I normally start these off talking about the story/campaign but I want to start with something that seems to be universal with this game and that's the technical side of it. I have seen so many people talk about the bugs in this game and honestly, I've barely had any. And I'm not trying to be that "Well I didn't have any bugs so you're lying" person cause I've seen said people post the bugs and they seemed pretty for real. I've been playing on an Xbox One X and the most I've had to do is reload a save a time or two because an enemy bugged out but that happens in game all the time. I don't know why I've been this lucky to not have any problems but I really haven't and I wanted to start here cause I don't want the story around this game being that it's so broken that you can barely play it cause, for me, it's not. Aside from that stuff I think this game is gorgeous! All the character models look really good and the environments look even better. I know a thing surrounding this game has been the characters not looking like the MCU characters and that's cause this isn't based on/or around anything dealing with that. I think it was smart to make them their own to let people know that right off.
Now let's talk a bit about the campaign. I think this is an amazing Avengers story! Having Kamala Khan as basically the lead in the story was very risky but ended up being really smart. Since she wasn't in the MCU people may not know her and seeing her origin and letting her have a lot of the emotional scenes hit well for me. The opening of the game with her and her dad geeking out about A-Day was such a charming way to start this game. And after that bridge scene from the beta you pretty much exclusively play as her for the next 3-4 hours. I get maybe wanting to keep it secret that you mainly play as her but it would've been awesome to have a story trailer that focused on her. So after you see her origin you are basically taken with getting the Avengers back together after the stuff that happened at A-Day. I thought they did such a good job handling all these big name characters and I believed the story they were telling by the end. Seeing Hulk and Iron Man go at it was awesome and seeing everyone come together at the end to take down MODOK was great. And speaking of MODOK, he was a great first villain for the Avengers to take on in this game. He looked awesome and the scenes with him once he turns full on MODOK were very cool! I overall really liked the story and came away with a love of Kamala as a character!
I want to talk about the combat next. I really like the combat in this game. I'll admit that I wasn't crazy about it when I played the beta but they made it tighter since then and it's just fun to beat up dudes/bots as Avengers! At first it seems like this game is a button masher and you can just punch through everything in your way but it's really not. It has way more of an RPG vibe to it than I was thinking. The skill tree for each character is insane and you can customize builds in multiple ways that I wasn't expecting. And each character plays entirely different. About the only thing they all have in common is light and heavy punch. Iron Man and Thor can just straight up fly, like you can fly all the time with them if you want. Black Widow is a good mix of guns and melee, Hulk is a tank that can jump around and beat the hell out of most stuff, and Captain America is mainly melee but has several moves that lets him throw his shield. Kamala is unique cause she has a huge range with her stretching arms and grows huge for her ultimate! They all feel good to play but I do have my preferences. I like Black Widow and Cap the best cause they just fit my play style more. I love shooting from a distance with Widow especially when you get all her weapons.
So you might be wondering what it's like to actually play this game. Well it isn't open world but most areas have a lot to explore. There are 2 hub areas that basically work the same as they do in Destiny in that you can get daily missions and buy gear and cosmetics. You go to a War Table to select missions and you fly to them, basically like picking planets in Destiny. As someone who has played Destiny since the alpha it's hard to not compare this game to it so I apologize haha! Once you get to an area you have a main objective you can do and questions marks you can go to if you want. They usually lead to chests with loot or you rescue people. I'd advise to do all the questions marks early on just to get a taste of each level and get some early stuff. You complete the main mission and that's it! If you are playing the campaign you get a decent amount of cutscenes in between all the things I said. After the campaign you are in post game called Avengers Initiative. There are several different missions in the post game that has you opening vaults, beating super villains, and completing hives which are kinds of towers. The post game is actually more robust than I thought it would be so far. Also every mission in the post game can be done with up to 4 other players. If you don't matchmake with 4 or don't have 4 friends then the AI will fill in so you are never doing any mission alone. You can also just cancel matchmaking and just play with AI if you want to explore.
Now let's talk about loot. I know that when most people, myself included, found out this game was a live service game with loot I was confused. And I was honestly even more confused when I saw that the loot doesn't change how your character looks. Now that I've played it I actually like it! It's different and I kinda like being able to have different loot on while I can make each character look how I want them to. I'm always one of those people in RPGs that toggles off loot changing your look if I can. Not many let you but games like Diablo and the most recent Wasteland let's you customize while not showing loot. It does feel weird getting a rib cage thing for Hulk and different belts for Widow but it works. I get not liking it and thinking it's dumb but I dig it. I would like in the future to be able to mix and match different costumes but it's fine with the costumes for now.
I saved this for last because I have a very unpopular opinion about it in this game and that's how this game does micro transactions. I think they're handled fine. I've never once felt pressured to buy anything. Yeah it has a marketplace option at the main menu but it's at the end. Yeah there is a vendor in game that lets you buy cosmetics but the option to spend real money is at the bottom of the vendor options. Yeah there is a kind of battle pass with each character but I kinda like that as something to work towards. There have been so many people talk about how disgusted by how the micro transactions work in this game and I'm just not seeing it. They basically work the same way they do in Destiny. If you want to drop some money you can but if not you can earn everything in game over time. I prob will spend some money on this game at some point and it'll be because I want to and support it.
I've pretty much said nothing but positive things about this, shocking that I don't like talking negative I know, but I want to talk about something that I hate but it's not in game related. It's the PS4 Spider-Man exclusive thing. I HATE console exclusive things on multi-platform games anyway but this one might be the biggest one I've seen in a while. I get that Sony has the rights to the character but he was literally in Ultimate Alliance 3 and it didn't seem like a problem there so why do this? I prefer to play on Xbox and all they are doing by doing this is taking 2/3 of their player base, Xbox and PC, and not giving them one of the most popular Marvel characters. It didn't bother me enough to not get the game on Xbox but it still bothers me and stuff like that doesn't need to be a thing anymore!
Alright, I think I covered everything I want to. I can't say this enough that this is an ever evolving game and it may be totally different in 6 months so all this stuff applies to how it is as of now. I was pleasantly surprised how much I liked the story of this game and I'll grind out all the characters to max level cause I'm having a lot of fun! If you haven't been into Destiny style games but love Marvel maybe this will be the game that gets you into them. I totally get playing this game and thinking it's clunky and not for you but I love it and it will be in my personal top 10 games of the year! Avengers Assemble! (I had to do it)
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