjoy where the Avengers have been disbanded and retired after a catastrophe they caused that led to Cap’s death and citizens being mutated. Five years later when a authoritarian company takes over America and begins persecuting mutants, it’s up to Ms. Marvel to “get the band back together”. Dr. Banner is lost in self-pity and sorta believes the Avengers may do more harm than good. Tony goes off the grid and becomes a bitter hermit, Black Widow goes back to doing spy work, and Thor, well Thor got the short end of the stick. He just kinda shows up at the end of the campaign with no real mention of what he does besides help people and doesn’t have a character arc. Of course, Cap isn’t really dead and he shows up to be in the last two levels of the campaign. At least his story makes sense for him to be absent, unlike Thor. The story starts off at a good pace and I really enjoyed the dynamic between the starry eyed Ms. Marvel and the world weary Dr. Banner. Then once they find Tony and Black Widow they story starts speeding up and blowing by plot points like the devs were in a rush to just finish the story. I wanted much more meat.

The voice casting was very… safe. I could see their thought process being, this is the big Marvel flagship let’s get the biggest voice actors in town to be a part of it. Troy Baker does a great Dr. Banner, Laura Bailey is a bit flat, but Black Widow is meant to be a bit of a professional, dry personality. Nolan North was what I considered the oddest choice. I just don’t think of Tony Stark when I hear his voice. I like Nolan North, but it felt like this was a paycheck job for him. He was very bland with his “witty banter” Occasionally a line would land due to North’s natural charisma, but he mostly sounded like a 2nd rate Nathan Drake. I wasn’t familiar with Ms. Marvel’s voice actor, but she did a stand out job. I do wish in game the characters would banter back and forth more. Like the game should be able to realize which heroes are on a team and have at least a few lines of canned banter back and forth so they feel like a team. Instead we just get occasional quips.

The character designs of the heroes were interesting enough, most of them had costumes losely inspired by their MCU counterpart. I did really like their take on Captain America. His outfit had a more of a military/police tactical look to it with a flak vest and shoulder pads. I’m a fan of hero designs that look more grounded. Of course you can buy costumes for your heroes, there are movie versions of costumes available, but they cost $15 in real money. Each hero really has only about 4-5 different costume styles, then each style has 20 different color variations.

The one big highlight I will give this game is it is fun to play. No matter what, there is a certain childish joy of getting to run around as Cap whacking people with a shield or tossing people around as the Hulk. I do think the Hulk could use a bit more health or damage resistance, because I think of Hulk as the character you use to get into the thick of it and just wail on everyone, the tank basically, but he’s a bit of a glass cannon. I get it’s likely a balancing thing, but I’m playing Hulk for the power fantasy. Still, in general the heroes all feel good to play. They all have a very similar basic move set, but each has just enough variation thanks to whatever makes them special, like Cap’s shield, Thor’s hammer, or Hawkeye’s bow. While a lot of the bigger enemies are bullet sponges, the rank and file are fun to fight and there’s a good counter system implemented. Move sets are easy to learn and you can get real crazy with them when you master a character, Black Widow especially can get fun. Getting to play online with a team of heroes is just fun cool. I do wish there was some type of tag team attacks implemented, again to make things feel more like a team.

The fun combat does help bolster the rather uninspired level designs. Get ready to fight through the same three versions of a science facility. The few levels that are set in outdoor environments or cities are a welcomed change. Those levels are usually a bit more open ended and allow a little more open world-esque exploring. I’d love more world spaces like that. This game also has the PS4 Spider-Man problem of, there are only about 3 boss battles in the whole game and they aren’t spaced out well. You fight two villains in the first few levels, then it’s nothing but robots until you fight MODOK at the very end. I wonder if Marvel has a sorta exclusivity clause like DC did where they were only allowed to use certain villains who weren’t slated to be in another movie or TV show. Given the nature of this game, the boss fights aren’t super great though, just lots of button mashing on a bullet sponge, so maybe 3 is enough.

All in all, I have to agree with most that this game is a little too “mobile game predatory”, and there’s a lot not to like about this game, but there’s something about the actual gameplay that is fun and keeps me playing this game longer than I expected. Getting to play as my favorite heroes also probably helps with longevity. I’d say this game is only worth it if it’s on a deep sale.

