#weekend two

Tyler, The Creator Joined By Earl Sweatshirt During Coachella Weekend Two Set

Coachella 2024 Weekend Two Day Two Review: Tyler, the Creator, No Doubt, The Last Dinner Party Dazzle Again in the Desert

BREAKING NEWS: Coachella Adds Kid Cudi To Weekend Two, Drops Vampire Weekend

This past weekend saw the second part of the “beta” weekends of “Marvel:Avengers” -- the new video game for PS4, XBox One and PC based around the Marvel Avengers.

So I signed up and started playing. And one major bug aside it was actually kind of fun. True - the bug was kind of a game-breaker, but after looking something up on-line there was a work-around and I managed to continue playing. 

(And it is a beta release so I’d assume that they’d fix the bug in the full release when it comes out).

But this post isn’t about the bugs, or the sign up process -- it’s a beta release so there are going to be bugs and other teething troubles.

No - I am just going to write about the game in general, because the game play and so on should be pretty settled by now.

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For those of you expecting the MCU Avengers, I would get that out of your mind. As far as I can tell, none of the starts of the MCU have come on to the project - this is an original Marvel game that has nothing to do with the films. It is a little jarring at first, but after a while you get used to it and stop noticing. 

Which I realise seems an odd thing to mention, but given how big and how dominant the MCU has been over the past 10-12 years, seeing something Avenger related that doesn’t have members of The MCU cast in it did seem worth pointing out. 

The game play is okay - it kept me more or less entertained for three lots of three hours - but a lot of that was “tutorial” stuff and wandering around stuff. 

The graphics are outstanding -- some of the best I have seen in a very, very long while. Almost photo-realistic standard both in the city, in the helicarrier and in the big outdoors.

The character skills are good - each characters have their own strengths and weaknesses, and when you select them for missions you have to pick the right one to lead otherwise you will find some missions harder than others.

And that’s about where the good parts of the review ends, because the rest - not so good.

The missions are all kind of “samey” -- they broadly fall into one of three categories :-

Rescue someone or something,

Infiltrate a base and hack some data,

Infiltrate a base and destroy a base or a group in a base.

And that’s about it - that’s the limit of the scope of the missions. Sometimes they combine the two (just to mix it up) but mostly a mission is one of those three.

After a while you start to think “I’ve seen that before” - and given that in each case the mission mostly involves fighting a lot of bad guys to achieve your objectives (the rescuing, the infiltrating, the hacking or the destroying) then you really start to think “I’ve seen this before”

By the end of the sixth or seventh mission I was kind of “meh” about it. 

A feeling which wasn’t helped by the character selection method :-

At first you only have one character. Which is fair enough.

Then you get two. And then four. (I didn’t get any further - I didn’t have all weekend to try it. I might go back next weekend to see if I can get any further, assuming the progress doesn’t get reset). 

And you get four heroes per mission. I assume that as you build up your team you can swap them in and out of the rosta and make up a perfect team for the mission. 

But you pick your team for the mission, and the character you are going to play. And once it is picked that’s it - you can’t swap to another member of that team.

So if you decide you want to play Hulk, you are stuck as Hulk. If you pick Widow you are stuck as Widow.

It’s kind of annoying, to be honest. I would prefer to be able to pick and choose out of the team I have set up -- swap between team members. I don’t want to be able to swap out team members mid mission, but if I have four heroes at my disposal (so to speak) then I would at least be able to play as any of them at will. 

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The game is very pretty - stunningly so - but the gameplay (for me) leaves a lot to be desired. It is repetitive - both within the missions and the mission types. 

And the fact you pick a hero and are forced to stick to it is a big flaw in the way things are set up. 

All in all if the object of the free beta was to encourage me to play it then get me to go out and buy it, it failed miserably, because if anything it has made me less inclined to do so. Or it has made me less inclined to do so when it comes out at full price. 

If there is another one that runs next week I will give it another shot to see if I change my mind, but I suspect I am pretty sure at this point.

Overall :-