Marvel's Avengers Beta Review

I have been playing Marvel's Avengers Beta and my excitement level is at an all time high. Before I got to play this game I was fairly eager but I have to admit, I did not have the highest of hopes. The gameplay reveal left me wanting a little more from the combat and uneasy about each Avenger’s new look. But here’s the thing: Change, as Thanos says, is inevitable. In this case, the change is pretty good. There is still a lot more to see from our favorite Avengers but from the few hours I played, it’s really good. Bruce, Natasha, and Kamala stand out to me. Their voice actors do an excellent job of conveying their character’s emotions and personality. And that isn’t to say the rest are bad, or even average. Throughout the Beta I felt that these were the Avengers, not knockoffs or bargain bin Avengers, but the true Avengers that I have been obsessed with since I was a kid. Sure, it’s not RDJ. But he played Iron Man, not the other way around. All of the actors thus far have been amazing and have only added to the experience of playing this game.

Now let’s discuss the foundation of any decent game, the gameplay. Much more than I initially thought, the gameplay is fun and diverse. The combat is different from any superhero game that I’ve played in recent memory. It really requires you to have a strong team of heroes working with you, and it makes you feel a little less “super” than usual. This is something I thought would have made me hate this game, but it in fact makes me like it even more. Sometimes your hero hits a little slow and it can take some time getting used to the combat pacing. In the end it is a more deliberate combat style that requires you to choose your moments and rely on your other Avengers.

There are moments where Hulk will take a decent number of strong hits to take out one of the larger brute enemies and as weird as it is to not see Hulk just send some guys flying through walls one after the other, it makes the game challenging. This, of course, is something that each player will have to decide on their own, if it is something they like or not. For me though, I think it’s an excellent way to make an Avengers game more challenging and fun.

This beta was an excellent start to the hype I hope this game gets. The overall purpose of this beta was to recapture some energy from the player base. It absolutely succeeded in finding a new way to ignite my excitement. I felt that this was a game I could enjoy with my friends for an extended amount of time and in a genre that I absolutely love. For others, it showed off a lot of fun possibilities to be had in the shoes of the Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. But that all doesn’t come without some small, but important, warning signs.

This game reminds me of Destiny’s Fireteam Strikes. They are fun, but without friends it can get repetitive. Because of this, playing solo with 3 AI Avengers abandoning your objective could really degrade the game's value- especially with how the combat system is specifically created to require you to work with your teammates. This game really needs to create fun objectives that make missions feel much more unique than they currently do. Added variance to these missions will make this game amazing, spectacular, or even ultimate…. Sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself. But it does bring me to my next point. The new heroes they plan to add gives players another thing to be excited for. It will be awesome to see how different everyone's Avengers team will be. The amount of cosmetics, as well as future hero DLC, will have everyone’s game looking different. If you and your friends are Avengers fans and you plan on playing together, this is a must buy. This game is very fun to play and every Avengers fan should feel satisfied, because I certainly did.