Image: NetEase Games
Marvel Rivals’ hero kits might seem derivative of Overwatch, but its fun factor can’t be denied.
NetEase Games’ new hero shooter Marvel Rivals could not have kicked off its Closed Beta Test at a better time. The game popped up at San Diego Comic Con this year with a series of big announcements, including the unveiling of its big bad(s) Doctor Doom and new playable characters Thor and Jeff the Land Shark. It was then almost immediately shown up by Marvel Studios, which dropped a Robert Downey Jr.-sized bombshell.
The Marvel brand as a whole is front and centre in mainstream consciousness at the moment, leaving Marvel Rivals in a rather enviable position. Here comes a videogame featuring your favourite characters from Marvel comics, with the perfect angle to penetrate a genre seemingly on its last legs: the hero shooter. We’ve been spending lots of time in Marvel Rivals’ ongoing Closed Beta Test and while there's still time for things to change, it looks like NetEase Games has a hit on its hands - albeit one that shamelessly and unsparingly apes on Blizzard Entertainment’s Overwatch.
How does Marvel Rivals play?
Marvel Rivals’ Closed Beta Test has four maps, three game modes and around 23 playable characters, making for a pretty meaty beta all in all. In terms of its similarity to other hero shooters, you’ll find that the game skews closer to Overwatch's arena shooter-like format than Valorant or Apex Legends, offering 6v6 PvP gameplay across all three of its game modes.
These game modes are Convoy, which has players escort a payload across a map, Domination, which has players capture multiple objectives, and Convergence, which is a king of the hill-style mode with objectives that constantly shift in location. As you capture objectives or escort payloads, you’ll have to contend with various Marvel heroes who bring their own power sets to the table in the form of ability kits.
Marvel Rivals can be inconsistent in the way it translates iconic Marvel heroes to gameplay. For example, The Punisher wields assault rifles, smoke grenades and turrets to fight his foes, and it makes sense that the ex-military vigilante is the closest thing this game has to a generic Call of Duty-style shooter kit. Hulk is a D.Va facsimile who distributes shields to his allies in between fisticuffs and turns into a pistol-twirling Bruce Banner if he runs out of health. While the Punisher feels like the Punisher through and through here, the Hulk simply doesn’t feel like the Hulk. Part of that blame can be placed on his wide and unwieldy set of abilities, but most of it lies with the game’s atrocious melee combat.
Cue the Overwatch rant
There’s something to be said about just how much of Overwatch’s homework has been copied by Marvel Rivals here. At least Valorant and Apex Legends applied the playable hero concept to different genres, but Marvel Rivals feels like a reskinned Overwatch in too many ways. Not only do its maps and game modes harken back to the Blizzard game - and fall short by comparison, incidentally - but its playable superheroes feel like a mishmash of Overwatch’s entire roster.
Rocket Raccoon has Torbjorn’s original kit, down to throwing out armour packs for his allies. Storm can swap between a speed and a damage buff, much like Lucio does with his speed and healing buff. Magneto plays like Sigma, Scarlet Witch has Zenyatta’s secondary fire as her Ultimate, Star Lord has Tracer’s Pulse Pistols (with the exact same reload animation!), and the list goes on. It actually never ends.
I love comic books and I love Overwatch, so this game should have been an immediate slam dunk for me. Its crossover appeal is massive, but any excitement I had in picking up these heroes was immediately replaced by a sense of disappointing familiarity. It’s too similar to a game I’ve poured hundreds of hours into to fully draw me in, despite an indisputably gorgeous new coat of paint. These Marvel characters have rich histories and complex power sets, so why do their in-game counterparts feel so devoid of innovation? Even if I ignore how much this game drops the ball on the superhero power fantasy, I can’t ignore how mechanically shallow the roster feels in comparison to the characters they’re aping.
Overwatch 2 developers have confirmed in the past that new heroes can take up to a year to release, with each hero going through multiple phases of development ranging from ideation to design and voice work. To Marvel Rivals’ credit, taking a few existing ideas and mashing them together might have streamlined that work by some margin, as the Closed Beta Test already has 23 characters whereas Overwatch launched with 21. However, my suspicion is that when the game actually launches and a meta develops around its strongest characters, we’re going to see the fallout of these redistributed hero kits. It’s too early to tell, but the gap between this game's strongest and weakest heroes is massive right now. Thor’s cooldown-heavy kit renders him sluggish and situational, while the Punisher instantly shreds any hero he sees with little opposition. Some of these hero abilities seem to have been haphazardly thrown together with little regard for balance, and that can only lead to frustration among competitive players down the line.
More to the point, having these iconic Marvel heroes play like Overwatch characters cheapens their very appeal. There is no shortage of Marvel games to draw comparisons from here - Guardians of the Galaxy had a better take on Star Lord, Marvel’s Avengers had an infinitely better take on the Hulk, and I won’t even mention how much better the Insomniac games are at turning players into web-slingers. Almost every one of these characters is more fun to play somewhere else. Yes, this is a radically different gameplay format - but a noticeable lack of imagination is what really weighs them down.
