Will you play it when the big ‘next gen’ update hits?
Can Marvel’s Avengers even afford the “Real Reborn Treatment?” Will people come back if it does miraculously get it? These are things I wonder at random moments whenever I see the icon flash across my PS5 menu.
Marvel’s Avengers was always fighting an uphill battle. No matter how much Square Enix and Crystal Dynamics showed of it, a lot of folks felt like it didn’t capture that Marvel, or even general comic book spark.
The demo didn’t really help, as it showed that it didn’t play like either of those things to boot. So we were kind of left like a weird Frankenstein’s monster of a comic book action romp, and off-brand MCU character models. It felt like there wasn’t a lot of cohesiveness there from any executive level.
But even still, I had a decent enough time with Avengers as long as the story was rolling. It wasn’t until I hit that endgame Destiny-like grind that things started to…grind to a halt. It’s a rollercoaster of a game, in terms of mechanics and the live service loot foundation.
Square Enix and company assumed that throwing more characters and cosmetics at players would keep their interest. Even without any delays (I get it), I don’t think that was going to be the magic bullet they thought it would be. There are fundamental problems with how the endgame is structured that will take a lot of effort and time to fix.
Some of the problems were of Marvel/Square Enix/Crystal Dynamics’ own making: top-level marketing type stuff. Waiting forever to introduce him and making Spider-Man a Sony exclusive may have helped pay the bills, but from the outside, it looks like a big mistake. Executive decision after executive decision helped kill the momentum of this game: to the point where the CEO of Crystal Dynamics even had to address the drop-off in players.
So I ask: is the game salvageable for you? Are you coming back for the big “next-gen” upgrade (which, like Cyberpunk 2077‘s was delayed)? I’ll probably give it a shot, not just because it’s my job to do so, but I’m not super hopeful that it’s going to be enough to blow everyone away.
