Gameplay itself is actually pretty fun, if a little lacking in depth, but there's just very little to do here. The modes and features that make these games work for me just aren't here yet. Cool that they actually got the team licenses for the first time (though the rom I played was a European version that only had international teams), definitely a marker of things to come, but it isn't really there yet.

update: managed to find the US version. the playoff mode is a bit more in depth than I thought, and I just had a quadruple overtime game against the Nordiques so I'm bumping it up a star.

Every step forward comes with a caveat. The terraforming grants you greater freedom than ever, but you don’t get it until like 20-30 hours in, long after you’ve gathered all your residents and planned out your infrastructure. The only thing you can dig up this time is fossils. There’s more freedom in how you plan out your town, but it also takes way longer to get even basic stuff like the clothing store, and there’s far less permanent vendors and locations than New Leaf in general. You can put stuff outside now, but it comes with a shitty crafting system that also makes your tools break multiple times per session if you play for any length of time.

Not only do you then have to make a new tool, but you have to make the “flimsy” version to then make the proper one, and there’s no way to make things in bulk or automate the process or anything that would make the whole thing less tedious. One of the worst crafting systems I’ve seen in ages. The phone is a neat idea but there’s ultimately not that much you can do with it. Conversations with villagers feel robotic and repetitive compared to former entries, though they’ve been getting better with updates. Lots of game-as-a-service type trends like daily challenges that just don’t really add much to the game.

Ultimately, it’s still Animal Crossing, and there’s definitely good times to be had here. Once you get all the “endgame” stuff around 30hrs in it’s a decent enough time killer. But the the slow drip feed, both in terms of progressing your game and in the adding of content (most of these games have shipped feature complete and you could mess with your consoles clock to see stuff from other seasons and such, but they’re being added bit by bit through updates here), and the general lack of features compared to New Leaf makes this a somewhat underwhelming entry.

Played for about 10 hours. Story is pretty good so far, visuals are impressive, but the design is at war with itself even more than most rockstar sandboxes. The mission design is restrictive to the point of failing you even when you're trying your best to follow the script. The setpieces mostly feel like poorly executed uncharted clones which is strange because GTAV and rdr1 were mostly ok in terms of interaction if a little underwhelming from a spectacle standpoint. The weightiness of the movement and over-indulgent animations are worse than ever. Didn't try the multiplayer.

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.

Starts ok, with an interesting world and more balanced tone than the first. As it goes on, it doubles down further and further on the worst aspects of its design. One of the worst shooters I've ever played. Barely function auto-aim, with single stick shooting that makes Goldeneye look like high level Counter-Strike (other third person shooters that were available on ps2 at the time: Max Payne, SOCOM 2, Ratchet and Clank: Going Commando, 007: Everything or Nothing). The level design is awful. The story is neat but most of the missions just feel like filler and the plot structure is convoluted and nonsensical, mostly just people telling you to go to the place and grab the thingy that might be important later. Put about 12 hours into it and got through the second baron boss, but I just can't be bothered to finish it.

A step up from the first one in pretty much every way. On top of the vastly increased level of detail, far more naturalistic animations and character models, better lighting, and improved gameplay camera, the New Orleans-inspired setting of New Marais is far more colourful, varied, and lively than anything in the first game's drab New York City analog. The sound design and score are far better here, as well. Most importantly, it runs much better than the first game, still dipping an unfortunate amount but it’s in the mid 20s more often than not which is a huge step up. Again, a remaster would definitely be appreciated.

Cole's voice actor has been replaced, which initially bothered me but Eric Landin's performance grew on me as the game went on, in the end surpassing Jason Cottle from the first installment. The writing and voice direction is a huge step up in general, even from the returning actors, moving beyond just the bare minimum of periodic, awkward exposition dumps to keep the that the first had. The faux handheld camera style of the cutscenes adds a much needed visual personality to the narrative presentation, combined with the far improved animations making for some genuinely great moments (I quite like this scene in particular, seeing what characters do in their down time is always an effective tool to flesh them out and make them more relatable: https://youtu.be/VStkpB22_zw).

Zeke is actually somewhat charming here, still a flawed person but he feels like he really cares about Cole which the first game didn’t convey all that well. There’s a central villain who is actually kinda developed, and instead of each section of the game having a separate villain faction with its own leader barely connected anything, the various factions spring out from this main villain as the plot moves along, adding even more enemy variety while cleaning up the disjointed structure of the last title. The supporting cast is far more fleshed out than the first game, and there’s some levity sprinkled throughout that makes it far more engaging than the grimdark nonsense of the previous game. Cole even makes jokes once in a while. It’s still mostly self serious, but the added colour and energy make it feel so much more alive and the emotional beats hit harder as a result.

