The Marvel Avengers game isn’t far from release, and over the past couple of weekends a beta has been released, with a third weekend coming up. If you weren’t sure whether to pick this game up or not, I highly recommend checking it out for yourselves, as there’s been some mixed reception since no one was entirely sure exactly how it would play.
I was very sceptical of it myself when the game was announced, and became even more sceptical after the first gameplay reveal, as it looked very much on rails as it introduces you to most of the heroes. I can say it feels a lot better than I thought it would, and it being a loot game has brought worry to some, however is marvellous news for others.
The beta truly gave us a taste of what’s to come, offering a large variety of missions and activities. However most of them are simple training ones, or ones that take about 3-4 minutes to complete.
There are 4 playable characters in the beta, Ms Marvel, Hulk, Iron Man, and Black Widow. Ms Marvel was a personal favourite, as she has the ability to heal not only herself, but her allies as well, along with some pretty strong attacks that have a wide attack radius. You know those people who close their eyes when they fire full auto guns and end up shooting everything around then? That’s basically what Ms Marvel does.
Then you have Iron Man, who conquers the skies, being able to fly freely around all maps, though flying indoors isn’t always the best option. His ground attacks are still significantly strong, and he can make quick getaways when necessary. The most entertaining thing with him is being able to switch between his repulsors, wrist lasers, and micro-rockets. His only real shortcoming is being a bit clunky to control on the ground, and his melee attacks being unable to stun enemies very well.
Hulk feels almost exactly how you’d expect him too, being able to heal the more he attacks enemies. He has some major shortcomings though, not being able to move very fast unless you feel like jumping around aimlessly, as well as being so big that he’s an incredibly easy target for every enemy. He’s still incredibly fun to play as though.
Finally we have Black Widow, who has a similar function to Iron Man, she can switch between 3 different guns for her ranged attacks, dual pistols, dual smgs, and a single high powered pistol that when paired with gear that increases ranged damage, can down a lot of enemies in one hit. She is very powerful when it comes to attacking single targets often not allowing them the opportunity to get any hits in, however can be easily overwhelmed when facing multiple enemies at once. She also has a grappling hook that allows her to close the distance between her and her enemies quickly.
Each character has a few skill trees, usually having a melee skill tree, a ranged skill tree and a passive skill tree. Hulk had multiple melee skill trees, and Iron Man had multiple Ranged ones, understandably. Some players noticed that there was a header in the skill window which said ‘Primary’, suggesting there’ll be even more skill trees available in the full game, potentially ones you’ll have to switch between.
There were some pretty cool skins available to look at, such as Hulk having a Joe Fixit skin, Iron Man having a nice classic armour skin (from the early comics), Black Widow had some with white hair, and Ms Marvel had a mix of ones where she was dressed in her everyday normal clothes, and a few different colour schemes to her hero costume. My personal favourite was her Throggy skin, wearing a shirt that resembled Thor’s armour with a frog hat on.
There’s plenty of customization in this game, however the most disappointing thing being that gear doesn’t change any looks on your character, even when the default skin is active, even though they highlight certain areas on the character when changing them, making it seem as though they would. I won’t go on much further about the beta, if you’d like to see more, I suggest checking it out for yourself sometime between the 21st of August at 9pm, and the 23rd of August at 9pm. Or you can hang out for my review of the full game coming early September.
By Josh Braham
