This past weekend, I was lucky enough to be a part of a select few people to have a crack at the new Marvel’s Avengers game. Marvel’s Avengers is developed by Crystal Dynamics and Eidos-Montreal and published by Square Enix. Marvel’s Avengers is an action/adventure game that gives you control of some of the biggest names from the Marvel comics including Captain America, Black Widow, Iron Man, The Hulk, Thor, Hawkeye, and Ms Marvel.

I won’t go too much into the story for spoiler reasons, just know that it is based five years after the Avenger team disbands. While AIM takes over, their plot is discovered by Ms Marvel and she decides to reassemble the Avengers to stop them.

This BETA gives us a glimpse into the game and its mechanics, allowing us to play a few of the story missions and access to around eight war table missions which can be played solo, with AI or with three other people. I really enjoyed the tutorial mission, not only did you get to play as the main five Avengers, transitioning between each was a great feeling like a complete cinematic Marvel episode. Each showcase for each character is quite different, some in my opinion are better than others but there is someone for everyone’s playstyle.

The controls are simple enough and even changing characters is not a whole new learning curve. Out of the characters I had access to, Ms Marvel and Black Widow were by far my favourite, while I did play as The Hulk and Iron Man a little, they just weren’t as fun for me but as I said for someone else it could be the complete opposite. Each character has a quick attack, heavy attack, block, dodge/counter and three special abilities, which are incredibly fun to use. Some characters of course, like Iron Man and Thor, also fly which can take a bit of getting used to.

Playing the Multiplayer missions were pretty solid, though some objectives did feel like I was doing the same thing over and over. The levels are huge in missions, some taking up to fifteen to twenty minutes to complete, I even ended up taking nearly an hour as I just canvased the entire map.

The A.I. could use a little more direction as they just follow you and start attacking randomly when you encounter enemies. This leaves you to complete the objectives while fighting off enemies which can become a pain, fun, but still a pain. I also found if you play with others or friends, it will add more strategy and tactical advantages and we all know how much I love my strategy and tactics, if you have read any of my other reviews.

The gear aspect of this game is great; it reminds me of a few other games, where you find gear through completing missions or in loot boxes while playing the mission, along with resources that upgrade the gear. It also incorporates both a stat rating and tier levels of gear. For example, you might have two of the exacts same gear, but one will have a base of ten power while the other has fifteen. As you play through, you will start to find rarer gear which is indicated by a coloured edging blue, green, purple and so on. These will also have extra abilities to buff up your character and really drive your type of playstyle.

Another item you can gain are relics which again are like gear but are a little harder to get and level up. As you level up each character, you will unlock their character tiers, unlocking resources, emotes and skins. You will be able to bypass this if you want to spend the money or just unlock them as you level.

When your character levels, you will gain skill points to unlock new abilities and ability upgrades from your skill tree. Mine did glitch a little which caused me to have 999 skill points for The Hulk but being the BETA, it was not overly helpful as I only had access to a certain amount of skills and will hopefully be fix by its release.

Marvel’s Avengers looks really good and you can see the effort put into it visually, but with Square involved I wasn’t really concerned. Some of the scenes could use a touch up, like the load screens, and while on the Quinjet, depending on where The Hulk is, one of the shots is just a close up of his ass, but I’ve got to give it to him, it’s a pretty nice ass, he must have been doing his squats.

In all seriousness though, it was quite beautiful, and for the most part everything worked and looked like it should, for me anyway.

While I was excited about this game when it was first announced, I did also have my eye on other games as well, but my attention is now firmly directed towards Marvel’s Avengers. I cannot wait to get my hands on the full game and it is sure to excite many fans and upset many fans as well because, why not right. With a bit more polishing after these initial BETA tests, I believe this will be a must buy game.

Written by: Adam Brasher