Marvel's Avengers: First impressions (Playstation Beta)

Back in the day, there used to be this glorious thing called the Best Buy Gamer's Club. It was the most wonderful thing in the world, and it saved me literally hundreds and hundreds of dollars on video games. For some unthinkable reason, Best Buy decided to discontinue the program, much to the chagrin of people like me, who like saving money on their entertainment. The final thing that I did with my Best Buy discount was pre-order a highly anticipated game from Square Enix: "Marvel's Avengers" - a game that wouldn't even be released for a full calendar year.

Fast forward to the year of our Lord, 2020. Now, the "Avengers" game is less than a month away from commercial release (September 4, 2020), and is one of the few things in this world that have not been cancelled or delayed by coronavirus. Because I pre-ordered the game, I qualified to participate in beta testing on Playstation 4.

Certainly, there are some who poured hours and hours into this thing over the weekend; I've seen some people online saying that they basically did everything there was to do, including maxing out the characters' stats. That wasn't me. I played it maybe for a total of four hours over the three-day weekend, so my experience is somewhat "limited," compared to other reviews you might find on the internet right now, but I'm happy to share my thoughts, based on what I was able to experience.

All screenshots used in this blog were captured by me on my Playstation 4.

Note: For those who are looking forward to playing the game when it officially comes out and wish to do so completely "blind," not knowing anything about the story beforehand, I will warn that some minor spoilers will follow, although I believe that the folks at Square Enix and Marvel are only giving us a little sneak peek into the game and are not going to reveal any major plot twists during the beta phase.

A-Day

The beta kicks off with a series of events that have been no secret, surprisingly, for months. (Click here for an "Everything We Know So Far" article that was written by another website back in June.) A big community event is being held in San Francisco to celebrate the Avengers, but things take a turn for the worse when a deadly explosion derails the event. Casualties are plentiful, and among them are several notable individuals, including Captain America, himself. (Allegedly.) I, for one was shocked that this synopsis was made public knowledge months ago, but apparently the fact that Cap bites the big one early in the game is not intended to be a secret by the team that made this game. This catastrophe becomes known, in the game, as "A-Day," and these events set the main plot of the game into motion.

The game lets players jump right into the action, allowing the option to play as all of the main characters in the first 20 minutes of gameplay. First, I flew into the fracas as Thor and Iron Man, taking control of the God of Thunder as I beat back a squadron of dastardly henchmen. I harnessed the might of Mjolnir and beat the tar out of the baddies. After a couple minutes, I was automatically swapped over to Iron Man, in a sequence that had me flying at high speed and shooting my repulsors at airborne villains. While the gameplay controls between the two heroes remained similar (Square for light attacks, Triangle for heavy attacks), the fighting style felt immediately different. I transitioned from brawling with Thor to using mid-ranged attacks with Tony, and it felt natural and intuitive.

Moments later, the game introduced the Incredible Hulk and Black Widow, and I soon thereafter dropped out of the Quinjet as the green meanie, smashing into the wreckage below. Slow and overwhelmingly powerful, the angry Dr. Banner smacked bad guys around with ease, occasionally grabbing some poor sucker by the legs and whipping him left and right. While playing as Hulk, I galloped across a suspension bridge and bounded from billboards to overturned semi trucks, clearing enormous gaps with ease.

After spending some time as Banner, a pistol-toting, impressively agile Black Widow joined the fray to face off against Taskmaster, who appears to be one of the early antagonists in the game. In a challenging boss battle, I squared off against the iconic Marvel mastermind, attempting to break his shields with nimble attacks up close and gunfire from a distance. Ultimately, a special combo move proved to be too much for the masked maniac, and I completed that section of the level.

