Avengers Review: Gameplay Videos, Multiplayer Impressions and Speedrunning Tips

Marvel's Avengers from Square Enix and Crystal Dynamics carries some of the biggest expectations in gaming this year to its launch.  

That's not hyperbole—the game boasts some of the most well-known characters on the planet, headed up by Iron Man, Thor, Captain America and Hulk, while doubly serving as a deep-dive of an introduction for the beloved Ms. Marvel. Don't forget it sits in the shadow of one of Hollywood's biggest juggernauts, too. 

As if that weren't enough, the game has offered droves in the way of promises, including a deep campaign and a Destiny-like multiplayer live service that hints at min/maxing fun and replayability for months, if not years after release. 

Those are lofty goals, to say the least, though if there's a team to tackle these things in stride, it's probably the Avengers, right?

Graphics and Gameplay

Avengers carries all the visual bluster of films by the same name. 

On the visual scale, everything looks good-to-great. There's a ton of color and varied environments in the campaign mode. Whether it's slinking through the night across rooftops or slamming off walls and taking big leaps as Hulk, the singleplayer experience clearly received the bulk of the attention in the visuals department. 

The quality of the visuals varies based on where one focuses their attention, though. Main characters have some incredible lip-synching work done on them, whereas non-important characters (such as fans at the tutorial's big event) look rough by comparison.

It's a similar theme for combat, as the superheroes look great in motion and there are even some noticeable, if not small, destructible environments going on. But sometimes things get tough to see and prioritize because of the game's massive amount of glitzy particle effects and explosions. Make no mistake, while it's fitting given the movie adaptions do the same, it's a drawback at times, too. 

But realistically, players can likely forgive that as long as the main heroes look great. And they do. This adaption of the Avengers notably flirts with just straight up copy-and-pasting the actors from the big screen right into the game. 

And that's a good thing. Thor looks like Thor, it's hard to mess up Hulk and Tony Stark has the playboy flair. Voice acting was one of the most polarizing topics of the game's pre-release cycle, and that remains the case now that it's out in the wild.

Some of the characters sound great and comparable to big-screen counterparts. Captain America is a good example. Tony Stark...not so much. Though, please note: This will vary a lot on a player-to-player basis. It's a different version of the Avengers under the Marvel umbrella, but it simply won't be able to escape the comparisons.

It's hard to pick out an issue with the rest of the sound design. It's bombastic and does its job. 

The environmental presentation does go the expected route for this genre, though. It's clear all the major lifting here went into the campaign's locales. They're varied, sometimes expansive, and engaging. But once the campaign is over and the repeatable missions kick in, it's largely narrow, classical/industrial corridors and bases ad nauseam. 

But as is the case for other games in the now well-represented genre, gameplay rules above all else. And if players are looking for a game that accurately gives off the feel of controlling dramatically different superheroes on the fly, this is the one. 

Each hero feels different, which is rather important given the subject matter. Hulk is a blast to play. Slamming a baddie around like he's Loki in that infamous scene and then sending that pulverized body cartwheeling at other baddies is...something special. Iron Man can zip through the air and fire off a barrage of different weapons. Thor's weighty, and his hammer can connect from long range. Captain America is a more traditional brawler who has some range to his combat via the shield. 

And overall, especially early, the game does a good job of holding a player's hand and specifying character roles in a traditional video game sense. Hulk is obviously a tank, albeit one that covers ground quickly. A handful of the superheroes can operate from distance and deal with pesky long-range enemies. 

While the combat can boil down to a basic button-mashing affair, higher difficulties and diversity of enemy types can require better attention to detail and party makeup. It's impressive that all the heroes manage to feel different yet operate within similar control schemes. 

But it's clear the game balances to strain everything and asks players to stretch that disbelief a bit. It's a little weird to see normal punches impact Thor—a god, or so to speak—the same way they hurt Black Widow or even Captain America. Likewise, Hulk struggling with the same robot enemies as everyone else fits the same idea. 

It would have been easy to think this game goes on an almost Destiny or Anthem route where the heroes walk into a room, fight some robots and move on to the next room. But that's certainly not the case in the campaign, as mission variety is a plus via chases, a bit of stealth and more in impressive fashion. 

That said, the game goes the other direction and can feel like Destiny with superheroes at times. Hulk hanging out and defending a node is as video game-y as it gets and not exactly something fans are accustomed to seeing in the Hollywood blockbusters. But if you want to play an Avengers game, then putting up with that sort of thing seems like a must. 

Which brings us to gameplay loop. It's important to note that while the grind generally seems fun, it's a much more simplistic loop of combat than, say, the recent Spider-Man or Batman games. It has to juggle so many different characters at once that this makes sense, but just keep in mind it's a simpler brawler and set those expectations accordingly. 

But there is depth to each character via skill trees, at least, and it will be interesting to see where players take the game over its potentially long lifecycle. Controlling Thor early on is a joy because he can fly around and swing his hammer, but later unlocks provide greater control of said hammer. Getting accustomed to the different enemies, gameplay and unlocking new traits means early-game combat looks nothing like what players will eventually evolve into with time. 

While it doesn't always pack the punch one might expect of superheroes hammering through endless waves of robots, an excellent campaign gameplay-wise and the general distinct feel of each superhero makes for a fun romp.  

Story and More

If one couldn't tell from the above, the campaign is a hit and worth its own standalone look. 

To keep it succinct, the game's opener features the devasting event that drives the entire narrative, pushing Kamala Khan to seek out the resistance amid a sea of anti-hero sentiment from a public fed up with them. That sort of world backdrop has been done in countless superhero comics to date, but there are a few really touching moments early in the game that insert normal humans on both sides of the standoff and just...humanize the conflict quite well. 

