Enlarge /. Avengers unite. (All of the images in this article were taken from real PS4 Pro gameplay. This is what the Avengers look like in their new 2020 video game.)
Crystal Dynamics / Square Enix
After more than a year of rumors, teasing, and revelations, we've finally played the upcoming Avengers video game, which is set to be released on September 4 on PS4, Xbox One and Windows PC. It is arguably the largest Avengers game ever made thanks to the massive efforts of the developer Crystal Dynamics (creator of the modern Tomb Raider trilogy). Many of you will soon be able to play the same content when the beta test of the game opens on Friday August 7th, exclusively for PS4 players who pre-ordered the game. (All three platforms will have open beta periods by the end of the month, no purchase required; more on this below.)
We handled this superhero game carefully, partly because its performance looked suspicious during E3 2019 and we couldn't tell how the Destiny-inspired looter shooter system could be transferred to the beat em up genre. The choice of missions and story sequences in this beta raised our suspicions of what to expect in the last game – and the news isn't great.
Feeling weak in a world of heroes
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Campaign content in beta focuses on Hulk and Ms. Marvel. You can see a significantly improved face rendering run compared to previously revealed footage.
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"Hulk jump! Hulk comes from point A to point B!"
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This boss fight ends spectacularly, I have to admit.
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Some of the dialogs land directly in the "exhausting" area, but at least the facial expression behind these conversations has improved considerably.
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For example: Black Widow's makeover makes her look a bit more discreet compared to her popular film version.
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The other side of the shield is very Captain America-ey, swear.
The beta begins with an all-star superhero brawl in San Francisco, mostly on the Golden Gate Bridge, and it may seem familiar, as it premiered at E3 last year. It's a show-of-force intro where players jump from one well-known superhero to the next: Thor, Hulk, Iron Man, Captain America, and Black Widow. Everyone comes with a mix of melee, ranged, counter and special attacks, and everyone can seriously hit a large amount of generic robo-soldier enemies. Hit, run, jump and repeat.
As a mission that sets the tone, this San Francisco battle runs on PS4 Pro with a constant refresh of 30 frames per second, while offering a delicious variety of explosive effects and detailed characters. Really, the whole thing looks much better than before – especially the faces of the title heroes, who no longer look like stunt doubles from the real Avengers films. However, actual control over this mission shows that almost all characters' attacks are sluggish. Black Widow's punches are what makes this game "snappiest" and everyone else feels hit by a ray of kryptonite (yes, I deliberately bring my canon together there for comic book publishers).
Even worse, even Black Widow, a supposed sniper, suffers from a crude mix of push-button delay and recoil with jerky targets when making a ranged attack, and so does any other hero. Hulk's ranged attack is a great example of how badly Crystal Dynamics deals with this aspect of the fight. Hulk has to go through an animation in which he shovels debris from the floor and wads into a ball before he can start throwing. Then he has an extra animation cycle to actually throw the thing. Worst of all, the apparent size of this ranged attack is pea-sized and requires precision to hit your distant target, and its visual and acoustic impact is poor. Some of these issues could be compromises in the right mix, such as slow but powerful or fast and weak, but at press time, the beta ranged attacks all feel unwieldy, weak, and hot.
When prey is not all prey
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A chest full of loot.
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Loot only slightly affects your existing stats, rather than enabling new styles of combat.
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Weaker breastplate part.
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Stronger breastplate.
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You need to delve into the game's skill trees to get more game variety.
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Finally, the game offers three separate skill trees, and players can combine the powers of each to achieve their final build. There is currently only one skill tree per character in beta.
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Sometimes treasure chests contain comics, but you cannot read them. Instead, they offer very mild status bonuses, similar to the Borderland points system.
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Yes, there is a "Battle Pass" in beta that contains a mixture of cosmetic and useful items. When these things go beyond the cosmetic, our eyebrows go up – especially when we don't know if real money will go into this system.
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I admit I'm busy with some of the cosmetic options that are previewed in this beta.
This also applies if you've played enough beta to accumulate new loot for a particular hero, since each character has four equipment slots: one for melee attacks, one for ranged attacks, one for special attacks and one for defense. Similar to the classic ARPG series (Diablo, Borderlands), you will go through increasingly difficult missions to find and equip ever more powerful equipment. But unlike these series, this equipment simply changes the statistics for your hero's default skills.
Since the game revolves around archetypal heroes, the loot doesn't lead to significant differences in game mechanics. In other words, you will never ask Captain America to switch from a shield to a flamethrower because you found one on the floor. (Incidentally, "Captain America with a Flamethrower" would be a cute video game, Marvel.) Instead, the adjustment in Marvel's Avengers is mainly done through skill trees, which you can use to unlock and assign different types of attacks as the game progresses. However, the beta contains only one skill tree that you can play with. With Beta loot, players can only expand the stats of each character's existing skill tree. In certain cases, a new loot intake can add elemental bonuses (take less damage from "cold" attacks or add "fire" damage to your ranged attack). That's all.
If Crystal Dynamics expects us to engage in this game for months, this customization system will be better than it currently looks.
After the climatic, polished opening mission is completed, the beta will quickly advance in the game's story later. Long story short: The Avengers disappointed mankind and disbanded, but Ms. Marvel and Hulk teamed up to bring the band back together. These designed missions lose some momentum as they lead players into generic jungle environments and shiny metal-villain connections. The Golden Gate intro's sense of location is completely lost, and you'll beat up uninspiring intro sequence soldiers while grappling with a frustratingly narrow camera angle in cramped interiors.