That’s the last time I’ll mention Overwatch, I promise.
What Marvel Rivals gets right
There’s a lot to like about Marvel Rivals. Its ostentatious UI for example, which sees flashy little animations play when you click on almost any button in its extensive gallery of menus. An extended animation also plays when you click on a specific hero in its roster, which I found interesting enough to then view every single hero and see what the game did with each of them. Each map also comes attached with cutscenes tied to victory/defeat conditions, telling a small albeit repetitive story in each match. Given Marvel Rivals’ multiversal premise, this game also has one of the best reasons to mash heroes and villains together without breaking canon.
Marvel Rivals will be free-to-play at launch, and if its current closed beta cosmetics are anything to go by, it’s going to make bank. The game’s cosmetics seem to range from emotes to skins, and they all look pretty fantastic. NetEase Games’ art team is clearly exceptionally talented at churning out gorgeous character and environment designs, with even default character skins offering a fun but familiar twist on iconic Marvel hero costumes.
Galacta, the estranged daughter of cosmic planet eater and occasional smoke monster Galactus, appears as the purveyor of this beta’s battle pass. The battle pass is fairly short and almost impossible to complete unless you play daily, but at least all the cosmetics you earn will disappear once the beta ends. Granted, that won’t matter when the game actually launches - but free-to-play games have historically struggled with not fleecing players for every cent they’re worth. If Marvel Rivals launches with a fairly-priced battle pass but an outrageously priced shop, it will just have one more thing in common with a game I promised to stop mentioning here.
Without a doubt, Marvel Rivals’ biggest draw is its massive playable roster. As someone who got burned years ago by the absence of mutants in Marvel Vs. Capcom Infinite, it is both a relief and a joy to see so many of them on a playable roster - and not the usual picks, either. Wolverine and Cyclops aren’t on here despite being everywhere else, but the game has Magik, Magneto, Storm and Namor in their stead. The game also has a few other deep cuts, like Gwenpool’s pet Jeff the Land Shark, Marvel Future Fight’s Luna Snow and Spider-Verse’s Peni Parker. This is a strong starting roster, with plenty of new characters for Marvel fans to discover mixed in with old favourites.
This game also has a team-up system that unlocks special abilities whenever two or more thematically similar heroes are in the same team. Storm can call on Thor’s godly powers to throw lightning at her enemies for example, and Rocket Raccoon can climb onto Groot for a defense buff. There’s a long list of team-up abilities, and all of them are genuinely fun to discover and work out during a match. The system also has interesting implications for future meta team compositions, on top of just being a genuine innovation in the game’s favour.
What Marvel Rivals gets wrong
The entire purpose of a closed beta test is to identify key problems with a game before it releases, but Marvel Rivals has a few issues so intrinsically tied to its hero and level design that the developer might not have enough time to address them. Flying, for example, is a little strange in this game. Where the game drops the ball on giving players the barbarian-like power fantasy of its many melee heroes, it surprisingly allows them unlimited airtime with heroes like Iron Man and Storm.
While I love that in theory, it does create moments where you’re constantly getting pelted by lightning bolts, only to look up and see your assailant vanish behind a skyscraper. There aren’t enough counters to flying characters to bring them back down to the ground, or hitscan characters to challenge their dominance over a match. The two only hitscan characters that come to mind from this roster are Hela and the Punisher, and surprise, surprise, they’re the most overpowered of the bunch.
Interestingly, Marvel Rivals also has level destruction - a key differentiator in its genre. Much like Counter-Strike 2’s new smoke tech, however, it’s a cool addition that ultimately doesn’t come into play very often. You’ll see buildings and obstacles get torn down during skirmishes left and right, but players typically either seek alternative cover or use abilities to make their own. Heroes have a dozen different ways to get shields or manoeuvre out of danger in this game, to the point that it’s a non-issue. The game also has a truly bewildering amount of visual clutter thanks to its 6v6 format and overwhelmingly large hero kits, and watching walls explode around you only exacerbates the issue.
Combat animations are a noticeably mixed bag. Granted, animation work can be difficult in a fast-paced game like this. If animations are detailed enough to blend together seamlessly, they might appear sluggish and unresponsive to players who just want to string together combos as quickly as possible. If an ability doesn’t match up with the visual effect it has on an enemy, players will find it floaty and confusing. The latter seems to be the main problem here, especially in melee combat. Melee characters simply don’t have enough onscreen feedback to make them satisfying to use. Hulk should feel like a juggernaut threat when he’s on the battlefield, especially so in a game that features level destruction like this one does. Instead, his punches and thunderclaps feel airy and aimless, like he can’t quite land a direct hit.
Summing things up
The same nature of Marvel Rivals might deter fans of a certain Blizzard game from sticking to it for the long run, but newcomers will find plenty to like in its massive roster of playable heroes, gorgeous visuals and fast-paced matches. It's early days, but the game could find a strong audience so long as NetEase is willing to keep its ear to the ground and make constant tweaks to hero balancing and combat feedback, which appear to be the most prominent issues faced by the ongoing beta. Speaking personally, much of its appeal is lost on me - if only because I've played this game before.