With Marvel's Avengers being removed from digital storefronts at the end of September, I figured the game was worth revisiting beforehand just to see the full game on its own merits in lieu of every version now being re-branded 'The Definitive Edition'. Having done so, unfortunately, it's easy to see why and how things have gone this way for Crystal Dynamics. I truly believe there's a solid game hidden here, but the amount of dull loot constantly filling your inventory and the inane gameplay design make the good parts incredibly hard to find.
The base story campaign, 'Reassembled’, is a decent, if familiar, Marvel caper with Kamala Khan, aka Ms. Marvel, at the helm as she brings Earth's mightiest heroes back together after a major catastrophe effectively disbands the Avengers for good. Kamala makes for a charming lead, albeit excessively irritating at times in that adolescent kind of way. The dialogue is more miss than hit, especially in terms of comedy, but there are some good narrative beats and moments to be found here and there.
The biggest highlight for me when it comes to narrative has to be the individual character interactions when wandering the Chimera. There is some nice, unique dialogue between the various heroes that's honestly worth watching YouTube videos of on their own to get a sense of the care that was put into paying respect to them that was otherwise scarcely found throughout the rest of the game.
The same, although perhaps slightly less so, goes for the three DLC campaigns, which include the expansive 'War for Wakanda', which is a lot more pretty to look at and run around in than it is to play, thanks to some bizarre difficulty spikes. With how much work was put into this campaign in particular, it's a shame I had trouble with some missions due to the difficulty, as there is a solid standalone story here, if not a little derivative of the MCU Black Panther movies.
But yes, all of that aside, gameplay-wise, Crystal Dynamic's Avengers is indeed a mess, and it's no wonder things have been that way for them since releasing it. It's a multiplayer live-service game that really could have been simplified and made single-player (perhaps with optional multiplayer as well).
If you go into the 'play now' option from the main menu, which one would assume is the start of the main story, you're dropped into the post-game with every character unlocked and countless missions and notifications available for you. It's no wonder people get overwhelmed and tap out. Unless you really treat it like a single-player beat-em-up, it becomes more of a chore than the satisfying hero brawler it should be.
Take away the 'gear' and 'hero power level' and keep the skill tree (at least the main one), and you've already solved most of the problem. There's too much shit to keep track of at any given time, and not much of the content outside of the main story campaigns is worth investing all that time into, as it gets incredibly repetitive and regurgitative very quickly.
Marvel's Avengers isn't just an example of how not to do a live-service game, it's the answer to why you shouldn't. There's some solid content here, but there's so much unnecessary, exhaustive crap in order to get to it that it's probably not even worth it in the first place.
Oh, Marvel's Avengers, you really could have been fun.
4.5/10
The base story campaign, 'Reassembled’, is a decent, if familiar, Marvel caper with Kamala Khan, aka Ms. Marvel, at the helm as she brings Earth's mightiest heroes back together after a major catastrophe effectively disbands the Avengers for good. Kamala makes for a charming lead, albeit excessively irritating at times in that adolescent kind of way. The dialogue is more miss than hit, especially in terms of comedy, but there are some good narrative beats and moments to be found here and there.
The biggest highlight for me when it comes to narrative has to be the individual character interactions when wandering the Chimera. There is some nice, unique dialogue between the various heroes that's honestly worth watching YouTube videos of on their own to get a sense of the care that was put into paying respect to them that was otherwise scarcely found throughout the rest of the game.
The same, although perhaps slightly less so, goes for the three DLC campaigns, which include the expansive 'War for Wakanda', which is a lot more pretty to look at and run around in than it is to play, thanks to some bizarre difficulty spikes. With how much work was put into this campaign in particular, it's a shame I had trouble with some missions due to the difficulty, as there is a solid standalone story here, if not a little derivative of the MCU Black Panther movies.
But yes, all of that aside, gameplay-wise, Crystal Dynamic's Avengers is indeed a mess, and it's no wonder things have been that way for them since releasing it. It's a multiplayer live-service game that really could have been simplified and made single-player (perhaps with optional multiplayer as well).
If you go into the 'play now' option from the main menu, which one would assume is the start of the main story, you're dropped into the post-game with every character unlocked and countless missions and notifications available for you. It's no wonder people get overwhelmed and tap out. Unless you really treat it like a single-player beat-em-up, it becomes more of a chore than the satisfying hero brawler it should be.
Take away the 'gear' and 'hero power level' and keep the skill tree (at least the main one), and you've already solved most of the problem. There's too much shit to keep track of at any given time, and not much of the content outside of the main story campaigns is worth investing all that time into, as it gets incredibly repetitive and regurgitative very quickly.
Marvel's Avengers isn't just an example of how not to do a live-service game, it's the answer to why you shouldn't. There's some solid content here, but there's so much unnecessary, exhaustive crap in order to get to it that it's probably not even worth it in the first place.
Oh, Marvel's Avengers, you really could have been fun.
4.5/10
2 Comments
Happy to help! I’m generally against games getting delisted, but in this particular case, it’s easy to see why they felt Avengers was not worth keeping, even as a cash cow.
cowboyjosh
8 months ago