As a big fan of the new Tomb Raider trilogy, I was interested in this game. Oh well...

This has a shell of all the things that made that series fun but seems to be lacking optimization and polish. The way you traverse through the levels during the curated sequences is like an echo of the best part of TR's (Tomb Raider) level design. But, as I said before, lacking polish. Falling through environments, assets not loading, level geometry not being bound correctly, loading being lengthy... just a lot of little annoyances that really add up.

The combat is whatever and while the graphics are mostly nice it feels like the whole thing is going to crash at any moment, possibly because a few times it crashed when too much was happening on screen.

The more open stages are dull and same-y with redundant "objectives" that make it easy to just want to skip them and focus on critical path of the main story. A story I actually did enjoy.

I think Kamala is a great performance and well-cast unlike the rest of the avengers. I really liked pretty much all her scenes. I just wish it was served by a better game.

I'll start this off by saying, I love this game, and I have played just over 400 hours of it. I have every character leveled to 50, and 6/11 at the highest gear level possible. I play it just about every day, and it's my live service game so I keep up with it pretty religiously.

All that said, this is a very frustrating game that makes you wade through some serious problems in order to get to that point where you love it. I've gotten to that place and am still frustrated almost every time I fire it up.

Seeing that, you might wonder what it is that keeps me playing. You might even think I'm in some kind of unhealthy relationship, but I can assure you my joy is genuine.

I'll start with the good. As a Marvel fanboy, I've played most of the Marvel games out there from all eras. Marvel's Spider-Man on the PS4/5 is one of the greatest games ever made, and that it stars my favorite superhero is pretty unbelievable. I loved the Guardians of the Galaxy game despite not really liking that group very much. I recently played through the original Ultimate Alliance game, which I'd have loved if not for the motion control frustration. Marvel's Avengers tops all of those for me, and it's largely due to its ensemble nature, and the simple fact that this game makes me feel like a big, strong, badass superhero more than any of those others. I can walk or fly into a group of enemies and play with them like they're action figures, tossing them around and in general making myself feel strong. The combat in this game is fun, probably more fun that it has any right to be. It can be both simple and incredibly complex. There's a battery system that takes a lot of knowledge to use properly, but when you do, and it clicks, you really start to get what makes this great. The set pieces, while insanely re-used, are great, and the heroes themselves and remarkably fleshed out, from their combat styles to the endless, beautiful costume work that the team keeps producing (and yes, charging for).

If that's all I had to say about this game, I'm sure it wouldn't receive nearly as much flak as it does. Many people are initially turned off by the multiplayer, games as a service nature of the game, and I sympathize because when it came out, I felt the same way. I played through the demo for it a month or so before release and thought, "this is just some arena combat stuff, where's my grand Marvel adventures?" You aren't wrong to think that. Unlike some other games, this grand adventure isn't readily apparent. You aren't flying off to Asgard or going to hell to fight Mephisto. It's slightly more grounded than that. The big bad is AIM, and then later Klaw when you get to Wakanda. That said, the campaign actually is that grand adventure, and tells a really touching story about Kamala Kahn and her journey to becoming a hero (and in turn bringing together the Avengers again).

So let's say you get past the live service, charge for cosmetics aspect and start enjoying the game for what it is. You are soon hit with two things - the repetitiveness of its missions and the glaring, game-breaking bugs. I have very little to argue against if these are your criticisms. These are a big deal. Content is lacking, and while we've had two solid expansions in the two years since its release, and a lot of updates and content changes, you are largely doing the same thing over and over when you play, but that's what online games do. Tell me Destiny or FFXIV doesn't do the same and I'll call you a liar.

