Keeping in mind that this whole experience was colored by a $0.99 Playstation Now trial that gave me access to the full game essentially for free during that trial, I have to say Marvel's Avengers is one of the great tragedies in all of video games.
I can't speak to how the expansions have been going, but on paper I don't see how they could be disappointing. All four of the core characters are their own form of fun - Thor gives you some God of War action, Captain America is one of the cooler brawler characters in a long time, Iron Man does a weird kind of Anthem/Uncharted mash-up thing while Hulk is, well, Hulk - and Ms. Marvel is Hulk Too! The variety at the core of Avengers' gameplay is admirable, especially considering there's a 12 hour campaign in which only one of the characters is playable for most of its duration. That's talent!
Also, without any need to go into it because enough people have done this, the campaign is Pretty Good, Actually. That's all.
Unfortunately, it's all the bullshit grafted onto this game that curses it. Which is strange because I know people who've really enjoyed Marvel Ultimate Alliance and Marvel Heroes - in other words, a Marvel heroes game with season pass content, skins, new episodes of story content and whatnot should be a no brainer. Contrary to a lot of popular takes, I think an Avengers that cribs from Destiny and Destiny-likes makes a LOT of sense!
But the way this game does it is just so not the move. For starters, because there needs to be a carrot at the end of the stick, these heroes enter the endgame portion grossly underpowered and underleveled. It renders much of the initial missions a real bog, not unlike the opening hours of an MMORPG where you catch yourself daydreaming of the fireworks and spectacle of the sizzle trailers as you wail away on rats in an arid desert field.
But don't even think about trying to play on a harder difficulty to gain XP faster and get those cool abilities as quick as you want because this game is bizarrely hard for a superhero power fantasy ostensibly intended to reach as broad an audience as possible. Sure, don't hang your 25 year-old über gamers out to dry with Lego-level simplicity, but this is really a game you can imagine a 10 year-old enjoying? No, no, no!
Beyond that, wow, so many currencies and things to ponder at any given moment. I can't even get into that, though that's in no small part due to having played this game three-quarters of a year ago as much as how convoluted it all is. My last gripe is that the game is irrevocably buggy - I counted at least five instances in which I was loaded into a level, which WAS populated with baddies, only it wasn't populated with the specific enemies related to the mission we'd launched. This meant our squad could traverse the bland cityscape or underground bunker in search of flunkies and dunk on them for hours on end if we wanted, only eventually we'd have to force quit the mission and sacrifice all XP and progress because that's, unfortunately, just the way it goes in Marvel land.
Again, there's actually a sneaky fun action brawler in here, especially when it comes to Thor and Captain America. The absolute core of this game flirts with being "fantastic" without any imbued irony - unfortunately, it's rooted in toxic soil and filtering noxious air, dead on arrival due to a confluence of mishaps and misguided ambition.
In a perfect world, Crystal Dynamics would be able to perform the sort of emergency surgery on this game that benefitted previous infamous flops like No Man's Sky, Final Fantasy XIV or Rainbow SIx: Siege, but at this point I just don't see it happening.
I can't speak to how the expansions have been going, but on paper I don't see how they could be disappointing. All four of the core characters are their own form of fun - Thor gives you some God of War action, Captain America is one of the cooler brawler characters in a long time, Iron Man does a weird kind of Anthem/Uncharted mash-up thing while Hulk is, well, Hulk - and Ms. Marvel is Hulk Too! The variety at the core of Avengers' gameplay is admirable, especially considering there's a 12 hour campaign in which only one of the characters is playable for most of its duration. That's talent!
Also, without any need to go into it because enough people have done this, the campaign is Pretty Good, Actually. That's all.
Unfortunately, it's all the bullshit grafted onto this game that curses it. Which is strange because I know people who've really enjoyed Marvel Ultimate Alliance and Marvel Heroes - in other words, a Marvel heroes game with season pass content, skins, new episodes of story content and whatnot should be a no brainer. Contrary to a lot of popular takes, I think an Avengers that cribs from Destiny and Destiny-likes makes a LOT of sense!
But the way this game does it is just so not the move. For starters, because there needs to be a carrot at the end of the stick, these heroes enter the endgame portion grossly underpowered and underleveled. It renders much of the initial missions a real bog, not unlike the opening hours of an MMORPG where you catch yourself daydreaming of the fireworks and spectacle of the sizzle trailers as you wail away on rats in an arid desert field.
But don't even think about trying to play on a harder difficulty to gain XP faster and get those cool abilities as quick as you want because this game is bizarrely hard for a superhero power fantasy ostensibly intended to reach as broad an audience as possible. Sure, don't hang your 25 year-old über gamers out to dry with Lego-level simplicity, but this is really a game you can imagine a 10 year-old enjoying? No, no, no!
Beyond that, wow, so many currencies and things to ponder at any given moment. I can't even get into that, though that's in no small part due to having played this game three-quarters of a year ago as much as how convoluted it all is. My last gripe is that the game is irrevocably buggy - I counted at least five instances in which I was loaded into a level, which WAS populated with baddies, only it wasn't populated with the specific enemies related to the mission we'd launched. This meant our squad could traverse the bland cityscape or underground bunker in search of flunkies and dunk on them for hours on end if we wanted, only eventually we'd have to force quit the mission and sacrifice all XP and progress because that's, unfortunately, just the way it goes in Marvel land.
Again, there's actually a sneaky fun action brawler in here, especially when it comes to Thor and Captain America. The absolute core of this game flirts with being "fantastic" without any imbued irony - unfortunately, it's rooted in toxic soil and filtering noxious air, dead on arrival due to a confluence of mishaps and misguided ambition.
In a perfect world, Crystal Dynamics would be able to perform the sort of emergency surgery on this game that benefitted previous infamous flops like No Man's Sky, Final Fantasy XIV or Rainbow SIx: Siege, but at this point I just don't see it happening.