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Rather than creating their own in-house development studios, Disney and Marvel Entertainment have chosen to leave video games to professionals and license their properties to third-party developers and publishers with the right pitch like Sony and Insomniac Games with Marvel’s Spider-Man or Nintendo and Team Ninja for Marvel’s Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order. It was inevitable that Earth’s Mightiest Heroes would have a team adventure and that dream came to life with Marvel Avengers, an online multiplayer cooperative action-adventure game from Crystal Dynamics and Square Enix.
It’s been a year since the release of Marvel Avengers and a lot has changed over that time with three expansions, three new playable heroes, eight to ten hours of new story content, and a complete overhaul of the user interface and menus. Despite some pervasive and ongoing issues with the Games-as-a-Service component, there has never been a better time to play Marvel Avengers and with a new content roadmap in less than a week, Square Enix and Crystal Dynamics still believe in the future of this game. For the first anniversary of Marvel Avengers, it’s time to look back on the past year and assess the state of the game now.
The launch of Marvel’s Avengers
In recent years, Crystal Dynamics is best known for Tomb Raider (2013) and its sequel from 2015 Rise of the Tomb Raider, it is therefore not surprising that despite negative glimpses of the opening mission, Marvel Avengers story campaign has been praised by fans and critics alike. Unfortunately, this is where the positives start to fall. Its multiplayer component has been heavily criticized as being forced, uninspired, and incredibly repetitive with long work to reach max level. Crystal Dynamics built a solid gameplay foundation and each playable character felt fun and unique, but struggled to give players compelling reasons to come back. Marvel Avengers the games component as a service was not where it needed to be; Fortunately, three new heroes were on the way in the coming months.
The first DLC for Marvel’s Avengers
Prior to launch, Crystal Dynamics announced that Kate Bishop would be coming out for Marvel Avengers in October 2020, a month after launch, in a new miniature expansion known as “Operation”. However, a troubled launch and the continuing effects of the global pandemic pushed the entire content roadmap back with no concrete date in mind and in November, most of the launch player base for Avengers had already fallen. Operation Taking Aim was finally released in December and featured Kate Bishop as a new playable hero along with two to three hours of new story content set after the events of the main game. While the expansion did little to improve the core issues, Crystal Dynamics once again delivered a gripping story and a unique new hero.
Expand the roster in Marvel’s Avengers
A delayed content roadmap meant the second and third DLC characters were slated for Marvel Avengers, Clint Barton’s Hawkeye and Peter Parker’s Spider-Man, have been pushed back, with the latter arriving in the game later this year. Operation Imperfect Future was released in March, five months after its original release date in November, and followed suit with Operation aiming at in almost every way. New playable character, new campaign, same old issues with what to do next. Future Imperfect added a whole new area and a new villain sector, but overall it felt too similar to the existing content to stand out in any meaningful way. Once again, Marvel Avengers was stuck between anvil and anvil with great story content and playable characters, and a games-as-a-service component added six months later.
A content roadmap for Marvel’s Avengers
Following the release of Hawkeye and Future Imperfect, Crystal Dynamics released a solid roadmap for Marvel Avengers until its first large-scale extension in August, Black Panther: War for Wakanda. And over the past six months, Crystal has delivered every aspect of that roadmap, introducing new limited-time events that use existing content, finally allowing players to use any combination of heroes and adding more. new endgame missions such as the Omega level threat. .
War for Wakanda released as a third free expansion last month and added a new hero, new campaign, new Wakanda biome, new villains in Klaw and Crossbones, and more. In overall size, War for Wakanda is admittedly short, not being much larger than either of the previous operations and not even close to a Destiny 2 annual expansion, and again, does very little to improve the final component or the games as a service. For inactive players, this just serves as a strong starting point, as the game now has up to three new characters depending on where they last left off. For newcomers, there’s never been a better time to play as Marvel Avengers has always had incredibly strong story content and the list of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes is now at nine.
The State of Marvel’s Avengers
One year after the launch of Marvel Avengers, for better or worse, the game is for the most part in exactly the same place it was at this time last year. Three Avengers expansions later, there are three new characters that all feel distinct, around 8-9 hours of new story content which is where the game shines the most, and a few new activities based on the Endgame. Unfortunately, a lot of the game’s fundamental issues, from not very exciting loot to a dull and repetitive endgame, are still present and Black Panther: War for Wakanda doesn’t seem to have done much to bring back inactive players.
Crystal Dynamics to release in-depth review of the next content roadmap for Marvel Avengers next week, and with the confirmation of the PlayStation exclusive hero Spider-Man before the end of the year, it won’t be long before players have a much better idea of the game’s future. At least on the surface, Marvel Avengers doesn’t seem to be going anywhere with Square Enix and Crystal Dynamics dedicated to the project, so hopefully this was just the first year of a long and successful life.
Marvel Avengers is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One and Xbox Series X.
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