Marvel Avengers Review: Buggy but Good
Marvel’s Avengers is the newest game from Square Enix that allows you to play with some of the favorite heroes from the Marvel cinematic universe while also acting as an origin story for Ms. Marvel, aka Kamala Kahn. Through both single player and multiplayer missions, you are able to see how her tale unfolds and ultimately how she becomes an avenger in the end.
The Good
From the start let me just say that this game is beautiful and has potential going forward to last for a while within the gaming community through DLC character packs as well as other end game missions. From the very beginning you really feel immersed as Kamala Kahn, the fangirl, and her journey is one that feels organic and natural as she goes about on her journey and not overly forced as some games tend to do with a main character.
The multiplayer within this game does a great job of scaling missions based on the party power level and you never feel overwhelmed or overpowered when playing with others. The game also allows you to set your mission difficulty offering you a variety of challenges along the way. Combine that with standard tropes within online games such as Daily Quests similar to that of Destiny and a loot system that has you always anxious for the next bit of gear to become more powerful and you can see how this is a game that would be easy to become hooked on.
The game also shines in it’s character customizations and unlockables giving you the freedom to have your characters look and feel however you choose. While this could be considered tedious, as many character customization options and gear are locked behind either multiple currency types that you have to collect in game, or faction rep, in the end, I think this is more of a positive as it tends to keep the game feeling a bit more fresh.
The Bad
If you don’t already know, this game is buggy…extremely buggy. I can’t tell you the number of issues I had connecting to online games with friends only for someone to lag out, or get kicked mid mission and no longer receive credit for what they were working towards that entire time. There were many times we, as a group, would have to resend party invites multiple times because someone wasn’t able to connect to the party. Add in as well the fact that you can’t reconnect mid mission, and you have a somewhat annoying experience on your hands.
The bugs in this game also extend beyond the multiplayer and into the single player experience. While Square Enix has recently released a patch that was supposed to fix some issues, the problem remains that there are long loading screens and in my case, the infinite loading screen glitch. I ended up at this glitch because while playing the final mission of the game, my character spawned into existence, but the game terrain didn’t thus causing my character to be in an infinite loop of falling and respawning. The latest patch released claimed to resolve the infinite loading screen for most, however, in my case I can no longer finish the game at the time of this writing as the mission doesn’t even appear anymore for me to select. Hopefully this is something that gets patched in an upcoming update and soon.
Final Thoughts
If you are on the fence about this kind of game, that is understandable due to the sheer amount of issues going on currently. I would still recommend giving this game a shot as overall it is still a good game and there is something about using the iconic heroes and all their abilities as you bust up all the baddies in the game. Had this game delayed a few months, I feel as though some of the most well known bugs could’ve been resolved and give the users a much better first impression, however, as it is now, while not great, it is a good game and one that has a lot of potential down the line.