Marvel's Avengers

Review

It's Avengers Day! Today is the day where the Avengers will announce the winner of their comic fan competition and the new Terrigen clean energy source which comes from a strange rock discovered in the water of San Francisco Bay. The festivities are held on their famous flying fortress "The Chimera" which is now using this new energy. The landing deck is full of people and Avengers’ attractions to enjoy. One young lady, named Kamala, is super excited as she is one of the contestants in the comic fan competition. Not only has she managed to meet all the Avengers, but she secured the best spot to see the ceremony unfold on a balcony located in front of and above the stage. The view is mesmerising, with the Golden Bridge in the background. Suddenly all hell breaks loose with a massive explosion right in the middle of the bridge! All the Avengers were sent to investigate the blast, with the exception of Captain America, who stayed on "The Chimera," which soon after fell into the bay and created a massive explosion that killed thousands of people. A day of festivities turned out to be the day where the Avengers were dismantled and took the blame for using an untested technology. Five years down the track, that day is now known as A-Day. Kamala has developed power since that day, and one evening, she received a message on her computer that the A-Day tragedy might have been orchestrated on purpose, and not from her superheroes. . . It's time to get the Marvel's Avengers back together!

Marvel's Avengers is a third-person action/adventure/RPG game developed by Crystal Dynamic, Eidos Montreal and published by Square Enix on the 5^th of September 2020. The game is available on Steam, PS4 and Xbox One.

The game consists of a single-player campaign of around 15 hours gameplay with four levels of difficulty (easy, normal, hard and brutal). You'll also have missions which you can play online with 3 of your friends or by yourself with the help of the AI. I played a fair few of these missions with the AI but not with other players and therefore do not know how stable the game is in that regards.

What a ride the single-player campaign is; I thoroughly enjoyed it from start to finish! After the introduction and the fights with the Taskmaster and his troops on the Golden Bridge, you’ll be playing Kamala (Ms Marvel) for a while. As the story evolves, you'll find other Avengers, and you'll be able to choose which of the Superheroes you want to control on the next mission. Bear in mind that some of the missions will automatically select a specific hero. I like that because you see what each of the heroes can do and what their moves are. You can choose to select another hero if you wish.

In the campaign, you'll have two bases of operations. The first one will be on "The Chimera" and the second in the resistance caves at the Ant hill in Utah. As you progress through the story, "The Chimera" will have more Shield personnel as you go on and the Ant Hill will fill in with Inhumans you'll save during missions. You'll also receive factions' points and rewards.

The missions are super fun, quite challenging and offer a bit of variety, which is always a plus. Some of them are relatively short while others will take you some time to complete. You might die a few times, in fact; your selected hero can only be revived three times by another Avenger during the entire mission. If you do die, you'll restart from the last checkpoint with only one life and you can't be revived if you go down again. In any case, you can see the mission difficulty before launching it.

In each of the areas you fight in, you'll find cases of different colours. When you open these cases, the hero you are playing with will receive some gear and a resource, or vice versa. There are also steal crates with different shiny lights within them; they are resources crates which you’ll need for upgrading your gears. By defeating enemies, you receive either items, resources or health. If you are struggling in regards to health, try to find the green cylinders with a white cross on them. Plenty of collectables to discover, such as comic books and intelligence files.

What I really like in Marvel's Avengers is the fact that you can upgrade all your gear as well as minor and major artifacts to enhance your hero’s powers. There are lots of skill trees to unlock for each of your heroes. To give you an idea, I haven't yet managed to unlock all the skills in one of the 12 skill trees available for one of my heroes. I could have if I’d wanted to, but there is just so much to choose from; and that’s after 20 hours of gameplay! There are plenty of other things to unlock in this game: outfits, emotes, takedowns and nameplates for each of your heroes.

The graphics are splendid, and the voice over is exceptionally well done. The story is excellent and grabs you from the start. I did have a few issues with the frame rates as well as changing resolutions within the game. I also noticed a few disconnection issues with Square Enix but I haven't tried to play online with other players. 

Review written by THE CPT FROGGY for Zeepond.com!