Marvel's Midnight Suns: Photo Blog

My first big video game of the year was "Marvel's Midnight Suns" - and despite not knowing much about it before I picked it up, I ended up loving it! If you're familiar with the XCOM series of tactical, turn-based combat, that's pretty much what this was (same developer), but with Marvel characters. I appreciated the game's inclusion of well-known characters like Iron Man, Captain America, Doctor Strange, Spiderman and Captain Marvel (who I, surprisingly, thought was really cool), and also enjoyed getting to know some new characters like Nico Minoro and Magik. I won't bore you here with the nuts and bolts of the game, but I can simply say that I recommend it for Marvel fans who want a different spin on some of their favorite superheroes. My only real problem with the game was that there was a ton of dialogue and, aside from important story-focused conversations, largely revolved around water cooler chatter and kissing the main character's butt to tell me how cool and great I am. (I mean, they weren't wrong, but it was pretty excessive.)

One of my favorite aspects of the game was its photo mode, and I spent a good deal of time snapping pictures of my heroes as they kicked some undead and HYDRA booty. Here are a couple dozen of my favorite shots from my 70+ hours spent with "Midnight Suns":

I hope you enjoyed these shots of me interrogating, pummeling or otherwise driving fear into the heart of the forces of evil. For more photo blogs from my video game journeys, follow us on Twitter (here and here) and keep it tuned here at Signs of the Times: Underground.

What did it cost?: Beating Marvel's Avengers

I first played Square Enix's "Marvel's Avengers" video game during the Playstation 4 beta test in August 2020. I blogged about it here. Nearly two years later, I reached 100% trophy completion on the game.

To quote the movie "Avengers: Endgame," did I do it? Yes. What did it cost?

A solid start

As I mentioned in my post back in 2020, I enjoyed playing the beta. I thought the game had a lot of potential. When the game officially released, I picked it up immediately. I burned through the short campaign and had a good time. The story was interesting, the gameplay was fun and, once I came to grips with the voices and likenesses of the characters being different than their counterparts in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I really enjoyed having a new spin on the superheroes we've come to know and love over the past decade and a half.

I particularly grew fond of Ms. Marvel - a character that I had, essentially, no prior knowledge of before getting my hands on this game. She was spunky, she was funny and, more than anything, I resonated with her because she was an Avengers fan. The familiarity I gained from the video game has helped me enjoy the new Disney+ series, "Ms. Marvel," which I think has been great, through three episodes.

The best-laid plans

I think that, with "Marvel's Avengers," the developers' plan was the give players a quick, single-player story mode, then focus on what they wanted to be the "meat and potatoes" of the game: the post-campaign, online multiplayer. Although I'm not a huge proponent of online multiplayer (who am I kidding? I actively try to avoid having to play with or against other gamers online), I can see how they thought this would be desirable. "Team up with your friends as the Avengers!" On paper, sounds super fun. Cash in on Marvel Mania and all that.

But there were a couple problems.

First of all (and this isn't their fault), I have very few friends. Very few friends that 1) have Playstations, 2) bought "Marvel's Avengers" and 3) want to play online with me. So that was a problem. I played online with another person two times, I think, and both times, I had to drive over to my brother's house, tie him down to a chair, duct-tape the controller to his hands, then drive all the way back home, get online and pray that he didn't turn off his console in the meantime. It was literally like pulling teeth. Long story short, I played this game alone 99.7% of the time, so the "online multiplayer" aspect did absolutely nothing for me. I'm sure it would have made things easier, ultimately, but that just wasn't the case for me.

Secondly, the post-campaign content was very repetitive, to say the least. "Avengers" provides a handful of mission types, along with a handful of locations in which to play them. However, if you're playing multiple missions in one sitting, they really start blurring together and, basically, all end up feeling the same. Get to the waypoint. Beat up a wave of bad guys. Open a treasure chest. Get some gear that, more often than not, is worse than the gear currently equipped to your hero. Go to the next waypoint. Rinse and repeat, over and over. It got to the point where I could basically put my fingers on autopilot and knock out pretty much anything the game threw at me.

One good thing was that you could level up your characters pretty quickly. You could sometimes gain two to three levels per mission, which was nice. Progression was fast. That is, until the developers pushed a software update that made it significantly more time-consuming to gain experience points. Why on earth they'd do that and how on earth that made sense is beyond me. At that point, in March 2021, the game was infamously losing players - people were sick of the repetitive nature of the missions and just stopped playing - so what did they do? Ah, yes. They made it harder on everybody else who was still coming back.

