6 Decisions That Sunk Marvel’s Worst Game Of The Last Decade

Not unlike how Steve Rogers’ Captain America was entombed in ice and eventually thawed decades later, Marvel’s Avengers missed the remarkably short era when AAA live-service games were thrilling, flourishing, and highly anticipated. That said, not every game is made better by cramming itself into a games-as-a-service mold, and games like Marvel’s Avengers or Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League are prime examples now of how awful the marriage of superheroes and live-service games can be (Marvel Rivals being an example of the type of gameplay genre that is basically made in a lab to be a live-service game).

Player dissatisfaction and poor sales ultimately led to development/support ending and Marvel’s Avengers being delisted only three years after it had initially been released. That said, the bones of Marvel’s Avengers’ story and gameplay were fantastic, and that’s at least partially why it’s so disappointing that nearly everything else was such a disappointment. Marvel’s Avengers could’ve been exceptional in a different Marvel multiverse reality, surely, and there are myriad reasons why it hasn’t left that much of a positive impression on anyone who’s played it.

6

Poor Character Roster

Marvel Rivals’ playable character roster is a pale shade of what it could’ve been if the game had time to marinate and simmer longer, let alone if it wasn’t indebted to an unfavorable live-service formula. It’s fairly bizarre that we got two Hawkeyes before we could get a Captain Marvel, who would’ve been a perfect playable character to add due to Kamala Khan being inspired by her, specifically. Sadly, we never got to see those who might’ve become the best possible Marvel’s Avengers DLC characters, nor anyone else who could’ve been unique and refreshing.

The character roster was becoming too comfortable recycling the same character/archetype, and this probably would’ve persisted throughout its DLC roadmap for years to come. It was superfluous to have both Clint Barton and Kate Bishop’s Hawkeyes and both Thor Odinson and Jane Foster’s Thors, and the same would’ve probably been said about She-Hulk and War Machine reheating Hulk and Iron Man’s nachos if they had been released.

Of course, the characters who were selected for the roster and planned to be post-launch DLC seemingly revolved around characters from the Marvel Cinematic Universe that Marvel’s Avengers could then synergize with and base its cosmetic skins off of. With Mighty Thor and Winter Soldier’s reveals and launches, players knew that MCU skins weren’t far behind.

5

Little Enemy Variety

Lackluster enemy variety and enemy factions are glaring problems that few superhero games have been immune to. This was practically a death sentence for a live-service game like Marvel’s Avengers, with players largely battling the same swarms of yellow A.I.M. robots ad nauseam. Marvel’s Avengers is fortunate that its actual combat gameplay was as fun as it was because it made this monotony more palatable than it would’ve been otherwise, but it’s upsetting that we didn’t get to see a lot more factions or unit varieties over the course of the three years that the game’s post-launch development went on for.

Moreover, Marvel’s Avengers’ bosses were too far and few between. It’s a sad testament to the game that Taskmaster, of all villains, would be the boss that players likely fought the most, and Maestro and Crossbones being two of the only DLC villain bosses was deeply unsatisfying.

Paired with a menial gameplay loop and poor mission type variety, Marvel’s Avengers would soon lose its luster once players were finished with the campaign’s story content and grew weary of all the repetitive endgame grinding it has to offer. Still, Marvel’s Avengers’ co-op allowed for fun online with friends as a Strike Team.

4

Long Content Drop Lulls

A live-service game can live or die based on how long it takes for anticipated content drops and updates to be rolled out. That’s why, with as many as seven months between expansions and new character launches, averaging at about four or five months, Marvel’s Avengers simply wasn’t churning out content at a pace that would sustain or entertain players.

This lack of momentum would be inexcusable for many live-service games today, and it absolutely was for Marvel’s Avengers, a game that had little else to rely on other than MCU skins and the promise of characters arriving in the future. It didn’t help, then, that Marvel’s Avengers routinely exhibited game-breaking bugs.

3

PlayStation-Exclusive Spider-Man

Marvel’s Avengers’ Spider-Man was forever made a PlayStation-exclusive character. This gave players a phenomenal incentive to play Marvel’s Avengers on PS4 or PS5, yet it’s an abysmal practice to say that PC and Xbox users would be denied a playable character that PlayStation users got for free, not to mention a character as widely beloved and popular as Spider-Man. Plus, players would be painfully reminded that a whole character is inaccessible to them when they’d suddenly see a Spider-Man in their lobby queue.

2

Live-Service Grind-Fest

Marvel’s Avengers was a grind-heavy live-service game, and that permeated an otherwise neat campaign to introduce a wealth of bloat. There are multiple grindy systems in Marvel’s Avengers, all revolving around players leveling characters and amassing high-level gear.

It’s a tedious mess overall, and these systems can be grating to have to interact with because players would probably rather be enjoying the campaign’s narrative and watching as their Black Widow fights an enemy in co-op alongside someone’s Black Panther. This same ethos of having to spend hundreds of hours grinding or farming is precisely what shot Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order in the foot a year prior, and it’s one that fans now dread seeing from any superhero game, regardless of whether it’s a Marvel or DC game.

Part of what hurt its live-service aspect is what was chosen to be paywalled in Marvel’s Avengers’ Marketplace storefront. Here, players indulged in microtransactions that were relatively controversial or divisive, such as having to pay to unlock finisher animations. Players could thankfully avoid the Marketplace like the plague and go about their lives, but it was these Marketplace practices that probably increased some fans’ FOMO, while other players might’ve pulled away from Marvel’s Avengers completely thereafter.

1

MCU Cosmetic Skins

One of Marvel’s Avengers’ gravest sins was that it essentially became a factory for cosmetic skins that gave it MCU synergy. Marvel’s Avengers’ MCU skins were theoretically favorable because they could adapt iconic character appearances from fans’ favorite movies, though this only gave fans a greater opportunity to assess them with intense scrutiny. For example, Hawkeye’s default character model in Marvel’s Avengers had a shaved head (colloquially known as “Baldeye”), and his Avengers: Endgame skin launched with the same shaved-head look, rather than the mohawk that Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye has in the movie.

Similarly, Black Widow’s Avengers: Endgame skin neglected to adapt the blonde-tipped braid that Scarlett Johansson has in the movie. Many such inconsistencies were present in MCU skins, and thus, it wasn’t always easy to be excited for them, even if players were enthusiastically awaiting skins from certain movies and for certain characters. That said, it’s unfair to compare Marvel’s Avengers’ skins to those of other Marvel games due to the fact that some games, like Marvel Rivals, have the profound advantage of distinct, stylistic art direction, instead of only having photorealism to rely on.

Systems

Released

September 4, 2020

ESRB

T for Teen: Language, Mild Blood, Violence

Developer(s)

Crystal Dynamics

Publisher(s)

Square Enix

Engine

Foundation Engine

Multiplayer

Online Multiplayer

Franchise

Marvel