Meanwhile, Captain America was stuck aboard an airship, fending off attackers and dodging fire and explosions. One of the things I really enjoyed about playing as Steve Rogers was utilizing specialized heroic abilities, such as, in this case, the same move that fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe have seen dozens of times, where Cap hurls his shield and it proceeds to pinball off of several enemies before returning like a boomerang. It was beautiful. I fought my way through several areas of the ship, then watched as the rest of the Avengers plotted how to save the Star-spangled Man with a Plan. Eventually, Iron Man and Thor hastily decided to fly in and attempt to extract their team member, but it was too late. The ship was sent hurtling down in flames, leading to the aforementioned death of Captain America.

Not a bad way to kick things off. It was exciting, gripping and fun to play. But the after-effects of "A-Day" would soon send shock waves across America, causing a multitude of problems for those who were there to witness it.

The Aftermath and the First Few Missions

A series of cut scenes portrayed the consequences of A-Day, which included the bestowal of unwanted mutant powers to regular citizens and the introduction of an organization who promised to heal them - Advance Idea Mechanics (A.I.M.). Now, the informed Marvel fan will immediately recognize A.I.M., and its head spokesman, George Tarleton, as iconic villains from the comics, so we know right away that these guys have nefarious purposes, but we'll have to wait to learn more about that in a couple weeks.

One of the individuals who received powers on A-Day is a young Avengers super-fan named Kamala Khan, who has unexpectedly gained superhuman elasticity in her body. The beta shows Kamala briefly during the opening sequence, then jumps ahead to a mission where she and Dr. Banner are searching for Iron Man, who appears to have gone missing in action. The beta actually provides several consecutive missions with this tandem, jumping between a jungle climate, a snowy tundra and a couple indoor facilities. Kamala is often tasked with tracking down objectives or completing certain tasks while Bruce runs research. Occasionally, I was able to switch to Hulk, where I was again given the chance to smash through windows, break a bunch of containers and throw chunks of concrete at my assailants.

At the conclusion of one quest, Hulk went one-on-one against an even bigger opponent: Abomination. The mega-slugfest was reminiscent of some fights in the "Batman: Arkham" video game series, with a ton of punching a lot of smashing and a handful of brutal combo attacks.

On the heels of completing several Banner/Khan missions, the beta introduces the War Table - an in-game hub where players can fast-travel to different locations (including one called "Utah Badlands") and access different types of missions. Two of the mission types offered in the beta phase are called Drop Zones and H.A.R.M. rooms. Drop Zones allowed me to fight off waves of enemies, including some that seemed just a bit above my skill level, and the first H.A.R.M. room mission I came across let Kamala enter an augmented reality training sequence, where she took on the form of Iron Man to compete against four waves of villains.

Leveling Up, Skills, Collectibles and Gear

As is typical of most action RPGs, characters gradually improve and attain new skills by defeating enemies. Such is the case in "Marvel's Avengers"; the heroes collect resources and experience points along the way, eventually earning enough XP to reach the next level. Leveling up grants a skill point that can be spent to buy new powers, such as new combo moves or improved defensive abilities. For instance, I was able to buy a couple new skills for Kamala that let me perform running attacks when fighting and one that improves the power of Iron Man's blasters.

Collectibles appear to be a large part of the game. While exploring the world, players can gather various items, like comicbooks. Each individual comic belongs to a collection, the completion of which will grant bonuses - none of which I have come close to finishing off (and I'm not even sure whether any collections can be completed during the beta phase). As far as I can tell, many of the bonuses will likely be cosmetic, such as different outfits or player name plates.

Similar to games like "Assassin's Creed," "Injustice 2" and "Destiny," characters in "Marvel's Avengers" can upgrade their "gear" in the game, which improves strength and defensive stats. However, unlike those other games, so far as I can tell, gear upgrades in "Avengers" did not physically alter the appearance of the character, which was a bit disappointing.

Beta users were given a chunk of in-game currency for free, which could be used to purchase cosmetic upgrades (like an outfit that made Kamala look like she was attending Comic Con or something) but chose not to do so. I have no doubt that I'll be buying as many of those outfits as I can, come full-release of the game.