That bothered me a little bit, but I made sure to max out all of my heroes before the patch went live, so it didn't affect me as much as it may have others. What did bother me, though, was that, on top of slowing down the flow of experience points, they then added microtransactions (in-game purchases, for real money) that allowed players to buy XP boosts. They literally made the game harder and expected players to pay to get the game back the way it was. That is just straight up moronic. They knew the game's popularity was struggling and they intentionally made choices that resulted in people wanting to play it even less. What the heck?

Once this started happening, I took a break from playing. I didn't touch it or even think about booting it up for months. I never completely uninstalled it, but I wasn't going to give it much attention if they were, basically, going to make it "pay-to-win." No, thanks.

The content roadmap

Initially, I think Square Enix probably thought, "People love Marvel, we make a Marvel game, people love our Marvel game." Seems like a solid formula. They promised, very early on, that they would release additional content for the game as time went on - most notably, new playable heroes. At the time of writing, they have come through on that promise, with post-launch characters Hawkeye, Kate Bishop, Black Panther and (exclusively on Playstation) Spider-man, with Jane Foster's "Mighty Thor" character slated for release coinciding with the MCU's "Thor: Love and Thunder," which hits theaters next week.

Overall, I've felt like the storylines accompanying these new characters have been fun - particularly, Black Panther, who introduced the Wakanda region to the game, which was truly a breath of fresh air, compared to grinding out missions on the Eastern Seaboard, Utah's Badlands and the other couple original locations.

I see a lot of headlines about what's to come, further down the line, for "Marvel's Avengers," but I have a hard time taking those rumors seriously, considering that this game has, for all intents and purposes, been a massive flop, but hey, if they release a character that I'm interested in, there's a chance I'll pick the game back up and play. (Note: I do not care about Jane Foster, even in the slightest.)

In fact, I just Googled "Marvel's Avengers Roadmap" and I'm seeing some reports that Square Enix's long-term plans for additional content in the future have been scrapped altogether. Nice.

The pains of being a completionist

As I've lamented in previous blogs, I've developed into a bit of a Playstation trophy hunter, largely thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic. We've all been at home more than usual these past few years, so why not beat a bunch of my old video games, right?

Without getting too crazy about it, I landed at an uncommonly high completion percentage for "Avengers." I've got a buddy that is a hardcore trophy hunter - like, doesn't settle for less than 100% on most games - but he will never touch this game. Has no interest in it, as far as I know. But I knew if I was crazy enough to get 100% on "Avengers," he'd be proud of me. I only had a couple trophies left. I knew it wouldn't be easy, and it wouldn't be quick, but my buddy Chris would be proud of me if I did it.

Here were the main trophies that gave me trouble:

• Treasure Trove - Open 50 Cache strongboxes
• To the Dark and Back Again - Complete 50 Hive missions
• Holding It Down - Complete 30 War Zones at Challenge III or higher

I went for the "Treasure Trove" trophy first. This consisted of me repeating Vault missions over and over. A "Vault" is a mission where you have to locate an underground bunker and fight off waves of enemies, while periodically running around and fending off computers located around the building. They're not exceptionally difficult but usually took about 15-20 minutes each. At the end of each mission, I would get two or three "cache" treasure chests, and I needed a total of 50 of them. The hardest part about that - and the other quantity-related achievements - is that there is no way of tracking how many you already have, so I was just blindly doing these missions over and over, hoping that I was somewhere in the 40s. Eventually, after several nights of defending vaults for S.H.I.E.L.D., the trophy popped. On to the War Zones trophy.

"Holding It Down" wasn't terrible for a couple reasons: I manually tallied how many I had done, so I knew how many I had left, and I found a mission that I could beat in about five minutes. That's about all there was to it. Just repeated that mission until I hit 30 on my tracker. Boom.

