There are certain times in life where you just have to hold your hands up and admit you were wrong, this dear reader is one of those exact moments for yours truly. One week ago I wrote an article discussing my initial thoughts on the Marvel’s Avengers Beta after playing the game for my very first time. Words like ‘bored’, ‘disappointed’ and ‘crappy’ were thrown around with anger while I claimed I would no longer be buying the upcoming Square Enix game.
If you don’t feel like reading today (don’t worry, this is me most days) then feel free to check out the video version of this article instead in the video below.
One week later and the beta was open once again so I thought it was only fair to give the game another crack, especially given that I never even gave Iron Man and Black Widow a proper opportunity to impress me. I started again from scratch at the Golden Gate Bridge and my first thought was I might have been a bit harsh, but overall I was still a little let down by its repetitive nature and dull locations. However this time I was more forgiving of the story now that I’ve accepted that the beta won’t be giving us much of a narrative at all.
Once I’d reached the war table, I made sure to lower my expectations as much as possible given that it was at this point I gave up on the game during my first playthrough. I tried jumping in as Iron Man and to my surprise I really enjoyed his gameplay. It’s surprising that in the opening mission they decided to highlight the worst parts of using Iron Man because once you actually get him on the ground he’s a lot of fun! The HulkBuster in particular is a great touch, being able to switch between essentially being the Hulk then flying away and taking out drones and enemies from a distance meant I’d found my favourite character to play with.
Unfortunately the fun of using Iron Man didn’t make up for the boring (there’s that word again but hear me out) missions on offer at the war table. I found myself uninterested again pretty quick and ended up switching it off for what I thought might be the last time. That was until I received a message from my little bro Matt asking if I wanted to give the multiplayer a go.
After only committing to one quick mission, I was more surprised than anyone to find that we’d ended up sinking a couple of hours into mindlessly taking out waves of enemies and protecting points here there and everywhere. All of a sudden there was fun with the most simplest of actions. Matt would call me to check out his new elbow drop he’d unlocked for his Hulk while I’d mock him for not being able to reach a chest that I could easily fly to as my Iron Man. Then we began to dig a little deeper into our skill trees and before we knew it, we were a well oiled team of Avengers and having a great time with it.
As somebody who is very outspoken about his dislike for online gaming, I take zero pride in telling you how addicted I got to unlocking all the Iron Man cosmetics available in the beta. I’m usually fully against grinding for silly outfits but when that grinding involves blasting enemies with repulsor blasters and those outfits are classic Marvel Iron Man suits, well you can just go right ahead a call me a big old hypocrite, go on, I deserve it.
Like any mature adult making an apology, I will first point out what I was right about before fully admitting to any wrong doing. These missions are still repetitive and lack any proper narrative. The game also lags pretty bad when there’s too much action going on, at one point I’m pretty sure I was down to about 15 frames per second. There’s also no way in hell that this game passes an 8/10 come launch due to the reasons mentioned above and certainly won’t be in my GOTY discussions when it’s competing against the likes of The Last Of Us Part 2 and Final Fantasy VII Remake. Despite all this however, me and Matt were still having a ton of fun and isn’t that all that matters? I can’t deny that I have the itch to boot it up again this coming weekend for the last open beta before launch. After all I still need that intergalactic rare outfit for my Iron Man!
So here we go.. I’m sorry, I was wrong. No, Marvel’s Avengers won’t be a 10/10 classic but it’s not trying to be, and it’s unfair to start comparing it to the likes of Spider-Man on the PS4 and Rocksteady’s Arkham games when it’s not trying to be those either. Judging it as its own thing with a fresh perspective, I now realise exactly what this game wants to be and I think I’m more than okay with that. Will it be worth the full asking price of £50 plus? It’s hard to say for sure at this point but what I will say for sure is I’m no longer boycotting in and actually look forward to seeing what the full version of this game looks like. Roll on September 4th!
If you’re excited to get your hands on Marvel’s Avengers but you’re yet to pre-order the game then please do so in the Amazon links below, it won’t cost you any extra and just helps us continue to do what we do for free. Thank You.