First Impressions

My main takeaway from playing "Marvel's Avengers" during its first beta weekend on Playstation is that the game is a lot of fun. Being able to play as so many different heroes was a blast, and each character felt unique from the others. I immediately liked playing with Thor, brawling like I've done in so many Batman games in the past. Switching to Iron Man was fun, too, adding an improved set of mid-range attacks. I actually surprisingly like Black Widow's skills - particularly the ability to use quick-fire pistols. Wall-jumping with Hulk was innovative, and destroying everything in sight will never get old. Captain America definitely had my preferred "heroic" abilities, and I loved throwing the shield. The character I've quickly grown attached to is Kamala Khan. Listening to her gush over how cool it was to be involved with Avengers missions was funny, and she's got some really unique powers to play with.

One of the things I was most worried about with this game was the way that the characters look. They don't look like the heroes we've grown to love on the big-screen. Not even close, really. But that didn't bother me at all as I played. It's not meant to be an MCU spin-off. It's a different interpretation of stories using superheroes we're familiar with, and I'm cool with it.

My brother has asked a few times how "open-world" the game is. From my time playing over the weekend, I can most assuredly say that this game is not anywhere near as open as something like "Skyrim" or "Read Dead Redemption." It might not even be quite as expansive as Sony's hit "Spider-man" from a couple years ago. If I had to make a comparison right now, it seemed like it might end up being something like "Uncharted 4" with the ability to fast-travel... and that's not a bad thing.

I died a lot during this first beta weekend. Some of that may be due to me playing mid-game missions with Level 1 characters. I also didn't adjust the difficulty at all, so that might have been some of it, too. Or maybe I just sucked. Who knows?

"Marvel's Avengers" allows players to team up in co-operative missions online, which seems like it could be a lot of fun if you have a few gamer friends that also own a copy. I tried to join a co-op mission via online matchmaking a couple times, but got an error twice and decided to just forget about it, so I can't speak to how the online features worked thus far.

My biggest gripe right now is that it was sometimes just dang hard to tell which way I was supposed to go to complete objectives. After playing for about an hour, the game instructed me to press Up on the D-Pad to activate a power that indicated where some enemies were located, and I imagine that will become an often-used feature when I get my hands on the full game, but there were some stretches where I really had no idea where something was located (such as the instruction to head to the hangar bay of the Chimera ship... how was I supposed to know where that was??).

As far as the controls go, I  had a little bit of trouble figuring out how to use the "swing" ability with Kamala, to help her traverse large gaps. I eventually figured that out, but it took me a second to get the hang of it (no pun intended). I'm not sure I quite understand the intricacies of Iron Man's flight ability yet. Like, I get the hovering stuff, and that's not the issue, but when it lets you actually zoom around at full speed, I had some difficulty being able to both fly and shoot accurately at the same time. I'm sure that is something that will come with time and practice, however, and that aspect was only a very small portion of my experience, anyway.

I always love a game with "Photo Mode," but I'd love to see some improvements to that feature to bring it up to par with the "Spider-man" game, which offered way more filters and lens options. Overall, the graphics looked really good, and I'm sure they'll look even better when I upgrade the game to PS5 for free. (Yes, that's a thing.)

Final Thoughts

I know there has been a lot of hype for this game, as well as a ton of haters that expect the game to suck, but I was pleasantly surprised with how much I liked the game, from the very beginning. Obviously, the story in the beta is choppy, and I'm sure tons of important beats are skipped over, for the sake of leaving some of the material fresh for when the game actually launches, but I'm really excited to experience the fallout of A-Day and the Avengers' return to full glory. September 4 can't come soon enough!

The next beta weekend for this game will be on August 14, when an "open" beta starts for Playstation and the first access for Xbox users who pre-ordered the game will start.

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Have you participated in the beta yet? Are you looking forward to playing "Marvel's Avengers"? Do you have any questions about my experience so far? I'd love to hear from you in the comments below, on Facebook or on Twitter (here and here).

Until next time...