"To the Dark and Back Again" was, truly, the bane of my existence. To get the trophy and hit 100% completion, I had to beat 50 "Hive" missions, which each consist of at least five floors of missions. That's like 250 regular missions. Again, like so many other aspects of this game, it wasn't hard. But it took FOREVER. I wanted to keep a count of how many Hives I had completed but knew I'd done a few in the past, so I didn't know where my tallies actually started. I gave myself credit for having four under the belt and started keeping track from there, but I figured that my count might be five or 10 low. At first, each Hive mission was taking me between 30-45 minutes to beat. The problem was that, in order to get to the "mission" on each of the five or six floors of the building, you had to fight your way through a long hallway. At that pace, it was going to take me 25 hours to get the final trophy. However - and take note, if you ever plan on going through this utter insanity yourself - I discovered that if I used a hero that could fly (Iron Man or Thor), I could just fly over the enemies in the halls and go straight to the door that would get me to the main mission on each floor. Let me tell you this: my Thor got really, really powerful.

Using this new strategy, I found that I could beat a Hive mission in about 18 minutes, barring any unusual delays. Thankfully, this shaved hours off of the time I originally thought it was going to take me to complete this task, but it still ended up being approximately 12 hours of literally running the same Badlands mission over... and over... and over... and over... and over... and over again. Twelve hours of it!

The biggest problem that I found about using my Thor for this task is that he was already at the maximum power level, so the rewards for completing the mission were not useful to me at all. If I would have been using a lower-powered character, at least I could have possibly gotten more powerful gear, but, with Thor, anything I got in exchange for the work I put in was recycled immediately. It hurt my soul.

For those that are curious (probably everyone who is still reading this blog), my tally was four off of what I gave myself credit for, so I surprisingly got the trophy - and the elusive "platinum" trophy for 100% completion - as I notched my 46th tally on the index card.

The epic journey concludes

My wife once sent me a meme of Thanos resting after curb-stomping the Avengers in "Infinity War." The meme said something like, "Me, enjoying the final minutes of a game I love before I immediately uninstall it and never playing it again."

That was me, for like five seconds after getting that last trophy on the eve of June 16, 2022. I enjoyed the feeling of triumph for about 30 seconds, then quit the game and powered down the console. I haven't touched "Marvel's Avengers" since. I've never say never, but I can tell you this: if I ever play that game again, I'm so happy that I don't have to play it the way that the developers want me to play it. Whoever thought that "Complete 50 Hive Missions" was even remotely comparable to "Complete 30 War Zones" is out of their mind. If anything, it should have been, like, 10 Hive missions and 50 War Zones. That would have been way more reasonable. Anyway, it will be such a relief to just play "Avengers" for fun in the future, with which ever character I want and doing whatever missions I feel like doing - absolutely not the mind-numbing grind I just put myself through.

At least I can look at this any time I want:

Ooh. Ahh.

Am I glad I did it? Uh, I mean, according to the numbers calculated by PSNProfiles.com, I think I'm part of about 8% of people who use that website to track their gaming stats that have gotten the platinum trophy (and, apparently, one of the 1.10% of total Playstation users), so that's cool, but willingly subjecting myself to that dastardly, monotonous death march was probably not worth it, in the end. As the classic saying goes, "You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain."

I kid you not, finishing off those Hive missions was four or five nights of extreme boredom. I tried to get in as much gaming late those nights as I could because, the more I played when my wife and son were asleep, the less I'd have to play when they were awake. I joked with a coworker that this accomplishment would be something I could tell my grandkids about, but I don't want them to be ashamed of me.

I snapped this in-game picture of one of Thor's finishing moves as an accurate depiction of how I felt when I finished. "Marvel's Avengers" had me down for the three-count:

I'm sure this post has just been a ringing endorsement for the game, hasn't it? Let me say this: I mostly enjoyed the game. It certainly wasn't all bad. The main thing is that I think the repetitive nature really wears on you after a while, so it's really best in small doses, here and there. It should not be played - and I absolutely do not recommend that anyone play it - the way that I did. It was pain. Such terrible pain.

But hey, my squad ended up looking pretty sick, when all was said and done, so you've got to appreciate that.

What is your most regrettable video gaming achievement? Let us know in the comments section, on Twitter (here and here) or on Facebook.

Farewell.

MCU Power Rankings - January 2022

It has been two and a half years since the last time we ranked the movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. A lot has changed since then. Four new movies have been released since the summer of 2019, including Black Widow, which was officially delayed three times due to the pandemic. When we ranked the MCU 30 months ago, Avengers: Endgame had just come out and Disney+ wasn't even a thing yet. Needless to say, it's been a while. Once the largely maligned Eternals hit streaming services, we figured it was a good time to poll the people and develop new power rankings for the 27 movies and five TV shows in the ever-expanding galaxy of Marvel Comics.

