Marvel's Avengers

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

 

[Sledgstone 8,672]

I played 3 hours of the beta this last weekend. It was ok at first. This Avengers game noticeably takes place in a different timeline or yet another alternate Earth because this game has nothing to do with the established Marvel movies. The combat was decent, the campaign flipped me around between different characters while the beginning of the story was unfolding in a large kinda epic battle with alot of destruction. But then the plot gets a bit weird. A terrigen bomb goes off, creates alot of inhumans, the avengers get blamed for it and are disbanded. Tony Stark's assets are seized by the government... um.. I don't think he'd actually allow that.. superheroes are outlawed, 5 year time skip.. and some super high tech company basically takes over the USA and its called AIM. So AIM is the bad guys and they have an endless, and it really seems endless, amount of armed troops, robots, etc.

So the campaign continues, some of the missions seem good, but then abruptly the game turns into Destiny. This is basically where the beta ends the campaign but continues to show end game stuff. Theres a war table, holograph display, that lets you choose a variety of strike missions. Theres matchmaking or you can play solo with AI controlled characters. But I'm not kidding when I say its Destiny. All the strike missions are repeatable, all have difficulty variables (increased ice damage), you can choose the difficulty for better rewards, etc. Different boss fight locations, etc. will have no respawn zones like Destiny. You revive fallen characters like in Destiny. And there is endless gear, even for the Hulk. He equips nano gear that somehow gives him powerups but you don't see it equipped on him. And all the gear is endless to, with their own different upgrade variables, better defense against freezing, more offense with shock damage, etc. etc. Its a hack/slash/shooter/looter. I did one strike mission and it took a solid 30+ minutes. I don't think I'll like this game. If it was all just a campaign based single player like Spider-Man I'm sure I'd love it. But I have no interest in multiplayer looter games anymore. And all the combat starting feeling quite repetitive after those first 3 hours. I'm also not good with strike missions like that anymore. If I have to walk away from a game I want to save it and resume later.. but its strike missions so you better have the time to dedicate to it. I'm sure its only a matter of time before Avengers also gets Raid missions too. ehh.

Btw, skin shop galore. You can buy skins like crazy, because who wouldn't want to play the game with Hulk wearing a business suit. wtf.

 

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

Destiny as a concept is amazing. Especially for the current console limitations. They just could never get accessibility or loot tables right at launch. The first was too inaccessible for casuals, and the last was too accessible for hardcore players. The concept it self is good, its really just the players that are the problem overall. Needing six friends all on at the same time for raids was only a big obstacle because rando groups via LFG sites demanded you had Gjallarhorn. The trifecta of PVP, Open World and Instanced content collided as casuals mostly farmed the open world which didn't have shit, while instanced content had all the best loot... which would cause you to get shat on in PVP if you only did open world. On top of that Strikes were mostly fodder unless it was the Nightfall which you could only do 3 times a week if you had 3 characters. 

But yeah these are all time sinks now made for people that are in their 20s, work a part time job in school etc. Its sad they're making it a cash grab too. These type of games are def going to start struggling and they need too. I don't mind cosmetic shops. I think The Division 2 had a pretty fair system for getting keys for free weekly. They only time you were pressured to buy any were timed events, but even then if you saved up your keys and didn't use them on the common stuff that will always be there, you'd still get a good run in. But some of these games take it too far.

[Sledgstone 8,672]

As if the game wouldn't be a big enough of a time sink, instead of having one battle pass per season, each character will have their own battle pass for $10 each per season, but if you play enough for each character you buy the pass for you can max out that pass to unlock the next season's pass for that character for free. I read a while back that multiple pieces of character models are in the game code, so this game is going to be a massive cash grab once they release a crap load of DLC characters that will cost money too.

https://www.psu.com/news/marvels-avengers-will-charge-10-a-battle-pass-for-every-hero-after-launch-but-you-can-avoid-spending-money/

Reading this doesn't sound like fun to me, it sounds like a massive grind that will never end. I think I'll watch someone play the campaign in a let's play and skip on buying this.