For me, all of that is forgivable if I'm having fun and feeling heroic. Where the unforgiveable stuff comes is in the myriad of different bugs you'll encounter, and also the dev team's strategy when it comes to dealing with those bugs. Crystal Dynamic seems to prefer fixing beneficial bugs to fixing the ones that make its players mad and break the game, and that's really frustrating. They also often won't acknowledge some bugs, or do so much too late, and their methods of communicating with their playerbase leave you thinking that they don't want people to play this game. As a for instance, the big endgame content is the Klaw raid, which can take about an hour to complete and isn't necessarily easy unless you're cheating or have a full group of people using mics and actually communicating. If a player drops from the raid, gets disconnected or just leaves, that's it. You're done. There's no join in progress matchmaking, and there are bottlenecks that require 4 players pressing buttons in tandem to continue. There's also no checkpointing if you get a raid-breaking bug, which often happens at the VERY end, to get you back to where you were. The fact that I've managed enough successful raids to get 6 characters to max gear level is kind of a miracle.

That's just one example. If I listed all the bugs, I'd have a book on my hands here.

So, obviously this game is a mixed bag. I'm not even sure I can recommend it, but I know that I love it, and it has brought me more joy over the past two years than most any other game. Take that for what it is.

Optional Music to listen to whilst reading: Farewell - from Spider-Man (Danny Elfman)

Avengers is one of the most conflicting games I've played this year. This is mostly down to the fact that I wanted it to be so good, I have so much love and affection towards the marvel universe and many fond memories as a kid watching the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man movies etc.

At its core Avengers has some good elements going for it. The ability to play an array of heroes is great. The combat and super powers available, whilst relatively basic, are quite fun and with enough upgrading can offer enough variety to keep you engaged. The semi-open world levels are a good idea in conept (more on that later).

Where I struggle to get on board with this game though is the lack of polish and the half baked ideas that seem to be littered throughout the game. For example the campaign is okay, it has some nice set pieces, but it is merged with the online 'war table' mode in a way that makes it feel tacked on. Mission selection is done via the war table and you'd be forgiven for wondering if you were about to enter an online game. But thats the problem with Avengers, it was only really meant to be one thing - a looter based PvE experience.

Playing Avengers only makes you long for a truly open world super hero experience. It's almost like the game is giving you tasters of what it could have been. There are times where your group are running towards a bunch of enemies, you all jump into battle and it feels epic, but then you realise you're still within a linear mission, the enemies are often bullet sponges with levels and pointles gear RNG grinding. The flying heroes speed are capped so that the non flying heroes can keep up, and the missions themselves are extremeley repetitive even to the point where the singleplayer reused the same enemy base... the whole experience feels like its confined in a box, unable to reach its full potential.

My feedback? Take inspiration from hero games that have come before and that have had positive reception. Make it open world, remove the gear system (or make it actually meaningfull, give it a cosmetic element etc), and let people live out their true hero fantasies. If they had done those things people would have flocked to the game and would no doubt be more than happy to pay for some cosmetics, or whatever the publishers wanted them to shell out for.

I hope in the future that publishers and developers treat these kinds of IPs with more care and give them the love and respect that they deserve. People have grown up with these franchises, laughed, cried, and smiled. The least they deserve is a homage to the marvel universe in true superhero fashion. Take some notes from Insomniac, they know how to do it best.

"The Internet" just can't get over the fact that this looks like an off-branded Marvel Cinematic Universe game, and they refuse to actually look at the game underneath all of the cosplays. If the Marvel movies didn't exist, I honestly think that people would generally like this game.

I've really only played the main single player campaign, and I actually thought it was pretty fun. Gameplay feels somewhat similar to God of War 2018 with its skill tree of ever-expanding movesets. Much like GoW, it takes awhile for the moveset to feel like more than just button-mashing the same attack over & over. One drawback of the single-player campaign is that you never really use a character long enough to really get the hang of their those movesets (with the exception of Kamala Khan, whose constant-fangirl dialog gets a bit grating after a few hours).

I played on PS5, and aside from the Adaptive Triggers (which were strong enough that I had to put down the controller to rest my fingers at least once), it didn't seem particularly "next gen". I also ran into more bugs than I'm used to on console games (cinematic scenes where character voices never played, and UI menu options with missing text).

While I can't say I was entirely hyped by Modok as the big-bad, the story did have plenty of cool, cinematic-feeling moments. Also, there appears to be a decent amount of post-campaign content with some compelling storylines to sink your teeth into. My original intent was to sell this game after beating the campaign, but I think I'll hang onto it for awhile and dip in and out of it.