Before we get into the fun stuff, we need to explain a few things. If you'll allow us...

How were the movie rankings determined?

In the past, we've used a website to help determine numbered rankings - that is, we used a system where people would rank things in order, from best to worst (e.g., favorite movie, second favorite movie, third favorite movie, etc.). We discovered that that has now become a "paid" feature, and we're cheap, so we couldn't use that anymore. This time around, we used Google Forms, and asked those who took the survey to rate the movies on a scale from 1-10, with an "N/A" column for movies that they have not seen. (The "N/A" column awarded zero points per vote.)

Once we closed the poll, we added up the scores for all of the movies, then ranked them in order of total points, from high to low, with the movie getting the most points as the top-ranked movie on the list, the movie with the least points in last place, and so forth.

Tie-breakers for the three instances where two movies received the same amount of points were determined by examining the number of 8-, 9- and 10-point votes those pairs of movies received. The movie that received the most "high" votes won the tie-breaker. For instance, if a movie with three 8-point votes and one 9-point vote tied with a movie that had one 8-point vote, two 9-point votes and a 10-point vote, the second movie would have won the tie-breaker.

How were the TV show rankings determined?

We used a golf-style scoring system to rank the five Disney+ TV shows, meaning that we asked those who took the survey to rank the shows from best (1) to worst (5) - with a 6-point "N/A" option for shows they haven't watched - then calculated the scores. The show with the lowest point total became the top-rated show and the program with the most points became the lowest-ranked on the list.

Did any problems arise during this process, and were any adjustments made to the scoring?

One big problem with this new method of voting (as opposed to literally ranking the movies) is that someone who really loves Marvel could hypothetically go in and just give everything a 10 without having to explain themselves or justify their scoring. We saw that quite a few people who took the survey gave out lots of 8s and 9s, and a good number of people didn't rate anything lower than a 5 or 6. We believe that taking an average of all of the points helped balance out people who consistently voted high or people who gave responses that didn't make much sense (like irrationally disliking a movie that was otherwise scored highly by others, or vice versa). However, we would have preferred to use the other ranking system that would have, for example, made people assign a rank to the four movies to which they gave 9s.

We had to manually adjust several scores for Eternals, in particular. Two people admitted that they gave Eternals a score, despite not actually having seen the movie. One responder rated it as an "N/A" when they took the survey, then watched it a few days later and provided an updated score. So once we tallied the votes, we zeroed-out the scores that shouldn't have counted and added the points for the updated ranking in question.

We deleted two surveys that had results we determined were intentionally trying to negatively skew the results. We haven't put up with trolls in the past, and we kept it that way.

How will this data be displayed?

First, we'll reveal the results of our survey, which we feel is pretty good but certainly not without flaws, which we will break down below the chart. There were three tie-breakers, as explained earlier in this blog, and the winners of those ties are denoted with a + symbol.

Second, because we previously power-ranked the MCU films back in 2019, we created our own "Signs of the Times" rankings, which we will compare with the list we made three years ago. We added a column to that chart to show how our rankings have changed over the past two and a half years.

Following that, we'll unveil the survey results for our Disney+ rankings. Because this is the first time we've ranked the TV shows, those rankings will not be compared to any other lists; it will simply show how the survey votes ended up.

Finally, we also asked people who took our survey to tell us which Marvel movie they'd want to re-watch most, as well as which movie they'd be fine never watching again. Those results will be displayed as percentages.

With no further ado, here's how everything shook out:

MCU Power Rankings - survey results, January 2022

Analysis: After looking over this list, we notice some major flaws in these rankings - namely, that there were a lot of people who took the survey that hadn't seen recent MCU entries like Black Widow, Spider-Man: No Way Home and Eternals. It's practically egregious that No Way Home didn't even crack the top five, let alone the top two or three. Eternals received half the points of the movie directly above it (that's really, really sad, by the way). This appears to be a combination of the movie being objectively bad and the fact that lots of people simply haven't watched it yet.

Interestingly, the voters appear to really like Ant-Man and really dislike Captain Marvel.

Signs of the Times MCU Power Rankings - comparison between 2022 and 2019

Biggest positive movers: Doctor Strange, Spider-Man: Homecoming: +2

Biggest negative movers: Spider-Man: Far From Home: -5

Disney+ Power Rankings

Analysis: Despite being the most polarizing program on the Disney+ slate thus far, WandaVision ended up being the best received by our voters. Based on the survey results, we deduced that hardly anyone that took the survey has watched What If...? (which is a shame). Also, it appears that many people either didn't watch The Falcon & The Winter Soldier or started it but didn't finish; it consistently received the lowest non-"N/A" votes of any of the five shows.