Although this game tries to combine a racket with an ARPG formula, Marvel's Avengers is based on a core principle of these two genres: careful thought about the camera. It is an exercise in exhaustion and frustration to keep an eye on every surrounding enemy in a Marvel & # 39; s Avengers brawl while fighting with three allies. Crystal Dynamics tries but doesn't help by hitting the periphery of the screen with "Hey over there!" Fills. Warning symbols in different colors and shapes. I remembered my favorite memories of Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 on Xbox 360, where four people could sit on the same couch and wave villains wave by wave, supported by a fixed, easily visible camera angle. I just wanted to go back to this game. (I would like to point out that the new Marvel & # 39; s Avengers currently do not support split-screen co-op. You must connect with friends online.)
Did Hulk code the motion blur system?
Every now and then there is an incredible moment that reminds me of how far gaming has progressed since the launch of the original Ultimate Alliance games. One of Hulk's special attacks, an uncomplicated onslaught, sometimes triggers special animations when it connects to a boss character, and the resulting WHAM WHAM WHAM WHAM WHAM is exactly the comic fight nonsense that I polished myself into Action game like this tendon. These moments occur often enough, be it in the course of the fight or as a massive exclamation mark after a significant boss fight.
But the Marvel & # 39; s Avengers beta only has so many of these moments, and otherwise the beta suffers from two major issues: an extremely serious conspiracy and some terribly thin side missions.
The dialogue in the mission sequences of this beta is tirelessly serious, all apparently scripted and directed, as if this were aimed at overturning The Last of Us in cinematic splendor. Characters often pause and sigh through some sort of internal conflict, just to mix those moments with the total cheese of an angry villain who comes from nowhere or the charming, silly excitement of Ms. Marvel, who is in the middle of the action, official Avengers- Business. I don't mind that one of these extremes exists, mind you; It's more that the unbalanced tone exhausted me after just two hours of beta. (I wish they'd been on Ms. Marvel's side instead of sounding like another Troy Baker joint often.)
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This swirl of blurry characters is widespread in Marvel & # 39; s Avengers beta on PS4 Pro.
Crystal Dynamics / Square Enix
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One of many laboratories that you fight through.
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Unlike the exclusive Spider-Man game for PS4, cities in Avengers feel much less explorable because the tall buildings take players on specific paths. (The default bottom camera angle doesn't help the claustrophobic feeling.)
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Iron Man is the only character in Beta who can fly freely, so it's the most fun to use. (Thor also comes with free flight, we think.) The result feels better at this point than Anthem – though that's a fairly low bar to clarify.
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The question marks on the screen point to treasure chests that are hidden behind mild puzzles. As a rule, some huge switches are found and pressed in a certain zone.
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Fight in a laboratory? We have to play Marvel's Avenger.
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From above, these laboratories look clean and clear enough to measure themselves.
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However, get into a real fight and it's a mess of motion blur.
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At least Ms. Marvel's stretchy arm attacks grab a decent wallop.
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"Jump Hulk? Why jump Hulk on floating things?"
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"Hulk unimpressed by the last generation forest."
Once you've gone through the narrative core of the beta, you'll be taken to a series of side missions, which usually end in a series of repetitive corridors from research laboratories. Some of them start with walking through a semi-open area: a wooded outpost in the Pacific Northwest, or a facsimile of New York City filled with buildings, or at worst, a generic low-polygon wide snow-covered hill. But in beta, they pretty much all end up in some sort of lab, and they each end up with a few cookie-cutter mission types: kill everyone in sight, stand near a labeled zone until a meter is charged, or both.
These zones include booty-filled chests that are either hidden in winding tunnels or strewn over your head – and, gosh, the mission networks with floating "I think we should jump up there" platforms look positively ridiculous. The dragging controls of most heroes between the platforms don't help them. If you're not using the Iron Man jetpack, the Black Widow grappling hook, or Mrs. Marvel's stretchy arms, get ready for frustration. In any case, the regularity of this material "trudging through barren countries to find hidden chests" is a momentum slamming crap, as if Crystal Dynamics had been instructed to equip its growling drum missions with anything, anything.
Oddly enough, whether you're in an open-air city zone or in a network of lab tunnels, prepare for a confusing beta experience. Criminally low camera angles, mixed with erratic frame rates, aggressive motion blur and enemies that fit into your heroes made me sick at the end of my three-hour run through the content on offer. And when I recovered from this sensation, uncreative waves of enemies and all too similar characters and powers to ward off all of them left me untouched. If this is the best step forward in beta to tell potential fans what to expect when working through both the campaign and all of the "endgame" content, then I have a number of sarcastic, Tony Stark- similar comments locked and loaded into my loaded figurative, palm-mounted repulsor.
The promise against the competition
If you're hoping for improved performance by the start of the game next month, I recommend sticking to a series of "training" fights, all in a "wireframe" camp, with a locked 30-fps- Update run no matter how many waves of enemies appear.
In these zones, you can see the Marvel & # 39; s Avengers promise: full-screen battle for up to four friends, each with access to classic superheroes and their bombastic special attacks. I've described some nitpicks with speed and control precision, and I hope they are ironed out at the time the game starts, as well as generic AI and a lack of hostile variety. But even in its current state, this is still a reasonable superhero fight, and we've seen a lot worse, whether from the switch-exclusive Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 or a number of VR-exclusive superhero duds.
In the upcoming open phase of this beta, you can decide whether there is enough meat on these bones. So if you don't believe my nitpicks, that's fair enough. You get your shot this month for free. But I've played some awesome superhero games lately, especially the exclusive Marvel & # 39; s Spider-Man for PS4, with more engrossing stories, better side-job content, and more consistent ways to fight for "I feel like an asshole". The volley from Crystal Dynamics clearly has polish and ambition and invites friends to the party. However, the most worrying problem with this beta is that it catches up on games that are already great (and discounted) (and don't rely on those annoying games). as-a-service model).
