I was unsure about Marvel Rivals following its initial announcement and preview, but the closed beta gave me hope that, despite some obvious issues that need to be ironed out, the game can be brought to some acceptable conclusion.
There’s no denying that Overwatch 2 has long struggled, and depending on who you ask, Blizzard’s once-attractive hero shooter IP as a whole has faced the same woes. The truth is that things started to go downhill in Overwatch’s first two years or so after its launch, as the powers that be decided it wasn’t good enough to appeal to players of all skill levels and grow from there, and instead began chasing esports-related growth. Now, despite some recent success, Overwatch 2 still feels like a shell of itself, and Marvel and NetEase’s shameless take on the format might be exactly what many of us have been missing for years.
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I have to agree with my friend Connor that Marvel Rivals is a lot like a knockoff of Overwatch, but that depends Which Overwatch is trying to replicate that phase, which is probably a good thing, because the current version of Overwatch 2 (it doesn’t feel right to even consider it a sequel) isn’t very good. Marvel and NetEase are just looking for that fat hero shooter revenue, and most hero shooters and other live service gambles have apparently started to die. However, all of these recent developments were hard to predict, and even harder to predict if we consider how long AA and AAA development usually takes these days, unless you’re a studio full of development wizards (there are some interesting cases).
Marvel Rivals also fails to escape the shadow of my recent complaint about “free-to-play games suck.” The game has been (and still is) tested in the heat of the moment, and if you’ve been following Marvel’s efforts in other areas, it’s easy to see why some characters were added to the Marvel Multiverse instead of more iconic heroes. The inclusion of Luna Snow, for example, can only be explained by NetEase and Marvel’s apparent focus on the Asian market; she’s an overlooked Korean K-Pop star superhero who first appeared in Marvel Future Fight. The current roster of 21 characters may raise some eyebrows, but there are good financial reasons behind each superhero (or villain) that has been introduced.
Those things aside, my experience with Marvel Rivals so far has been… a lot of fun to play. The hero designs are solid (although they need a lot of balancing work after the beta), and synergy could be the game’s most defining feature if NetEase gets its way. By sacrificing overly rigid class archetypes and letting each hero or villain shine based on their comic book counterparts, some bold gameplay possibilities open up, and if done right, the unique interactions and boosts that come with certain group combinations could shake up the metagame with each new season.
At a more basic level, games are just Feel Well, it looks great (although the artists behind the scenes may have done something sketchy). Concord’s own beta was met with a lukewarm reception, which may have been due in part to the overly conservative art direction. Meanwhile, Marvel Rivals looks like a souped-up version of the Spider-Man universe movies, with strong anime influences, and it’s amazing to see it all come together in motion (even outside of the actual game). The downside of this aggressive visual style is that the chaotic team battles sap much of the game’s readability, to the point where you’ll often be lying dead before you realize your HP bar is too low. This is an area that needs major improvements before a public release.
The level design is also a mixed bag. It works well with the game modes that are directly borrowed from Blizzard’s hero shooters, but the layout lacks more immediately recognizable points, and can even become a bit difficult to traverse at times if you’re playing as a slower (and generally support-oriented) super character. Venom and Spider-Man, meanwhile, jump around like they did in the single-player Insomniac games. I wasn’t kidding when I said the overall Marvel Rivals experience could be changed. a lot of It depends on what character you choose, and I guess the developers want everyone to feel powerful despite their differences, so there’s a lot of work to do on that level as well.
Will NetEase listen to all the feedback we frantically send it over the next few days? Hopefully it’ll be the basis for a hero shooter that’s almost as hot as Marvel Snap in the digital collectible card game space. As for Marvel’s role in all of this, it should really focus on building cross-media synergies with future roster additions. That means bringing Agatha Harkness on board this fall, or recruiting Sam Wilson as Captain America in February. Before that happens, however, we need to know if it’ll be available to everyone soon. Alas, for all we know, it could be in 2025.
