Marvel’s Avengers Review

Somewhere, wedged deep into the recesses of this troubled effort, is a good Avengers game. More specifically, there's a great Ms Marvel game – the focus on Kamala Khan, the polymorphic powerhouse who's been one of Marvel's best new comic characters of the last decade, is far and away the best aspect here. Unfortunately, they're both overwhelmed by bland mechanics and the worst excesses of Marvel's games on mobile and social platforms.

The good, first. The storyline is strong, focusing on Ms Marvel's quest to reunite the Avengers after a public event five years earlier lead to the apparent death of Captain America and the fall from grace of Earth's Mightiest Heroes. Kamala herself is great to play as, her mixture of stretching and strength based powers making her feel like a cross between Spider-Man and the Hulk. Slightly unfortunate then that the Hulk himself is also playable, feeling like a less agile tank in comparison, but for the most part the rest of the roster feel unique to play as, whenever the game cycles them into your control. Iron Man's flight and targeting of enemies is a touch fiddly, but mainly because it's so distinct, feeling more like an old-school space shooter.

Voice acting and capture performances are uniformly great, too. The game may lack the likeness rights to Scarlett Johansson, Robert Downey Jr, Mark Ruffalo, and Chrises both Evans and Hemsworth, but Laura Bailey, Nolan North, Troy Baker, Jeff Schine, and Travis Willingham (respectively) do excellent jobs capturing their costumed alter-egos, while Sandra Saad infuses Kamala with the giddy excitement and teenage uncertainty that the ingénue hero possesses.

It also looks stunning throughout, particularly on a 4K HDR screen. Frankly, if the cutscenes and storyline of Avengers' single player campaign were strung together, they'd make for a great, thrilling CG movie, especially with the big, cinematic moments thrown in along the way.

Unfortunately, the actual mechanics of play largely get in the way of its better aspects. While the combat is, broadly, fine, it also feels very similar to the Dynasty Warriors series, simply batting aside enemies while waiting for gauges to fill up to unleash special moves. There are RPG elements, allowing you to unlock and level up more powerful abilities, but for much of the game, simply hammering out basic light and heavy attacks does the job. Doing this for the roughly ten-to-twelve hours of the campaign will dull the senses of even the most ardent Marvel Zombie.

The greater problem is that Avengers into a service game like Destiny, with constant drops of new characters and power-ups to keep players hooked. That loop – play, get gear, level up, play more – feels directly drawn from some of Marvel's more gratuitously grind-focused games on other platforms.

The first warning sign should be the inclusion of the wretched "Iso-8", a resource introduced in 2012's Facebook game Marvel Avengers Alliance, used as a way to enhance heroes' abilities. It's since poisoned nearly every Marvel game with any competitive element, particularly mobile ones. Here, it's just one of dozens of crafting resources and power-ups that turns playing the game into a dreary hunt for better stuff. Along with the inevitable torrent of additional DLC heroes – both Hawkeyes, Clint Barton and Kate Bishop, are confirmed, Spider-Man will be a PlayStation exclusive, Black Panther has already been teased, and the game hints at Captain Marvel so clearly she may as well be on the cover – it feels like microtransactional hell waiting to burst forth.

Ultimately, it's hard to gauge who this game is for. The core roster, absent only Hawkeye, leans towards an audience familiar only with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but narratively the game leans heavily into comic book territory – a not unwelcome decision, in itself – but with some references, characters, and even collectibles that are such deep cuts they feel alienating to... the people drawn in by the movie similarities. It's a horrible ouroborous.

It's sad to see how widely Avengers{=nofollow} misses the mark, especially when Spider-Man exists as a template for how to structure a Marvel game that doesn't feel like it's solely designed to nickel-and-dime players for extra content, or tie power-ups into an artificially scarce resource. The solo campaign may be worth a look for comic fans, but otherwise this is largely a disappointment.

Buy Marvel's Avengers on Amazon.{=nofollow}