Ah, Multiplayer. A rare gem. This is the only place on Earth, digital or otherwise, where you can watch Jason Voorhees slam Scooby-Doo Velma into a golden blimp filled with chicken legs using a bed. This is a game where you can listen to Estelle “American Boy” diss Batman and Bugs Bunny get berated by someone who is definitely not Justin Roiland.
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It’s back. And better than ever. If you haven’t been following the bizarre drama surrounding this Smash Bros. upstart, let me boil it down to one paragraph: The game was pulled from the shelves a year ago, with publisher Warner Bros. and developer Player First Games saying it would take longer to release and therefore no longer available to players (many of whom paid for content in the “open beta”). Fans complained about infrequent updates and that some characters needed to be removed from the game entirely because they were so terrible.
But as they say, time heals all wounds. Yesterday, this game came back from nowhere, and you know what? I forgot how much I missed the cartoony feel of this game. It’s crazy, exaggerated, and absurd, but it’s a lot of fun. It may not be as tight or responsive as Smash, and there may not be as much depth underpinning the entire experience (yet), but there’s a very special core here, and the 2v2 nature of the game feels as strong as ever and worth exploiting.
Before Rebirth (Final Fantasy 14), MultiVersus was essentially a multiplayer game. You could play alone, but you were either playing against bots or against random pairings, who then played against another pairing. Now, there’s something called Rifts, which is a single-player or co-op game filled with silly modifiers and weird mini-games. The mini-games are universally bad, sorry, but the core of the game is really cool – one part tutorial for the PvP suite, one part silly fun of showing off the various cogs in the machine and letting you spread the word about how they all work together.
This game is great. And it’s free. And you get a ton of stuff for free: Even in its early stages, I’m sticking with this as one of the best free games of 2024. There’s a lot of stuff coming; playable Matrix agents, Adventure Time’s jokey Banana Guard character, more Rifts, more rewards, more cosmetics – a pretty good prospect for a free-to-play game, especially one that’s received some negative reactions from the public after making the unpopular decision to go offline.
So what’s my beef with this? This is the second attempt from WB Games and Player First Games. It’s been offline for a year, and all the new content is great, and the new expansion lineup is great. But the netcode. Oh my god, the netcode. I know yesterday was always going to be a big day for the game – three waves of console releases and a final sprint for PC players will test any servers – but the team has done this kind of thing before. It should have predicted how much load the servers would be under.
As someone who paid for the game last time (yes, really), I wanted to log in, get the rewards for being an early adopter, and enjoy the new features that were rolled out for me. But I couldn’t even do that – there was an issue with redeeming my information and syncing my account on the Xbox. After a few hours, the issue was resolved and I got (most of) my stuff back. But after that, the game became almost unplayable for me.
When teaming up with my former friend and MultiVersus collaborator (Reindog forever!), we can barely get into co-op, versus AI, Rift matches. Even when we can, we can’t get the game rewards. Come on, MultiVersus – did you really not expect your servers to take such a hit on day one back? Did you not prepare things beforehand? It’s frustrating for me because I play this for work, but I can’t imagine how annoying it must be for someone who just wants to have a relaxing night with friends.
Will this teething problem stop me from playing the game? No. Will it hurt my opinion of the entire product? No. But I am a paying, playing-for-a-living, multiplayer-defending fighting game fanatic. I am in the hardcore, comfortable little quadrant in the middle of this game’s Venn diagram of design. I enjoy the game, and I have patience for its instability. I don’t know if your average “try-before-you-buy” free-to-play demo player would want to come back after being locked out of single-player content and waiting in a lobby for 30 minutes.
It’s a shame, because there’s something special about the middle of this game; a cleverly conceived and beautifully executed core of the game, punctuated with ridiculous cartoonish fanservice and wish fulfillment. I hope the netcode gets improved and the servers get better, or this game is doomed – I doubt even the deep pockets of Warner Bros. can save it again.
MultiVersus is available now on Xbox, PlayStation, and PC.
