The first thing you see when loading up Marvel's Avengers is mostly indicative of the entire experience. An unintuitive menu, behind which is a wall of content that holds much promise, but delivers a bombardment of shallow and repetitive missions instead.
At first glance, this wall of content seems like a good thing, until you realise that most of this content consists of shallow missions with the same objectives that have been reskinned and replaced from other areas of the game.
I'm glad I came late to this game so I didn't have to deal with the live-service issues as they were happening, and I got all of the extra content for free! I like the costume roster, which contains a plethora of (now) free cosmetics which range from great, to some truly awful original costumes. Nevertheless, they are great fun to mix and match while playing as your favourite heroes.
The actual gameplay itself is serviceable enough in itself, the characters control pretty much how you would expect them to, and the heroic power fantasy survives just long enough until you encounter enemies who should be crushed under the weight of a single Hulk-Smash, yet turn out to be merciless punch-sponges. I would imagine playing in easy mode would keep the power trip going a little longer, but the gameplay quickly becomes repetitive and grind-y.
Grind-y is also a great way to describe the achievement list that accompanies Marvel's Avengers. I definitely like a good achievement hunt, but when I see multiple achievements requiring hundreds of levels, collectibles, mission completions and the like, I get sincerely turned off. Clearly the developers thought they would have a dedicated player-base for years to come, and yet it is so easy to understand why many a player would have fallen off after completing the main campaign.
Speaking of the campaign, I actually was intrigued and mostly invested in the reassembling of the Avengers in the aftermath of a disaster. I think this is quite an interesting place to meet this version of the team for the first time. I just think it's a shame that the team are divided for more of the game than they are united, I wanted an Avengers team-up power fantasy game, not the separate adventures of 6 heroes featuring even further separated adventures in the DLC.
The team-up idea is let down even further by the actual gameplay. There is nothing akin to teamwork within this game - sure, you can take companion Avengers with you on missions, but you can't work together to tackle objectives, they mainly throw punches at the same punch-sponge enemies you've been fighting the whole way through the game. There are no tactics, ideas, or great thought that can be put into these fights; the enemies don't require strategy, just punch 'n' shoot. I'm rather glad that I played Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy first because at least now I know what this game could have, and should have been.
Marvel's Avengers is basically worth checking out for a one-and-done superhero romp. You'll get your power fantasy, but it will be short lived in spite of the sheer mountain of content slopped onto your plate. Just enjoy the short campaign while it lasts, and next time we'll all know better than to get our collective hopes up years in advance for an Avengers game.
At first glance, this wall of content seems like a good thing, until you realise that most of this content consists of shallow missions with the same objectives that have been reskinned and replaced from other areas of the game.
I'm glad I came late to this game so I didn't have to deal with the live-service issues as they were happening, and I got all of the extra content for free! I like the costume roster, which contains a plethora of (now) free cosmetics which range from great, to some truly awful original costumes. Nevertheless, they are great fun to mix and match while playing as your favourite heroes.
The actual gameplay itself is serviceable enough in itself, the characters control pretty much how you would expect them to, and the heroic power fantasy survives just long enough until you encounter enemies who should be crushed under the weight of a single Hulk-Smash, yet turn out to be merciless punch-sponges. I would imagine playing in easy mode would keep the power trip going a little longer, but the gameplay quickly becomes repetitive and grind-y.
Grind-y is also a great way to describe the achievement list that accompanies Marvel's Avengers. I definitely like a good achievement hunt, but when I see multiple achievements requiring hundreds of levels, collectibles, mission completions and the like, I get sincerely turned off. Clearly the developers thought they would have a dedicated player-base for years to come, and yet it is so easy to understand why many a player would have fallen off after completing the main campaign.
Speaking of the campaign, I actually was intrigued and mostly invested in the reassembling of the Avengers in the aftermath of a disaster. I think this is quite an interesting place to meet this version of the team for the first time. I just think it's a shame that the team are divided for more of the game than they are united, I wanted an Avengers team-up power fantasy game, not the separate adventures of 6 heroes featuring even further separated adventures in the DLC.
The team-up idea is let down even further by the actual gameplay. There is nothing akin to teamwork within this game - sure, you can take companion Avengers with you on missions, but you can't work together to tackle objectives, they mainly throw punches at the same punch-sponge enemies you've been fighting the whole way through the game. There are no tactics, ideas, or great thought that can be put into these fights; the enemies don't require strategy, just punch 'n' shoot. I'm rather glad that I played Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy first because at least now I know what this game could have, and should have been.
Marvel's Avengers is basically worth checking out for a one-and-done superhero romp. You'll get your power fantasy, but it will be short lived in spite of the sheer mountain of content slopped onto your plate. Just enjoy the short campaign while it lasts, and next time we'll all know better than to get our collective hopes up years in advance for an Avengers game.