The gameplay truly begins with Thor landing on the Golden Gate Bridge. Surrounded by thugs carrying stolen pulsar technology, Thor begins to destroy his opponents one by one. His ‘special’ abilities include throwing his hammer (which pins people to the side of objects until he recalls it), spinning mjolnir in front of him to create both a shield and weapon, and a barrage of both fist and hammer attacks. Using all three create an interesting opportunity to combo enemies while keeping others at bay. By using Thor’s god given abilities, he can also create both an individual lightning strike on his person or a storm of electrical activity which randomly targets enemies in an ‘area of effect’. Thor can obviously also fly, and crash into the ground causing further destruction.
As a new group of enemies arrive with the aid of jet packs, the screen seamlessly shifts to Iron man’s viewpoint. As these particular bad guys realize they’re outmatched, they burst down the now exploding Golden Gate Bridge, firing backwards at a fast pursuing Iron man. The game unfortunately seems extremely linear. There doesn’t seem to be much room for Iron man (or any character) to stray from the path in front of them. That being said, flying over the bridge whilst firing missiles and repulsar beams is dangerously fun. As Iron man, you need to actually aim your repulsar beams, as opposed to selecting individual bad guys. As Tony is winning his fight, the massive truck you see in the trailer (which is carrying a sonic weapon) begins to barrel down the bridge. Banner and Natasha jump from the hovering Quinjet, and the camera once again shifts to the perspective of a now very angry Hulk.
The Hulk gameplay was extraordinary. He’s as fast and as strong as you would hope, and his ability to jump around the bridge is flawless in its execution. His attacks include a ground pound that destroys everything in front of him, catching and throwing large objects (including pieces of the road laid out before him) and of course, simple Hulk smashing. The Hulk and Iron man quickly take out the truck, only to discover the driver to be the semi-famous baddie Taskmaster. Natasha relays to the team that she will steal the detonator from Taskmaster while the rest of the heroes prevent the bridge from falling.
Natasha’s combat within the boss fight that ensues reminds me a bit of Devil May Cry. The second taskmaster launches into the air, Black Widow uses her duel pistols and fires until hes down on the ground. She then continues her onslaught of fast jabs and martial arts, diving, ducking and weaving until Taskmaster gives up and prepares to run. This is where you see Black Widow riding on his back through the bridge. As far as boss fights go, it seems relatively uninspired. It’s a simple two phase, rinse and repeat style with what seems like little room for individuality. However, it looks so damn good it’s easy to forgive the lack of creativity. Especially considering this is the fourth hero you’ve played in under 30 min.
Finally the camera shifts to Captain America’s perspective, who is inside the heliocarrier preventing its collapse into the bay. Most of his combat seems centered around his shield, and less of it around his hand to hand fighting abilities. He can chain stun enemies by throwing his shield, launch it into the air after recovering it and then kick it with extreme force at another enemy. He also seems very powerful considering you just wrapped up playing as the Hulk.
The rest of the gameplay is seen in the trailer above, however the last few moments of the montage before the A [vengers] sign comes up is missing a quick scene in both a snowy mountain and a densely green forest. Hopefully this means that Marvel’s Avengers will have many different locations besides New York. That combined with a unique fighting style for each of their heroes equals what will most likely be an extremely epic game. My only complaint as of now, is how overly linear this game seems to be. Within the 30 minutes of gameplay we saw, every character had about 10 feet to move left to right, and for the flyers only about 30 feet up. I understand the desire to keep things simple, as long as it equates to a massive story and tons of hours of gameplay. Otherwise ill stick to free roaming New York in Spider-man.
Keep an eye out for similar articles regarding: Star Wars Fallen Order, Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, Dying Light 2, and Borderlands 3.
When I was young, I never imagined that my love for reading, writing and video games could so easily coalesce into such an interesting and unique profession. Come find me on steam @Coke581, or on Origin, where I primarily play Apex and BF4/5 @S0ape.
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