The morality is far more nuanced, too. Though there still are some very silly binary choices sprinkled throughout, the major narrative ones feel like believable approaches to achieving your goals instead of just playing a moustache-twirling maniac. This feeds further into the powers now as well, with many of the good side upgrades even giving options that minimize collateral damage. There’s a narrative choice about halfway through the game that gives you a brand new subclass of power type in addition to your electricity, distinguishing the karma paths even further, with drastically different arsenals available by the end of the game. On top of the enemy variety, this makes the already solid combat of the first game even better. Missions are more varied, the side missions don’t have weird police brutality shit for no reason, the different districts are not only visually distinct but also have varying architecture; all in all it’s a much better game to play.

It’s certainly not a perfect game. There’s some issues with getting side missions to appear when going for full completion, and the dead drop audio logs get interrupted whenever you do pretty much anything and then require you to dive back into a menu to activate them again, which became tedious to the point where I stopped caring about them even though they have interesting background information. The UI for when you beat a mission is still annoying and intrusive even if it doesn’t actively stop you from playing the game like the first one did. There’s major physics bug which will cause you to clip through an object and instantly die (this has happened to me multiple times within the same boss fight, though luckily it goes both ways and I’ve dispatched some minibosses in this fashion), and of course the aforementioned framerate issues are no small annoyance. The camera, while an improvement, still blocks your view sometimes and glitches out in tight spaces. Otherwise, though, almost every aspect of this title is a massive step forward from the first game, and it made me care about characters and a world I was completely univested in before, while looking, running, and playing better to boot. And it has a grappling hook.

How did this come out in 2009? It looks and feels like a ps3 launch game, complete with a lame sixaxis gimmick, framerate that struggles to hit 20fps most of the time, constant pop-in (seriously, cars and geometry sometimes didn’t load until they were like 30 metres away), and animations that make Morrowind impressive by comparison (for instance: https://youtu.be/O1P3GBG05Vg?t=53), jerking around like malfunctioning animatronics and with facial animations that basically consist of the bottom jaw moving up and down like a sock puppet. It’s hilariously bad and it makes the serious scenes impossible to take seriously. The colour scheme is that monotone, washed out grey and brown that was so popular at the time, and the lighting is so simplistic that the game feels lifeless most of the time. The dialogue is also terribly written, with stilted delivery that sounds like each line was recorded at different times and the actors never actually saw each other face to face. How was this released in the same year as Uncharted 2, adjacent to GTA IV and Red Dead Redemption?

Thankfully, most of the story cutscenes are rendered in a stylish graphic novel inspired style to sidestep this issue, but it’s still incredibly jarring whenever the game cuts back to in-engine cutscenes. The story is convoluted nonsense that has you going around beating up homeless people and engaging in police brutality, while you help the NSA use the Patriot Act to keep people safe (this is the good path). More specifically, there are these escort missions where the game doesn't let you cuff anyone, even though you have a previously established infinite lightning cuff power, so that you have to beat up the prisoners to make them fall in line (https://youtu.be/XNHSUzUB-CU?t=871).

There are somewhat interesting ideas about the government manipulating people and the conflicts being driven by a class divide, but it’s so disconnected from how the game’s binary morality directly rewards you for falling in line with the powers that be that it totally misses the mark. The choices are also mostly really stupid extremes, like “do you want to murder innocent sick people in a hospital or save them and become a literal messiah?”. Every time you make a major karma choice, the game pauses for 5 seconds to tell you the thing you did, and there’s no way to turn off or skip this notification. I know it doesn’t sound a lot, but there’s a lot of these moments and it adds up over time.

The instant you finish a mission, a pop-up appears and the game pauses, often triggering before the mission’s dialogue and cutscenes are even wrapped up. Everytime you clear a district by finishing a side mission, the game cuts to the map screen (the one element of the game with a consistent framerate), slowly zooms in on the area, tells you you’ve cleared it, and then lets you play again. These weirdly intrusive UI elements add nothing to the game. The power upgrade trees are another underdeveloped idea, mostly giving you wider AOEs on your attacks, which is really frustrating on the good run because it makes it harder and harder to not hurt civilians.

The gameplay is the real saving grace here. Aside from all the other problems I mentioned, the shooting and traversal is a lot of fun (even though the collision detection for the parkour is pretty jank at times). I could easily see my score on this going up to a 2.5 or maybe a 3 if it got a proper remaster. There’s a solid amount of variety in both your abilities and the enemy types, as well as the city setting affording tons of verticality and traversal options. Pretty much everything else here is doing the bare minimum to funnel you back into exploration and combat encounters, because that’s the one thing this game does nail quite well. It’s a shame this game is such a technical disaster, because there is a decent core gameplay loop here at the very least, but it’s buried under so many problems that it's hard to appreciate much at all.