Superhero-As-A-Service
When Crystal Dynamics first announced that they would be stepping away from developing the final entry in the rebooted Tomb Raider trilogy in order to work on an Avengers-related title, many initially expected the same kind of treatment that they afforded Lara Croft. The studio is known for making large story-driven campaigns that place the character at the forefront and wow players with gorgeous, Hollywood-like set pieces. The transition seemed natural, moving that same style of game to Marvel’s Avengers franchise, which has been packing movie theatres for the last decade.
Only when Square Enix’s promotion of the game began to circulate did the cracks begin to appear in the veneer. Through early gameplay announcements and teaser trailers, it became clear that the design plan for the simply-titled Marvel’s Avengers was actually a game-as-a-service — less Rise of the Tomb Raider, and more akin to Destiny 2 or The Division.
Developer interviews outlined a multiplayer game that would let players team up in four-player open world skirmishes. Unlike the campaign-driven Marvel Ultimate Alliance games, Marvel’s Avengers would have a central hub where players could invite friends to drop-in/drop-out of their own game to complete repeatable unconnected mission types for the goal of acquiring ‘Gear’. This element was key; Marvel’s Avengers would be a “looter”, and players would strive to collect incrementally better gloves and belt buckles for the sole purpose of increasing a “power level.”
The core Avengers team are playable within the game’s campaign
In an interview with gfinityesports, Scot Amos, head of Crystal Dynamics, said:
“This is the biggest thing we’ve ever done, and it’s an incredible responsibility and challenge. We had to assemble a large team internally and externally to take on this challenge and have multiple parallel pipelines of content being created and supported for new platforms. It’s a staggering machine that has taken us years to build. It’s transformative for how we make games now and into the future.”
Anyone with experience of the games-as-a-service model would be right in expecting a game of this kind to be filled with micro-transactions, expansion packs, daily challenges, season passes and cosmetics. Marvel’s Avengers made very clear from its early marketing how this would all play out, and players of the early access beta build would confirm the extent to which it applied. All of Marvel’s Avengers micro-transactions are tied to cosmetics; in the form of skins, emotes, and nameplates. These items can be unlocked through a lot of repetitive grinding and the game’s “challenge cards”, essentially a battle pass. In-game currency can be spent on cosmetics individually, or to progress the challenge card for those without the patience to grind the hard way. It reached a point where Square Enix had to publish a guide to explain the game’s micro-transactions fully.
Exclusively Disappointing
One point that the Marvel’s Avengers teams were clear to make throughout the promotion of the game was that expansion packs (in the form of additional Avenger characters and story content) would be free. This was met with a positive reaction from players accustomed to the idea of forking out additional money (on top of the game’s asking price) to gain access to regular downloadable expansions and season passes. Any players worried that their favorite Marvel hero might be missing could seemingly live in the hope that Crystal Dynamics would eventually include them at no extra cost beyond the initial purchase of the game.
This welcome announcement didn’t take long to turn sour. Square Enix and Sony heavily promoted the exclusive addition of Spider-Man as a playable character only available on PlayStation 4. For players on PC and Xbox One, there was no recompense or alternative offered. Their game would cost exactly the same as for players on PS4, but with less content in the long run.
In the same month, it was also revealed that owners of products/services from Verizon, Virgin, Intel and 5 Gum(!?) would receive exclusive in-game skins. A different set of exclusive skins were also offered to owners of the Deluxe Edition of the game, as well as three days’ early access to the final release of the game. Again, Square Enix published a guide for the various versions of the launch game.
Skins made exclusive to users of Virgin, Verizon or Intel services
The final gut punch came in the form of an announcement made just days before Marvel Avengers’ release. Those aforementioned free character expansions would not grant access to those character’s challenge cards unless players dropped £10/$10 to unlock them first. So whilst the new character and its story will remain free to any owners of the base game, any of the associated cosmetics are locked behind a pay-wall, a pay-wall which will still require the usual grinding to unlock items even after the purchase!
It’s understandable if a number of fans were dismayed at the litany of announcements from Crystal Dynamics and Square Enix over the run-up to the release of Marvel’s Avengers. It’s also understandable if many saw fit to cancel preorders or to wait for the presumed “Complete Edition”, which might include all of the pay-walled content at a later date. Square Enix and Crystal Dynamics did a terrible job promoting the strengths of their own game during the run-up to its release, instead of focusing on what they presumably perceived as the game’s longevity and its value to shareholders as a money-making device.
News posts leading up to September 4th, 2020, were heavily influenced by publisher decisions to make exclusive partnerships and monetization methods. What they should have been talking about was how awesome it feels to summon the Bifrost Bridge as an offensive weapon, or to drop the Hulkbuster onto an unsuspecting A.I.M Trooper’s head. They should have mentioned the excellent story arc of the often-overlooked Kamala Khan, or Captain America’s parkour wall running, or how good Troy Baker sounds as the skittish Bruce Banner.
Ms. Marvel leads the charge in the Marvel’s Avengers campaign
Campaign for Pleasure
Now, a week after the game’s release, stories are beginning to trickle out about how good Marvel’s Avengers is as a single-player campaign. Reviews are starting to uncover how the game pulls no punches and delivers on a roster of well-written and excellently performed personalities, bombastic and gorgeous set pieces, and a story packed with twists and turns that at least equal its Hollywood cousin. If you are a fan of Marvel story-telling and its world of super-powered heroes and comically evil villains, then you won’t be disappointed with the writing work in Marvel’s Avengers.