If you had to re-watch any Marvel movie right now, which would it be?

Analysis: Is it recency bias or just a great movie? The people have spoken, and they loved Spider-Man: No Way Home.

If you had to choose one Marvel movie to NEVER watch again, which would it be?

Analysis: By and large, it's the usual suspects - but there were also a couple surprises on this list. We demand an explanation!

*****

Final thoughts

First of all, we want to thank everyone who took a couple minutes to fill out our survey. These days, we don't get around to blogging just for the sake of it very much, so any excuse we can find to whip up a nice little post is certainly welcome.

When we first tallied up the results, we felt pretty good about the list. Upon further inspection, however, it became very clear that some movies (No Way Home, particularly) got punished by the "N/A" column, so the final standings weren't quite what we thought they should be. On the other hand, we anticipate some feedback about our SotT rankings (Thor: Ragnarok particularly), too, so let us hear what you think.

In summary, our recommendations would be these:

• If you haven't seen Spider-Man: No Way Home, you should definitely get out and see it.
• If you haven't watched What If...?, summon your strength and get through the first episode (it's probably the worst of the bunch) and give the animation style a chance. It took us a couple episodes to get used to it, but it looks like some of this stuff will end up being pretty important for Doctor Strange 2.
• If you haven't seen Eternals yet... take your time. Literally, find anything else to watch. We live-tweeted it and had a blast because there was so much to make fun of. It's a big, giant mess and there's only one character that is even somewhat likable. By MCU standards, it is really not very good.
• If you haven't watched Black Widow, let's be honest - they made that movie about five years too late, but they do introduce one really fun character that may or may not pop up in an important role in one of the Disney+ series.
• If you couldn't make it through The Falcon & The Winter Soldier, we would be glad to give you the Cliff Notes version. You know how to find us.

So there you have it! A gigantic, nerdy blog about all the stuff we've spent the last 14 years of our lives watching. Please, please, please let us know what you think about our final rankings by leaving a comment on this post, following us on Twitter (here and here) or hitting us up on Facebook.

Until next time.

WandaVision's Sitcom Theme Finally Explained

If you haven't been watching "WandaVision" on Disney+ there are a couple likely reasons: you don't subscribe to Disney+, you don't like Marvel or you think that the show's slapstick sitcom theme looked stupid.

Believe me. I hear you. Initially, I didn't want anything to do with "WandaVision" because I'm generally not a fan of sitcoms, and I thought that the trailer and promotional spots leading up to the debut episode didn't do the show any favors. I've since changed my stance, as you can read in my "First Impressions" blog, and I've actually thoroughly enjoyed "WandaVision," for the most part. Admittedly, not all episodes have been home runs, but if you've been patient enough to stick with it, I think the show has taken the Marvel Cinematic Universe in an interesting direction that sets future movies and programming down a very interesting path.

If you're still not sold on the idea because you're either hesitant to start watching in the first place or because you watched the first episode or two and hated the black-and-white shenanigans, some good news came in Episode 8. They finally explained what was up with all the sitcoms.

Be warned: major spoilers for "WandaVision" will follow, so, as always, only keep reading if you're caught up with the show or truly don't care.

Episode 8 ("Previously On") took a break from the set-in-a-sitcom scenario in which "WandaVision" has typically taken place, and instead, as the name suggests, featured a series of flashbacks into Wanda's life, as a potential means of explaining how she developed the immense power it took to create the fictional suburbia of Westview.

We came to learn that TV time with the family was a meaningful aspect of life in the Maximoff home. Wartime Sokovia was a pretty depressing place. I mean, at one point, Mrs. Maximoff looks out the window and sees a shootout taking place in the streets right below their apartment. Taking time as a family to sit down and laugh at the television was a good way to not only take their minds off the violence but also practice their English.

During the first flashback, a case of DVDs is shown, with the following TV series inside:

• Bewitched
• I Love Lucy
• Malcolm in the Middle
• I Dream of Jeannie
• The Addams Family
• Who's the Boss?

Ultimately, the family decides to watch an old re-run of "The Dick Van Dyke Show."