In time, imperfections in even the superheroes play into the story's outcome. Bruce Banner's feelings on events dramatically clash with Tony Stark's thoughts, and away they go with Khan stuck somewhere in the middle while still driving the narrative. 

It's on the shorter side as far as singleplayer experiences go, but a good variety of gameplay, strong Marvel-infused writing and gameisims like quicktime events in dramatic moments create a memorable experience. 

Kamala Khan is an awesome character, by the way. She's a goofy Avengers fan, just like the rest of us, in the game's intro, and as things progress, she's talking to herself in a witty, pep-talk sense reminiscent of a certain web-slinger.

Some who pick up the game might be a little disappointed it's a Khan game featuring the Avengers and not the other way around, but her vulnerabilities and bravery in this coming-of-age story have a way of winning over onlookers. 

Let's be honest: We've mentioned Destiny a handful of times. Anthem and even The Divison can get tossed in the pile, too. Those games don't have memorable stories so much as slight nudges to the next room and fight before repeating for loot. Not here, as a full-blown tale unfolds in quality fashion. Granted, it has the advantage over the other properties of working with some of the biggest, most popular characters in history, but the point stands. 

So far, the variety of characters is a nice boon to the story and multiplayer modes, and it's clear the game intends to add more soon. It's a shame a certain web-slinger is locked to one console, but Marvel's rich cast of characters could mean seeing some truly special things happen on the video game front. 

All the characterization of the heroes stay true to form and mostly hit home. Black Widow is a badass. Thor is goofy with poetic language. Bruce Banner acts like he's often about to pull his own hair out. The big exception is Tony Stark, which isn't any surprise. Iron Man comics have suffered for a long time (and are currently rebooting again) largely because Robert Downey Jr.'s portrayal of the character was so perfect that literally anything else feels cheap. And that's unfortunately the case here, unavoidable as it was. 

The diverse, well-done cast is something players will get to kit out over time, whether through specific character-based challenges or loot drops. 

At its most basic, each character has four gear slots, three Artifacts slots and eight different collectible resources to use. It's a lot to monitor, though oddly enough it doesn't feel like it early in the grind. 

Loot, especially early on, is boring. Many early items don't change the look of a character and sometimes don't make sense (Khan can equip new items that don't show up on screen?) and the stat upgrades behind the scenes are minimal at best. This conversation can dramatically change when players start reaching the endgame and min/maxing characters really become critical, but on launch, it feels tacked on to fit the genre a bit. 

But there sure are a ton of things to do that reward loot, and it hints at big things for the level 50 endgame (beating the story gives the player a level of about 8-12). There are repeated missions, challenges from faction leaders, weekly and dailies and quite a bit more. Like other games-as-a-service releases, players will hop on and find big checklists to tick off each day. Whether that's a good thing over the long-run will come down to how things develop, but for now, it's fun to log in and blast through bad guys as heavyweight superheroes. 

Now for the most important topic of all—endgame. Not the movie, either. In games structured like this, nothing matters if the endgame isn't enjoyable. 

And as always in the genre, it's a wait-and-see thing. Right now, going back and replaying old missions for loot is fun enough, and chests with rewards are bountiful, to put it mildly. Right now it's hard to judge just how much top-tier loot will dramatically change how characters play, if at all, but if it does, it opens up a whole new can of worms (read: replayability) for endgame content and post-launch releases. 

On the topic of cosmetic loot, Avengers feels a little disappointing. With so much comic history to pull from, there just isn't the expected variety of costumes for characters right now, and yes, some of them are housed in a microtransactions store. Compared to the staggering number of Spider-Man costumes in the recent standalone game pulling from all eras of the character, it's a shame the same doesn't happen here. 

There always seems to be a but that counteracts things for Avengers, though. Players can grind out pretty much all items in the game through time, and if we had to guess, there's going to be some dynamite additions throughout its lifecycle. 

Speedrunning Tips and Multiplayer

Avengers could end up having a pretty interesting speedrunning community if the grind remains fun and the content drops are consistent. 

The game, after all, could end up being a serious min/maxing strategic affair where premade teams try to tackle challenges as quickly as possible. Likewise, speedrunning strategies and builds for the campaign should end up looking interesting. 

Specific to the campaign, there are plenty of little things players can do to cut down on times right after the game launches. Skipping cutscenes is one, as is powering through optional world events. In combat, there are actually sequences where players can bypass remaining enemies if they destroy parts of the environment quickly enough. The how of mastering characters for fast times doesn't matter as much as understanding them all, too.  

On the multiplayer front, let's just say this game is much better in a group of players. Companion A.I. when playing alone isn't terrible, per se, but it isn't uncommon to see Hulk get thrashed and leave the party down a hero at a key moment. 

That said, limited ways to communicate with random players means the preferred option will easily be premade groups instead of matchmaking queues. And again, a lot of this is a Marvel paint job on the typical trappings for the genre, which isn't the worst thing. 

Conclusion

Avengers is front-loaded with a largely well-paced, varied story with some setpieces that will even make comic diehards smile. Whether the fluidity of it all translates well to long-term endgame remains to be seen. 

But it can feel like two different games at times. The campaign is a superb, albeit short, standalone experience with some of the odd multiplayer systems in the background seemingly doing little. The multiplayer has been done before, but not with this sort of historic, well-known coat of paint, and it is entertaining enough while promising big things over the long-term. 

Simply put, Avengers is a blast and will work well for players seeking out another daily checklist grind and/or hardcore Marvel fans. It's got fun gameplay with some interesting depth, though the quality of the updates post-launch will dictate whether it's remembered only for its superb singleplayer story or if it can blossom into something resembling what Stark might build and present to the masses.