The promise of a big-budget multiplayer Avengers game sounded too good to be true when it was announced at E3 last summer, and as the details came out many were rightfully skeptical. A live service loot 'em up with repeatable missions, raids, and an endless grind may sound like the trappings of another failed attempt to build a Destiny 2-style game, but Marvel's Avengers boldly forges its own path into the living-world genre without relying too heavily on mechanics and systems of other similar games, for better or worse. Avengers suffers by trying to be everything for everyone instead of delivering an experience that feels purposeful and complete, yet shows great promise for its future as a living game.

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A Focused Campaign With A Lot Of Heart

I'm of two minds about the story mode in Avengers. Kamala Khan, otherwise known as Ms. Marvel, plays the leading role in this tale of super-team reassembly. She begins as a non-powered girl invited to an Avengers celebration event as a finalist in a fan-fiction contest. She couldn't be a more perfect audience surrogate. Her overwhelming joy is infectious and seeing the Avengers in all their glory through her eyes is so much fun. As she faces challenges and grows into a bonafide hero, that journey is rewarding with emotionally charged moments that feel earned. The story isn't exceptional or even particularly memorable, but Kamala absolutely is, and not enough can be said about how significant this kind of representation is and just how expertly Crystal Dynamics nailed her character. All of the performances are strong, but Kamala really stands out.

My qualms with the campaign mostly come down to its length and how poorly the systems designed for post-game fit into the story mode experience. Depending on how you look at it, the campaign is either too long or not long enough. By the time credits roll, half the characters will only have been required for a single mission, there's only a single mid-boss fight and a final boss, and it all wraps up rather abruptly with a strong "to be continued" ending. It isn't a full triple-A-standard narrative campaign, but it's also too long to be considered a tutorial-style campaign that introduces all the systems and mechanics. I think this game deserved a longer, more fleshed out campaign with a complex narrative that has the Avengers going up against a colorful cast of their most famous villains, rather than a ten-hour campaign that is very obviously just Act One of a much bigger story. The campaign exists in service to the live service experience they're building, which will ultimately leave players only interested in the core story experience feeling unsatisfied.

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There's no greater example of this than in the vendor system introduced during the campaign. There are three different gear vendors each with a messy assortment of gear randomly arranged for all six heroes. You can start spending your hard-earned resources on purchasing and upgrading items during the story, but why would you? Gear drops constantly and it's always an upgrade (up to level 130), so why spend materials on a level 17 piece when the next chest you open will have a level 19 piece? With everything I saved through the entire campaign, I could only afford about 3 pieces of gear, yet I'm encouraged to start buying items before even unlocking all the characters.

There's a disconnect between vendors and gear in the story mode that only starts getting better in the post-game. Gear, in general, doesn't feel like it fits well into the story mode, and you can quickly get locked into using the same character through the whole thing as the power level for each new mission increases, leaving characters with lower gear behind.

Meaningful Combat Experiences (In Multiplayer)

A lot of my reservations about the game before playing have thankfully been put to rest, the most important of which being the combat. A game that hopes to keep people playing for the long haul can't succeed without thoughtful combat and varied, challenging content and, after about 20 hours of smashing the same ten robots, I'm actually still having a blast. The six characters feel very different, meaning it's necessary to adapt to the strengths and playstyle of each one in order to master them. Because each has their own strengths, multiplayer sessions can be incredibly rewarding for coordinated teams.

It's a bit of a cop-out to say the game is more fun with friends, but the thing I like most about the game is just how satisfying it is to fight alongside your friends and pseudo-role play your characters from a tactical perspective. Iron Man can fly and auto-target enemies with lasers, so he's best suited for dealing with turrets and drones flying above the other characters. Meanwhile, Ms. Marvel has fantastic support abilities with her healing power and her High Five power that can push enemies away, so she is best suited to back up the brawler types like Hulk and Thor.

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Linear Loot System

This is where my major concerns for the long-term success of the game still lie. I'm a Destiny 2 player, so I'm no stranger to the rush of serotonin you get from making a number go up, but because I'm a jaded Destiny 2 player, I also know that's not going to be enough to keep me interested.

The gear system is going to need a major overhaul before this game is the hobbyist endless grinder it wants to be. Every activity rewards multiple pieces of upgraded gear until you reach 130. After that, there are daily boss missions to do that reward special keys for unlocking chests in vault missions to earn upgrade materials for max level gear. There are also heroic missions that have a chance to drop exotic gear. After repeating those 3 activities — and really only those 3 — for a few days, you'll be done. You can do this for every character, but with no more harder content to pursue, it might not be worth the time.

And The Bugs...

Holy heck is this game buggy. There a whiff of half-baked content in campaign, particularly in the awful subtitles, but the bugs start coming at you non-stop in the post game. Everyone I play with on PC crashes constantly and we hit game breaking bugs almost every other mission. Luckily a restart from checkpoint option saves us most of the time, but there are just some many little frustrating problems.

Other players will lose their icon in the world or turn invisible, interactable objects don't work, enemies become invulnerable or spawn under the map, players fall through the world or get flung into outer space, unlocked skins get deleted, the battle pass won't progress, daily missions don't reset, the list goes on and on. Most critically, other players can not see Iron Man's laser beam attacks, he just hold his arm out and things explode.

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Hesitantly Happy

I'm resisting as much Destiny comparing as I can, but a five-hour campaign with a more robust end game would have set Avengers up for clearer player expectation at launch. This is a game that will evolve constantly and hopefully have a long life, and it's going to be difficult to encourage new players to jump in when there's a ten-hour campaign to complete first.

Every looter struggles in the early days, and it would be naive think a studio that's never made a game of this type before would nail it right out of the gate. That being said, it's already in way better shape than I ever expected it to be at launch, and, most critically, the combat — particularly in multiplayer — is an absolute blast. I'm hopeful, and I'll be sticking around to see where things go from here.

A PC copy of Marvel's Avengers was provided to TheGamer for this review. Marvel's Avengers is available now on PC, Stadia, PS4, and Xbox One.

marvel avengers game
Marvel's Avengers

Marvel's Avengers brings together the best of the comic books and the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Players can assume the role of more than ten superheroes, and must take on the nefarious A.I.M. corporation in both single-player and multiplayer gameplay.

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