Later on in Episode 8, Wanda is shown at the Age of Ultron HYDRA facility, re-watching an episode of "The Brady Bunch." In another flashback, which would have likely taken place around the time of Captain America: Civil War, Wanda (and later, Vision) get a few laughs out of an episode of "Malcolm in the Middle." Wanda uses this moment to teach Vision about slapstick comedy.

Other sitcoms that have been heavily parodied throughout the course of Season 1 include "Full House" (Episode 5) and "Modern Family" (Episode 7), as well as the theme from "The Munsters," which influenced the catchiest song of the season during one major reveal.

Episode 8 shows Wanda arriving in Westview, a place where she planned on moving with Vision so they could grow old together, and collapsing from grief (not unlike what she did after the death of her brother in Age of Ultron) as she realized that their goal was now unattainable. The radiating burst of "Chaos Magic" somewhat unintentionally turned Westview into Wanda's ideal version of the classic American neighborhood, based on the old TV shows that helped her deal with a tough childhood, growing up.

*****

So there you have it. Does that help the show make any more sense? Are you liking "WandaVision"? Still hating it? I have a couple ex-coworkers who are die-hard Marvel fans - like, everything-Marvel-touches-turns-to-gold-and-DC-sucks-worse-than-anything die-hard Marvel fans - and I've been surprised to hear that they're still not sold on this show. Crazy.

What have been your favorite sitcom references and Easter eggs so far? What are your theories and hot takes? And don't tell me you knew it was Agatha All Along, because I had never heard that name until literally the night before Episode 7, so if you tell me you knew that the entire time, I simply don't believe you.

Oh, also, if anyone knows where Dottie is or what she's been up to, let me know because... #WheresDottie?

Anyway, let us know what you think in the comments section below, on Twitter (here and here) or look me up on Facebook.

Until next time,

Marvel's "WandaVision": First impressions

Let me just say this right off the bat: Based solely on its trailer, I thought the new Disney+ series "WandaVision" looked pretty stupid.

I said it many times: I had absolutely zero hype for this show.

BUT... because it's Marvel and I'm a slave to the system they've created, where you have to watch everything they put out in order to understand the stuff they continue to put out, I knew I'd watch it anyway. They proved me wrong with "Guardians of the Galaxy" and "Ant-Man," both of which I also was not looking forward to paying money for, and I was sure that "WandaVision" would be fine.

Another thing that's important to understand is that I don't care for sitcoms. Anything with a laugh track, really. If a show needs to tell me when I'm supposed to laugh, it must not be that funny in the first place. I'd recently seen articles circulating on the internet describing the initial episodes of "WandaVision" using the words "sitcom hijinks," and that did not rub me the right way. If there are "hijinks" involved, it's not generally for me.

Finally, I must confess my biggest problem with Marvel: they just will not let their characters die. We've already seen multiple fake-out deaths with Nick Fury. Loki has "died" like four times. They're doing a prequel movie for Black Widow, who (allegedly) paid the ultimate sacrifice in "Endgame" (if her spin-off ends with her lying at the bottom of the cliff, with her opening her eyes and saying, "It worked," I'm OUT!), now they're bringing Vision back from the dead (if you'll recall, he died, I think, TWICE in "Infinity War"), and, to top it all off, there were rumors flying around yesterday that Chris Evans, who literally gave up his shield at the end of "Endgame," is in talks to reprise his role as Captain America in future movies. What? Is he just going to show up and be like, "Um, Sam, I'm gonna need that back now"? JUST LET THESE CHARACTERS GO!

[Inhales sharply]

Anyway, suffice it to say that I was not particularly excited to watch "WandaVision," but I did anyway.

Let's break down what we saw.

It's black. It's white.

As shown extensively in teasers, the first two episodes of "WandaVision" are presented in grayscale. There are major "Bewitched" and "I Love Lucy" vibes, complete - yes, indeed - with a laugh track and plenty of "hijinks."

The show centers around Wanda Maximoff (A.K.A. Scarlet Witch, played by Elizabeth Not-Mary-Kate-Nor-Ashley Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany) as an unorthodox and quirky couple in "Leave It To Beaver"-style America. The episodes focus on Wanda at home and Vision in the workplace, as well as their new life together in a brand new neighborhood. Of course, this opens the door for the introduction of a slew of nosey neighbors and gossipy co-workers.

