Marvel’s Avengers Review

Marvel has taken the cinematic world by storm in a little less than 10 years giving us one of the biggest movie cross-overs ever with the Avengers. Of course, none of this would be possible without the comic books that the entire franchise and there are still plenty of heroes to make the jump to the screen.

But outside a few titles that were not focusing on the films like the Spider-Man games and Ultimate Alliance, Marvel’s resume for Video Games are all over the place. The worst offenders of course are the PS3/Xbox360 generation’s time with Sega that coincided with the films (except for the Captain America game, that was an underrated gem.) However, now we have Square Enix at-bat and using the teams behind Deus Ex and Tomb Raider bringing us a new take on the Avengers.

Avengers follows an original story which follows Kamala Khan – who comic readers will recognize as the new Ms. Marvel, as she gets a VIP pass to meet her heroes as they introduce their new San Francisco headquarters, and a new helicarrier called the Chimera which runs on a new power source. A-Day quickly goes south as an attack happens on the Golden Gate Bridge and the Chimera’s new Terrigen reactor detonates, leveling a large part of San Francisco and spreading a mist that gives normal people superpowers.

The Avengers take the blame and are forced to disband while Advanced Idea Mechanics (A.I.M.) becomes a global power attempting to cure the Inhuman disease. Kamala finds out that A.I.M. is actually capturing Inhumans and uses her newly found powers to attempt to reassemble the Avengers to take on A.I.M. as a resistance force.

The story is very much focused on Kamala and her rise to being a new hero in the Avengers with a large amount of the game’s campaign being focused on her. This isn’t a bad thing at all as she is an extremely likable character with plenty of motivation to see the events through and become the new Ms.Marvel. It was smart to have a new Avenger, at least one that movie-goers haven’t seen yet, bring the Avengers back to help fight A.I.M. but it also feels like some heroes don’t get a moment to shine, especially those introduced in later levels of the campaign.

In general, the game feels like your basic beat’em up. Each of the 6 playable characters has their own moves and combos but every one of them has a light, heavy, and ranged attack, as well as a Defensive, Offensive, and ultimate attack. What changes for each character is closer to how they should be used, like Iron Man being more of a ranged character, while Hulk and Thor act as the game’s tanks taking on the front line fights.

Meanwhile, A.I.M. seems to rehash the same robotic enemies throughout the missions with slight variations. Flying enemies and turrets are easily dispatched by range attacks while Shielded enemies require a power strike/combo to take down their defenses, other variations include cryo attacks and plague (or gamma radiation) versions and some tank bosses. While the enemies do seem to have the numbers, especially in more challenging difficulties, it makes every mission have a “rinse and repeat” feeling.

That brings me to two of my major complaints about The Avengers, the first of which is the bosses. As this is a Marvel property, I feel like we should have seen some major villains show up to be an “Avengers’ level threat” however the game shows four major villains that don’t feel like they have the backing power to meet that level like Ultron or Loki, it also doesn’t help that the boss battles are very lackluster – except for a giant spider-tank which served as a 4 player cooperative battle.

The other problem I have is the game’s gear. While each hero has the ability to gain stat upgrades from gear that is hidden around the world, the gear does nothing visually, leaving all visual updates to paid content. Being spoiled by other looter systems where gear reflected actual change with the characters, I feel like this was a missed opportunity for Avengers and may have been the thing to push the game’s Online Mode to be truly great.

Now you can’t talk about this game without talking about the star talent behind it, which while it doesn’t mean that Robert Downey Jr. or Chris Evans reprises their roles, but the who’s who of voice acting stepped up and really bring the characters alive. Troy Baker as Bruce Banner and Nolan North as Tony Stark leads the cast which includes Laura Bailey as Black Widow, Travis Willingham as Thor, Jennifer Hale as Maria Hill, and Sandra Saad as Kamala Khan. While everyone is amazing at their role, the real stand-outs do come from Sandra, Troy, and Nolan, who happen to be the three who get the most focus in the story.

The biggest problem with The Avengers is that it had some big expectations coming before anyone got its hands on it, with a prestige development team and publisher, and being from a major property (considering all 4 Avengers films have made the top 10 highest-grossing movies of all time), we were expecting something spectacular. What we get is a great campaign with all-right gameplay and a mediocre multiplayer mode.

There is room for improvement in the Multiplayer aspects, and possibly the introduction of the upcoming additional heroes may fix it, but for now, The Avengers is not as super as the film and comics make them out to be.