08/13/2020 PS4 Open Beta - minor spoilers for the first few hours of the game
Crystal Dynamics’ Marvel’s Avengers wants to be a lot of things: a Destiny-style PvE loot grind, an Uncharted-tinged highly scripted action game, a God of War reboot-esque brawler, all enclosed within a new take on the Marvel universe ala Insomniac’s Marvel’s Spider-Man. If it did even one of these things well, it could’ve been worthwhile, but to call it a jack-of-all-trades would be an overstatement, as that implies a level of competency in the game’s variety of aims which it often doesn’t reach.
Being a team game, Black Widow has to be equally viable to the Hulk or the God of Thunder for co-op to work properly, even though that balance often undercuts what makes these heroes compelling in the first place. Which is where, in theory, the single-player levels come in. Locking the player to a specific hero allows the developers to cater the level design to their abilities and showcase what makes each character unique… you would think. However, aside from the occasional Hulk platforming sections that make Uncharted look masterful, the levels appear haphazardly thrown together without a particular character in mind.
The animations are lifeless, cutscene direction is bland at the best of times, the writing is bad both in terms of dialogue and overall plotting. The quicktime events feel unintuitive, and the transitions from cutscene to gameplay and back are woefully inelegant. Despite an all-star voice lineup, the lack of in-depth characterization ends up making it feel more like the Uncharted 4 cast cosplaying as marvel characters than it does a proper Avengers story. The art style very much looks like a knockoff of the first MCU Avengers film from 2012, which itself was not exactly the most visually compelling Marvel adaptation. In a world where even the homogenous cinematic universes have the occasional Aquaman or Guardians of the Galaxy, this feels sorely lacking in style.
The structure here is a real problem. The intro level gives you a taste of each character, but it’s not really long enough to give you a feel for any of them, and after this point the game locks you to Hulk and Kamala for the next 2 hours or so. The opening puts an emphasis on saving civilians and grounding the Avengers in this world, but this is mostly dropped afterwards, with all the following missions being totally devoid of civilian life (maybe this comes back in the full game later, though). It also transitions rather abruptly from the “A-Day” defeat of the opening level (I don’t think colloquial names for catastrophic terrorist events are supposed to rhyme), with a laughable cutscene comprised of the camera panning over stills of the sequence as if didn’t bother to animate the storyboards. On the one hand, this may be jarringly structured because certain things are edited out for the beta, but on the other that could mean even more time before the game properly opens up in the final product.
You’re not able to do co-op until you’ve cleared the 3 story missions available, which took me around 2 and a half hours or so, though I was doing other things in between so you’d probably be able to rush through it faster if you stay focused. It’s a really strange structural choice when the main draw of the game is playing superheroes with your friends. The narrative, itself not very compelling, is overly restrictive to the gameplay structure, locking out most of the cast for the main section of the beta, locking out co-op, and furthermore, Thor and Captain America aren’t playable for the remainder of this demo. Captain America “”dies”” offscreen in the opening level, so I’m assuming this major playable character is going to be locked off for the first half of the game or so in service of a dumb story decision. Not sure why Thor isn’t here, he’s even present on the radio in one of the side missions so I suppose they’re just holding him back for the full release, I don’t know.
(EDIT NOTE: The third story mission does allow co-op, though I couldn't find anyone online when I first played it, and as far as I recall you don't unlock Iron Man and Black Widow until after you finish it)
In future, Hawkeye and Spider-Man are also apparently being added, but for now there’s just these core 6, only 4 of which are really present in the beta. Yes, Spider-Man will be only on Playstation, but with how much this game is biting from ps4 exclusives Square probably had to make a deal with Sony to avoid getting sued (also I wouldn’t be surprised if he makes his way over to other platforms a few months later). Every aspect of this game, from the combat, to the visuals, to the loot elements, to the story structure, to the setpieces and story-driven exploration segments, to the humor, are thoroughly lacking and have been done far better by the games and films Avengers is so blatantly taking from.