The aforementioned "hijinks" come from the notion that Vision is not an actual human being and, therefore, does not eat nor do many things that a normal person would do, and the fact that Wanda is a telekinetic who can move things with her mind and, therefore, is not your typical American housewife. This leads to some, honestly, pretty silly interactions and, I admit, I did laugh out loud several times during these two episodes.

Keeping up with the Joneses

One of my favorite parts of these two half-hour installments was the inclusion of characters like the naughty next-door neighbor, Agnes (Kathryn Hahn); the bossy if-not-brainwashed resident, Dottie (Emma Caulfield Ford); and Mrs. Hart (Debra Jo Rupp), the somewhat aloof wife of Vision's boss -- not to mention the small circle of Vision's at-work acquaintances, many of whom had little moments in the spotlight. It's a pretty fun cast of characters, and I hope that, as the show inevitably shifts genres, these folks stick around as alternate versions of the people we were introduced today. I strongly believe this will be the case, and I look forward to it.

Slapstick superheroes

While I didn't necessarily chuckle at every single sitcom gag they pulled in the hour I spent watching "WandaVision" today, I do think it was more "hit" than "miss," and the show was much funnier than I thought it would be. Of course, there are a bunch of clichés that sprout from misunderstandings between Wanda and Vision, as there were prone to be in such 1950s programming - like Wanda expecting a romantic evening at home while Vision, meanwhile, is preparing to invite his boss over for dinner. Some of these lead to genuinely humorous interactions - most notably an impromptu musical number by Vision, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

A major plot point in the second episode leads to Vision becoming mentally and physically impaired, as if inebriated, and this really lets Bettany showcase his comedy chops, which I am not sure I understood he actually possessed. I loved (and will always remember) Bettany as Jeffrey Chaucer in "A Knight's Tale," in which he has some great one-liners, but seeing him act the way he does during his magic act in Episode 2 really was a treat.

Olsen holds her own, as well, and she gets some silly scenes around the house (particularly, in the kitchen), and I'm glad to announce that Marvel has not yet destroyed my opinion of Scarlet Witch by reducing her to a comedy act. So far, so good!

Things are not as they seem

As expected, Marvel teases the fact that strange things are afoot with this series. We already knew that Wanda and Vision are not actually married, so that's not a spoiler or anything. We also know that Vision is dead. It is rather safe to assume that somebody is messing with Wanda's mind and this is all playing out in her imagination.

Throughout the first two episodes, we get a little tiny taste of outside interference or a "glitch in the Matrix," as it were, and those are the moments that are making me want more. We know this simulation is going to come crashing down at some point, and we're going to catch the proverbial "man behind the curtain" - whose identity appears to be the mysterious organization known as S.W.O.R.D., based on some company insignia that could be spotted on occasion. But I guess we'll have to wait to find out what, exactly, is going on behind the scenes of the fake television program we're all tuned into.

Also, uh, Wanda is suddenly like four months pregnant now... What the heck?

Easter eggs and other tidbits

"WandaVision" comes complete with its own commercials to break up the programming. The first of these was advertisement for a toaster. I hoped (and, deep down inside, knew) that this would be a Marvel Easter egg. Ultimately, it turns out that Stark Industries didn't just make weapons, back in the day. We now know that they also had a line of kitchen appliances.

The second commercial was for a watch produced by "Strucker" - a nod to the blink-and-you'll-miss-him MCU villain Baron Strucker, whose secret base was assaulted by Earth's Mightiest Heroes at the beginning of "Age of Ultron." Closer inspection of the watch face reveals an octopus logo and the word "HYDRA." It should also be noted that Strucker was the one who was using Scarlet Witch and her brother, Quicksilver, as test subjects.

One other tidbit that was of note to me was the red and yellow RC helicopter that Wanda found crashed in her bushes. This strongly resembled a scene from "The Truman Show," where Truman is surprised when a studio light falls out of the sky - his first indication that the world he is living in is... a little different.

Final thoughts

All in all, I thought these first two episodes were fun. This is starting out as a very different ride than what we're used to with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and it will be interesting to see how this plays out in a weekly, streaming format. I am relieved to confirm that this show is not as dumb as it first looked, and I'm intrigued to find out what happens next week... in color!

*****

Did you watch "WandaVision"? What are your thoughts? Your theories? Did you have a favorite part of either episode? I'd love to hear your feedback in the comments section below, on Twitter (here and here) or on good old Facebook, so hit me up and let me know, friends!

Until next time,

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.

***

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...