I've never really played collectible cards games. I did read the Magic The Gathering comicbooks, does that count? I also dabbled with the Vs. system fifteen years ago or something, but that was it. No Magic, no Hearthstone, no Gwent, nothing. Then everybody was talking about Marvel Snap, I saw how developers talked about it and I got curious. Plus, I almost don't read them anymore but I have a lot of knowledge and affection for Marvel comicbooks and I like not having to actually buy the cards. So I donwloaded it and, well, it's how I imagine being crack addicted is. I played it more than any other game in I don't know how much time. I went back to constantly playing a multiplayer game like back in the day of sports games on the first two Xbox consoles. Anytime I have a few minutes to waste, I squeeze a game in. After a more "casual" beginning, I started curating many different decks and I use all of them. I went so all-in that I decided to create a set of rules to limit daily playtime. After three months I noticed I am playing a bit less but the reduced playtime is not comparable to what usually happens with other mobile games. So yeah, I love it and I think I will play it a lot for at least a few more months, even though I can see myself giving it up in the future.

Now, I understand these can be troubling games because of the monetisation system, but I'm having a lot of fun without paying a single dime (and I gotta say I would have been fine if paying a fee was mandatory, considering how many hours I spent on it). But sure, people who tend to go on spending sprees should be very careful.

I played A LOT of Hearthstone in my school days, too much really, even if I eventually got tired of it and haven't played it in several years. So I can't say I was all that interested when I heard about this game given I haven't felt that itch and I'm not all that into Marvel. But alas, a couple friends got super into it and I figured I'd give it a try so I could follow at least some of those conversations.

I think the game does a pretty good job at what it's trying to do. The good thing about heavy-RNG games is that randomness can be fun and exciting and it makes the iteration of playing games more varied even when playing the same deck. This tends to come at the obvious cost of predictability that more skill-reliant games require. But neither side of that continuum is a bad thing, there's simply a trade-off. The randomness definitely helps to make the game more casual and easy to grind out games without feeling bored or like you've seen it all. Getting screwed by RNG can be irritating, but it also takes some of the sting out of losing. Though there's certainly skill and strategy to the game as well. Your decks are also very small, just 12 cards, making deck-building quick and quite simple. Additionally, the game is tailored to super short iterations with matches you can finish during a 5-minute wait in line or a waiting room. These factors combine to make a fairly capable casual experience and that's probably the best thing about it. If you're into Marvel, there are cards for a wealth of the too-many characters in those universes (or multiverses, whatever) so you can play your favorites assuming you happen to pull them.

My biggest issue with SNAP is that I just don't find the game all that engaging. As I said, I'm not really a big fan of the underlying IP and while I wasn't really much of a Warcraft fan either, the fantasy setting, classes, and comedic charm still appealed to me a lot more with Hearthstone. The gameplay is okay and I appreciate the ability to play several games in very little time, but I don't find the super simplistic and RNG-heavy gameplay all that fun these days. This is primarily because I think I'm just kinda played out on this kind of thing from those Hearthstone days and it has little to do with the game itself. That makes it kind of hard to review this since it's not even "taste" so much as I'm just over this style of game.

The only major separate and specific criteria I'd judge it negatively on is that while the gameplay and rules are quite simple, there are a lot of cards in the game already and I find that really overwhelming. The way you earn them is also really weird and based on how much you play and a bit how much you pay. The unlock method mitigates the risk of being totally pay-to-win by basing your ladder opponents roughly on your collection level more than your rank. So if you spend a bunch of money to unlock cards, you won't really have much advantage since your opponent should have roughly an equal collection. In some ways you're at a disadvantage to people who earned more by just playing given they'll have a leg up in experience. So you're more paying for options, though there's definitely plenty of opportunity for microtransactions, unsurprisingly for a f2p game. But anyway, I consider this a bad thing because, while having a ton of cards is a good thing in a lot of ways, I do find it really overwhelming since the vast majority have an ability of some kind so there's a lot out there to keep track of for such a young game. When my friends link screenshots of a close game they just finished or a super wonky play, I basically understand it about as much as I would if I'd never played the game given I don't know what almost any of the cards in play do. Again, the collection level matchmaking mitigates this from being a significant gameplay issue so I probably shouldn't care, but it does still bug me feeling so weirdly overwhelmed by "what's out there."

Something I'm not really sure how to rate but feel I should note is that the ladder weirdly includes bots. The game is mildly deceptive about this as there's no clear indication they're bots unless you know some criteria to look for that give them away. This has one benefit in that there are very minimal queue times and, in my experience, you get a match very quickly, which is all the more important for a game you may pull out to play just one game during a 5 minute break. But it is at least odd that the game is kind of deceptive about this, despite it being a well-known fact in the community. Further, it just takes away from the game some to know that sometimes you're playing an ai.

Overall, I think if you're into Marvel and/or a casual card game like this sounds interesting to you, this is probably worth a try and I might recommend it on that basis (unless you're prone to spend a ton of money on this sort of game, then STAY AWAY). It does a pretty good job at the things it's aiming to do and I don't really have a ton of criticisms in that regard. I think for a lot of people it's going to be a blast and an easy 5 stars. For me though, I think it's barely 3 stars at best and I don't see myself playing it much more.

Marvel snap stunts player creativity, insults it's players intelligence, and use manipulative psychology to pressure people into spending money.

The "it has no lootboxes so it must be good" is a complete fabrication. Overall, Marvel Snap is yet another exploitative mobile game: built on the meticulous cultivation of suspension of disbelief.

There are two elements of the monetization that are bad:

One

First, the structure of the game forces you into a ranked que. The game rewards you for wining games in the ranked que.

Now that you are playing ranked all the time, your rewards will be based on your ability to win. There is no other que. As the game is so simple, you are seriously limited by how powerful your deck is. This means that once you plateau at a certain rank, you will start to lose.

So, You need to gain better cards to climb further and get more rewards quicker. Thus, you are motivated towards a "collection level," it will take a person months and months of daily play to unlock the best cards as a free-to-play player.

There are overlapping currencies that hide the use of money to progress collection level. I'm fairly certain in a decade or so this type of monetization will be illegal.

The fact that you can't see the next card in the collection level also means that the game is effectively using a lootbox mechanic.

Two

The cost of the cosmetics are unnecessarily high - they make the battlepass seem like it has value - which is also priced very high. A single variant has the same cost as an indie game, a meal out or 3 packs of Pokémon cards.

I very rarely give 1 star reviews.

I'm taking the third star away because the game started me off against bots without telling me. Really poor form. I'm taking the Second away from a monetization model that is built on abusing the very thing I love about gaming, letting me get lost in a world so I can forget about the real world for a time.

Overall, a fun game on a fundamental level, marred by aggressive psychological manipulation - manipulation that is hiding behind the façade of a good ethics.