Loot-based “Gear” is pointless and repetitive but is entirely overshadowed by the more interesting RPG-style Skills unlock trees and the sheer volume of available abilities for each of the six playable heroes that makes levelling-up a genuine pleasure. Throughout the campaign, players get to experience sections with each character as they are logically and excitingly introduced into the story.
The S.H.I.E.L.D Helicarrier acts as a central hub, not unlike The Tower in Destiny 2 or the White House in The Division 2, but here it is integral to the story being told and becomes a growing, evolving space relevant to the actions of the characters in the plot. Walking around the Helicarrier feels like exploring the Normandy in a Mass Effect game, with items and NPCs interactable for unique voice lines to flesh out Crystal Dynamics’ take on the superhero world — and, of course, to drop in a few ‘Easter eggs’ for Marvel aficionados.
The forces of A.I.M are the only enemy in the game at launch
Outside of the base of operations, traversing the game world feels great — whether it’s using Ms. Marvel’s stretchy arms or Black Widow’s grapple to swing from trees and platforms, or flying around for a bird’s eye view with Iron Man or Thor. Combat itself is addictive. There is a genuine heft to Hulk’s massive slams and throws, and regardless of how you build his abilities, there is no doubt that Hulk smashes. Iron Man is the floating swiss-army knife of explosive weaponry that you’d expect, and Thor’s hammer Mjolnir feels reminiscent of Kratos’s ax in God of War, returning when thrown like a lethal magical boomerang.
The main enemy through Marvel’s Avengers is Advanced Idea Mechanics (a name clearly designed in order to use the acronym A.I.M). Enemy types are diverse, from troopers and robots that can freeze, warp, or engulf you inflame, to adaptoids that force variety in combat attacks or giant spider-like robots. However, there’s a recurring theme here — everything in Marvel’s Avengers is a variety of robot or A.I.M trooper, and within the confines of the story campaign, it gets pretty old pretty quickly. The Marvel Universe is absolutely bursting with unique villains and enemy groups, and it’s disappointing to see Crystal Dynamics rely so heavily on slight variations of the same enemy throughout its 15-hour campaign and ‘live’ multiplayer component. The game features just six bosses, and three of those are robotic A.I.M vehicles. It’s a minor blemish on the game’s campaign, and one hopefully resolved by some variety in enemies in future expansions.
Dual Identities
The other major factor negatively impacting the story campaign of Marvel’s Avengers is the games’ inability to decide what kind of experience it wants to be. At various points in the story, mandatory multiplayer missions gate players as part of the campaign. These missions, a taster of how the multiplayer end-game plays, can’t be skipped but can instead be played with A.I companions if the player wants to play the whole story in single-player.
Hulk feels strong and powerful – as he should!
This is the recommended play style, as coordinating with a group of friends to reach the exact same point in the story (so as to play it multiplayer) is more hassle than it’s worth, and the game does little to reward doing so. In fact, at other times, the story naturally locks the player out of the War Table in the central hub areas for narrative reasons, meaning that the player finds themselves unable to rejoin the multiplayer elements that have been opened up until completing the story section they’re on. Cut scenes and dialogue voiceovers regularly interrupt the flow of play during the campaign, too, again discouraging play with friends despite opening up a host of multiplayer missions mid-story. The result is that by the time you reach multiplayer end-game content, you’ve already experienced a majority of it for the first time solo.
Marvel’s Avengers feels like a game split down the middle — and I speculate that Crystal Dynamics wanted to craft the story-based RPG-lite blockbuster campaign that they were known for, whilst publisher Square Enix (and its agreement with Marvel Games) insisted on a multiplayer live service that would best maximize the profitability of the license.
Whilst understandable from a purely business perspective, the decision to mix the single-player and multiplayer components was less so. They have tried and failed to emulate Destiny 2 in having a story-driven campaign and multiplayer open world seamlessly blended into one core experience, whilst at the same time trying to keep their multiplayer element separate for players who don’t want to feel locked out by a lengthy story. At times, it feels as though the multiplayer missions were only included mid-campaign for the sole purpose of padding the run time, and they proved needless to the otherwise excellent story sections.
Ms. Marvel is the star of the show in the story campaign
These multiplayer mission types — as well as rotating timed missions, daily and weekly challenges, faction quests (kill X enemy type, complete X number of missions) — all make up the core gameplay loop of Marvel’s Avengers‘ multiplayer “Avengers Initiative” component. Sadly, after completing the campaign, there is nothing new to see here. Environments are reused (expect to see the same A.I.M facility a dozen times each play session), enemies and bosses are repeated from the campaign, and a shoestring story is tacked on to each War Table mission. The multiplayer quickly becomes rote and repetitive.
Conclusion
Marvel’s Avengers is as much a product of differing business agendas as it is of its ill-conceived advertising and press. Those agendas have influenced the marketing, though, and it’s clear when viewed through the lens of a publisher why the single-player campaign has been downplayed in the game’s coverage prior to release. As the EA Games president was once infamously quoted regarding single-player games, “That model is finished. Online is where the innovation, and the action, is at.”
Square Enix clearly followed this sentiment with the development of Marvel’s Avengers, but the excellent work of Crystal Dynamics has proven the lie within the statement. The single-player story campaign is absolutely the best part of Marvel’s Avengers, and I can’t help but sit and wonder how much better it might have been if not for all of the other focuses that the game has been forced to endure. If it’s still possible to ever recommend a AAA game at its full retail price, I can emphatically recommend Marvel’s Avengers to anyone purely for the enjoyment of that campaign. You might need to ignore all of the other busywork, in-game sales pitches, and the bizarre coverage you’ve seen online.
