Marvel's Avengers Preview

August 22, 2020 at 2:08am
By Jason Stettner

I thought I’d dive into the latest Marvel’s Avengers beta experience with this weekend being the open one. I had played the PS4 closed beta version prior, so it’s neat to take a look at things from the Xbox One X side of pond.

For context, this is a cooperative focused brawling title with RPG elements and a games as services model. You’re able to play as Marvel Cinematic Universe look a-likes where I do find Digital Foundry’s comment on them being the “cosplay Avengers” to be somewhat true. Also rather funny at the same time, I definitely get a slight chuckle from that note.

Still, they look fairly great and provide solid true experiences for each of the heroes. I’m particularly fond of Ms. Marvel here as I find her to be a blast to play and so unique within this roster. She’s got such cool moves and combos to unleash through various abilities.

Others include the Hulk; Iron Man, Black Widow, Thor and Captain America. Hawkeye is set to come after launch, as it Spider-Man though that’s only for Playstation consoles which is disheartening. I actually think this might be the best Hulk we’ve gotten game wise.

That aside, time to start discussing the open beta experience. It’s running well, and looking gorgeous on the platform. I found it a tad blurry when on the base PS4, though still fantastic visually.

It’s nice to see it look far clearer here, those smaller details come out. This game really is visually impressive, with tons of little destruction opportunities scattered throughout the environments. Those areas are varied, especially within the campaign segments.

I do find the side missions which I compare lightly to Strikes in Destiny are very repetitive. I feel like if you played Agents of Mayhem, they’re like the tech bunkers. There’s thankfully some more variation here, but that game definitely came to mind when working through them.

I think the beta had a good selection of content to it, they were very generous. I thought the actual story missions were the true stand outs, and I think there’s a lot of potential for the full game. They’ve got some good tech they’re pushing engine wise, and visually.

The story seems enticing, and the light RPG mechanics were interesting. There are costume options, but don’t expect much cosmetic changes from choices in regards to your armor. This handled very well, I was impressed with the performance and can’t wait to see the full package.

I’m especially intrigued by what the next generation upgrades will have to offer. I think this has a lot of potential if the final release is stacked story missions wise. I think my big questions now are how they’re going to keep interesting going long term as that’s their goal.

Just in regards to the type of goals you’ll have, to further grind on. I think that’s about all for now, hopefully I’ll be delivering a full review and additional content down the road. For now, check out our review of Marvel’s Spider-Man below, or check out the full universe hub for further coverage as well.

Read our Marvel's Spider-Man Review
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