Marvel Avengers Beta - For Your Consideration Vol.1

Marvel Avengers Beta Impressions

Preface: Hey guys, so this will be my attempt at an impressions piece but also more where I talk about heads and tails about a certain game that is either at open/closed beta or at their alpha stage. Even adding details like extra future content, roadmaps, development process and so on. I'll probably post a full-on review of this game and the ones in the foreseeable future at their respective release dates

The beta for Crystal Dynamic's Avenger title is finally here or was since it ended yesterday. After playing it for several hours, the experience was ahh...mixed. Note though, I have a lot to say about this, good and bad, and maybe something inbetween all that besides the fact that they all look like rental versions of their movie counterparts. Bad facsimiles of them of course.

Avengers is a game made from culminations of years of work from both Crystal Dynamics with assistant production from Eidos Montreal starting from 2015. Before all this, Eidos Montreal released Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, a game with a questionable content release map involving the segregation of game's overall story content for, well, financial gain. End result was well, bad. With Square Enix's blessings, instead of working on the next Tomb Raider(Shadow of the Tomb Raider), the studio decided to work on making a live service game based on the titular Marvel team. This won't be the only Marvel game from Square either for future references.

So here we are, almost a month from release. The game is finally cooked in the oven, if said oven say had issues with the heating and didn't get proper maintenance. Marvel's Avenger is quite something, it is an ambitious co-op game that is following several formulas from Anthem, Destiny and Warframe. Except while those games were very flexible in terms of mechanics and game design philosophies, Avengers kind of left me questioning its existence. It is stated though that part of the game is single-player only experience as well and the co-op missions make up the other bulk with the two aspects working in tandem. You can play the entire game alone, then again, that wouldn't exactly be fun would it?

Ok, time for the talking points.

Avengers, Assemble!

Within the first hour, you're introduced to the team and thrust into battle against invasive force on A-day. You play as each of them within small segments of set pieces, playing each of them, I figured it's mostly a hybridization of 3D brawler and some other genres. Like Black Widow can go full Tomb Raider with dual pistols and fire while aiming. Iron Man can hover and fly just like in Anthem, shooting repulsion beams while in flight. Thor takes out multiple enemies like they're ragdolls and do some God of War tricks with his hammer. So yeah, basically the gist being; it's mostly a derivative. Actually no, the proper term would be "inspired". Not that the game is doesn't do much unique in and of itself, it does goes to length convincing of how awesome it is.

Not gonna lie, the insane 30 minutes I played of this game pretty much had me going. Even if they took ideas from the games and most of the Marvel rosters had similar moves and control schemes, it seemed like it was really going somewhere. Not only that, but I kind of dig some of the main heroes here(except Kamala, the fangirling isn't working for me). They got stellar presentation with great voice acting to back up. Honestly if this was the entire demo in and of itself, I would have been convinced this could be GOTY. Here's the footages I've recorded just so you get the idea:

Combat is pretty straight-forward yet tricky to master. Here are the controls from the PS4. You have two special abilities(both R1 and L1), an ultimate ability(R1 and L1 together), you can aim with L2 and shoot/throw with R2. R2 is also used for parrying. Square is for light attacks, triangle is heavy attacks which both can be used in combo, circle for dodging and X is for jumping around. You can run pressing L3. Target lock by pressing R3. The combat is pretty button smashy but there are tactics involved and you need to utilize your abilities for mostly special situations that do need it so its not all about giving what you got.

Now this part of the beta is considered to be the prologue to the main game, what happens later is where 5+ years have passed since the A-day incident and now you're playing as Kamala and Hulk mainly, you scour through what's left of the Avenger's outpost before trying to reunite the rest of their teammates. And this is where the ugly side of the game starts to unravel really fast.

Avengers, Reassemble?

I don't know how the game got lost within itself after this section. From here on out, Kamala and Hulk steps into A.I.M facility in order to retrieve JARVIS back. And so, you play as both characters pummeling the lights out of the bad guys. Sure, but as I was playing, the game's camera was started being a complete jerk. There were times it got frantic in small levels that the camera got instantly close and reverted back. Worse is the shaky cam, that might have worked for the Avengers films, Paul Greengrass and Michael Mann but certainly not this game. The animation is also a bit spotty, controlling the Hulk was irritating sometimes, I get that he's big but that's no design compromise if you can't balance it out properly.

The game is fun though, playing Kamala was alright even if similar to everybody else's. But what I've later realized is that this is their basic kit and that the only to unlock cool new moves and such is the skill tree. You have to play the game, earn experience and leveling up earns you skill points. These new skills unlock new crazy moves but also allows someone like Iron man to use laser beams instead of repulsion beams.

And then there's the technical issues. The framerate drops are almost. Visual downgrades have hampered my experience with the allure of the early presentation itself pretty much gone. Not saying it's bad overall and that the first hour was bait and switch, but it was obvious to tell that this did not get proper optimization and QA testing that it needed.

Shortly right after this section of hers was done, got to playing Hulk to fight up against Abomination. This boss fight even though it was pretty easy pretty much got my adrenaline pumping hard. Like you can play this game at various difficulties but the fights being intense and so engaging was also another convincing aspect of the game. This could seal the deal for me to buy one copy myself. Then again, am dubious about its condition at launch. If not for the fact that this game runs abhorrent and the bevy of bugs surrounding this game, would have been a resounding purchase. But then there are other problems around the surface. Pretty serious problems.

Stay Tuned for Vol.2

Right, so this here's my first part out of 2 that I'll be fully releasing. As of now, most of this was from the PS4 beta playthough and unfortunately it ended. Fret not though, the beta for the Xbox One and PC is coming out soon at the 21st. I will adding details about its mission structure, future content, divulging into the "serious problems" ordeal and more.

Also bit of personal message for you guys, am hoping you can provide some help in these dire times. My computer isn't aging well at all, first my RX 570 just died, least am able to RMA it. But my motherboard is also having problems like the RAM slots dying out. Only one of them is working. The warranty for it expired this year and it seems I might have to change the board itself to something new. I've always wanted to upgrade to modern Ryzen builds but only to do that, I need more currency. Things aren't good for me in this pandemic and I hope to keep writing, it's been great for the past 4 months here. I've wanted a lot more stuff like a good capture card for the consoles and a Nintendo Switch(blasted pricing). I hope you like the content am currently posting, I will also continue with the game reviews. Please stay in touch.