Crystal Dynamics’ Marvel’s Avengers wants to be a lot of things: a Destiny-style PvE loot grind, an Uncharted-tinged highly scripted action game, a God of War reboot-esque brawler, all enclosed within a new take on the Marvel universe ala Insomniac’s Marvel’s Spider-Man. If it did even one of these things well, it could’ve been worthwhile, but to call it a jack-of-all-trades would be an overstatement, as that implies a level of competency in the game’s variety of aims which it often doesn’t reach.
Being a team game, Black Widow has to be equally viable to the Hulk or the God of Thunder for co-op to work properly, even though that balance often undercuts what makes these heroes compelling in the first place. Which is where, in theory, the single-player levels come in. Locking the player to a specific hero allows the developers to cater the level design to their abilities and showcase what makes each character unique… you would think. However, aside from the occasional Hulk platforming sections that make Uncharted look masterful, the levels appear haphazardly thrown together without a particular character in mind.
The animations are lifeless, cutscene direction is bland at the best of times, the writing is bad both in terms of dialogue and overall plotting. The quicktime events feel unintuitive, and the transitions from cutscene to gameplay and back are woefully inelegant. Despite an all-star voice lineup, the lack of in-depth characterization ends up making it feel more like the Uncharted 4 cast cosplaying as marvel characters than it does a proper Avengers story. The art style very much looks like a knockoff of the first MCU Avengers film from 2012, which itself was not exactly the most visually compelling Marvel adaptation. In a world where even the homogenous cinematic universes have the occasional Aquaman or Guardians of the Galaxy, this feels sorely lacking in style.
The structure here is a real problem. The intro level gives you a taste of each character, but it’s not really long enough to give you a feel for any of them, and after this point the game locks you to Hulk and Kamala for the next 2 hours or so. The opening puts an emphasis on saving civilians and grounding the Avengers in this world, but this is mostly dropped afterwards, with all the following missions being totally devoid of civilian life (maybe this comes back in the full game later, though). It also transitions rather abruptly from the “A-Day” defeat of the opening level (I don’t think colloquial names for catastrophic terrorist events are supposed to rhyme), with a laughable cutscene comprised of the camera panning over stills of the sequence as if didn’t bother to animate the storyboards. On the one hand, this may be jarringly structured because certain things are edited out for the beta, but on the other that could mean even more time before the game properly opens up in the final product.
You’re not able to do co-op until you’ve cleared the 3 story missions available, which took me around 2 and a half hours or so, though I was doing other things in between so you’d probably be able to rush through it faster if you stay focused. It’s a really strange structural choice when the main draw of the game is playing superheroes with your friends. The narrative, itself not very compelling, is overly restrictive to the gameplay structure, locking out most of the cast for the main section of the beta, locking out co-op, and furthermore, Thor and Captain America aren’t playable for the remainder of this demo. Captain America “”dies”” offscreen in the opening level, so I’m assuming this major playable character is going to be locked off for the first half of the game or so in service of a dumb story decision. Not sure why Thor isn’t here, he’s even present on the radio in one of the side missions so I suppose they’re just holding him back for the full release, I don’t know.
(EDIT NOTE: The third story mission does allow co-op, though I couldn't find anyone online when I first played it, and as far as I recall you don't unlock Iron Man and Black Widow until after you finish it)
In future, Hawkeye and Spider-Man are also apparently being added, but for now there’s just these core 6, only 4 of which are really present in the beta. Yes, Spider-Man will be only on Playstation, but with how much this game is biting from ps4 exclusives Square probably had to make a deal with Sony to avoid getting sued (also I wouldn’t be surprised if he makes his way over to other platforms a few months later). Every aspect of this game, from the combat, to the visuals, to the loot elements, to the story structure, to the setpieces and story-driven exploration segments, to the humor, are thoroughly lacking and have been done far better by the games and films Avengers is so blatantly taking from.