Jose Zagal's Home Page - Games & Game Studies

Home	Talks and Slides	My GameLog	Research and Projects	Publications	Resume	Teaching
Back // GameBreadth Project // Game Ontology Project // GameLog

Marvel's Avengers (PS4) Status: Finished playing I started playing this game on Thursday 25 November, 2021 // I stopped playing this game on: Saturday 29 January, 2022
Current opinion of this game
No comment, yet.
January 29, 2022 10:49:31 PM
Finished the campaign and still definitely and pleasantly surprised. The end was actually quite bombastic and over the top in a way that felt authentic to the material and the experience. As you play the campaign you find more characters, play with them, until you've got all the Avengers plus Ms Marvel - your characters so to speak. The entire end sequence was interesting because it was a series of fights (against Modok) - but each fight was with a different character. When I noticed what was going on I was worried because it looked like it would be all the "headliners" (Cap America, Iron Man, etc.) and it looked like everyone had forgotten about Ms Marvel. As in, she was there for the fight but didn't have a starring role in any of the fights. I was wrong, hers was the last one, the most epic, and also (fortunately for me) the shortest. It was fitting! Having played the entire campaign, with no real interest in playing the other campaigns, levelling up the characters, doing all the gear chasing, etc... I still think it's a great value for entertainment game. I'm surprised it hasn't been more of a slow burner - the launch was mediocre if I recall, but it should have found an audience of Marvel fans by now. PS4 performance was a bit weak though - the entire end sequence cut-scenes got really choppy, but no showstopping bugs, just slowdown. I'm guessing the PS5 version was the one to get in this sense. Probably had better loading times as well, they were pretty bad here, especially when you die and had to re-start. There were a few moments in the game I died a lot in (playing on normal) and it was getting pretty frustrating for a minute there... The game has quite the progression system, with levelling as well as gear (some of which can also be levelled - when I first started ALL the gear could be levelled up, but they updated the game and got rid of that while I was still playing). What's strange about the levelling is that all the enemies are dynamically balanced to the player level as well. So it does feel a bit pointless at times, to be honest, but perhaps the little buffs and so on really make a difference when playing on a higher difficulty level? I tried playing online a few times - loading times were bad and I was surprised that it let me play with players that were really all over the place in terms of power level. It's a tough problem to solve, for sure - and I'm not even sure how they do it... Oh, I unlocked Spider Man - and wow - now that I think about it some more, I'm even more impressed by the game and how many heroes there are and how different they are to play, how them move around a level and all the rest. There's a really solid set of gameplay bones on which they've built a really flexible game here - Spidey has the swinging and everything!
December 4, 2021 08:25:33 PM
I've played maybe 20% of the campaign. Or, as far as I can tell - the FIRST campaign. I have no idea if everything else that showed up on the menu is available for me to play or if I need to pay (DLC?). I've been enjoying the game so far, it's basically a brawler with a lot of progression and RPG systems. There's all kinds of things to unlock, level up and so on. And, also special abilities (combos, special moves, etc.). So far I've (mostly) played with the Hulk and the Ms. Marvel character with the rubber hands/arms. It's been fun, and I've enjoyed the Ms Marvel(?) The game's menus are quite overwhelming and I was initially not feeling it...as in, not feeling excited about playing the game. But, I then had an epiphany of sorts - I realized that this game looks like what Destiny 2 must look like to a new player. There's events that seem like strikes (online multiplayer - get loot/rewards) and more. There's a whole map full of them - though I suspect I'm too low level at this point for it to make sense for me to chase these. But we'll see!

Marvel's Avengers (PS4)