Marvel Rivals, NetEase’s shameless Overwatch-like featuring the heroes and villains that have captivated comic book readers and moviegoers for decades, is already at a crossroads. It’s less than a week old, but it’s clear even now that the decisions NetEase makes in the coming months will determine if it stays a chaotic, unbalanced blast or if it joins the ranks of its hero shooter contemporaries as a polished, esports-ready sweatfest that only appeals to a fraction of its huge fanbase. I’ve spent years poring over Blizzard’s Overwatch patch notes, watching content creators nitpick every tiny tweak to damage output and suffering the loss of some of the most interesting shooter kits I’ve ever used because someone cried foul at abilities they believed “unfair.” I don’t know what Marvel Rivals will be in a year, so I recommend you play it now before the team behind it has a chance to sand down the things that make it fun.
Image: Marvel
If you’ve ever played Overwatch, you know exactly what you’re getting into. Marvel Rivals has three roles: the tanky Vanguard, the damage-dealing Duelist, and the supportive Strategist, all of which work together like the extremities on one body toward the common goal of standing in one place together uncontested long enough to win a game. I won’t mince words. Marvel Rivals is so derivative of Overwatch that it would be embarrassing if the game wasn’t also a ton of fun to play. It has the same objective structures and more than half the members of its hero roster have a direct parallel in Blizzard’s shooter (if not several). My friends and I have been playing the game for dozens of hours and still fall back on Overwatch’s vernacular when describing escort objectives as “payloads” or calling Star-Lord’s Reaper-esque “Blaster Barrage” ability a “Reaper Ult” because both moves involve dual-wielding gunners swinging their guns around and firing bullets at anyone in their vicinity. To call Marvel Rivals derivative would be an understatement, and if the notion of one big corporation looking at another big corporation’s homework and barely trying to make it look like they didn’t copy it doesn’t sit well with you, you need not apply. If you’re willing to overlook that, however, you’re in luck, as what Marvel Rivals lacks in meaningful iteration, it makes up for in feeling like it hasn’t lost sight of being enjoyable to the average person.
Like their clear inspirations in Overwatch, Marvel Rivals’ Duelists outnumber the other roles, but nearly every hero is capable of making big plays through versatile kits. There’s an unevenness to the hero design in Marvel Rivals that is compelling, even if it makes the game itself indecipherable at a glance sometimes. Jeff the Land Shark is an early favorite (to hate), as the little guy has high healing output but can also literally eat an entire enemy team with little opportunity for them to counter. Iron Fist is such a menace that the usually land-locked hero can pester an Iron Man flying away at full speed. Cloak and Dagger are a duo Strategist that you can swap between on the fly, with the former specializing in sabotage, such as blinding enemies so they can’t see their targets, whereas the latter is a more supportive healer. These heroes all have such expansive kits that it’s sometimes hard to keep track of what’s happening on screen, much less even remember what every character can do. Most Marvel Rivals fights start with 12 people walking into a space and end with a constellation of color and damage as cheeky voice lines echo across the battlefield. Most heroes in Marvel Rivals feel like they were built for a PvE cooperative game with the levels of unbalanced destruction they’re capable of.
Gif: Marvel / Kotaku
But in the midst of all the chaos, you’ll still find some heroes who feel more focused in their role. Star-Lord, my main, is an extremely mobile dual-pistol user whose main job is to hit and run. It feels incredible to zip around a battlefield of Marvel heroes as the Chris Pratt chucklefuck and then devastate the enemy team with your ultimate, freely flying around the map while your guns automatically lock on to your foes. Marvel Rivals knows the strength of a good pop-off, and there are so many opportunities to do so. Sometimes it can be as simple as finding a good setup, like leaving a Peni Parker bomb right at the enemy’s spawn door or putting a Doctor Strange portal right in front of them that leads to a chasm off the side of the map. But it wouldn’t be a team-based shooter if you weren’t able to come up with great plays alongside your team, and one thing that separates Marvel Rivals is its use of team-up abilities to incentivize specific team compositions that grant codified perks.
Team-up abilities include active and passive buffs for specific team compositions. For example, Rocket Raccoon can ride on Groot’s back, sacrificing free movement for increased damage reduction, and Groot gets a pocket healer. Having Scarlet Witch and Magneto on one team gives the latter a metallic greatsword to swing around when enemies get too close. Hulk can throw Wolverine across the battlefield so he can close distance quickly. Not every team-up ability is made equal, but it’s still an interesting spin on the hero shooter format, albeit one that incentivizes specific team compositions. In a more meta-focused competitive game, some would likely argue that this makes certain heroes and compositions inherently advantageous. But I don’t think I really care about those conversations right now, and I hope NetEase doesn’t either.
Screenshot: Marvel / Kotaku
Just days in, I’m already seeing so many people complain that such-and-such hero needs to be nerfed, or that certain abilities need to be patched out of the game. It feels like players and NetEase are both at a point where they need to decide what they want Marvel Rivals to be, and whether or not they want to see the game fall down the same traps as Overwatch has. There’s a version of events in which NetEase hangs on the every word of balance-hungry players looking for their next competitive grind and Marvel Rivals loses a lot of the whimsy and mayhem that it currently possesses. Right now, most characters feel powerful, and that’s because Marvel Rivals doesn’t feel like it’s chasing some unreachable ideal of a perfectly balanced hero shooter in which every character is competitively equal to one another. Such balance is a nice idea, but the pursuit of it has drained some other games of what made them special.
In a superhero game, you want to feel superpowered, right? Marvel Rivals understands that, and even if there are some notable characters that could use some tweaks (Captain America, you’re a super soldier, why do you hit like you haven’t taken the serum yet?), if it starts catering to those who already think the game is “broken” and needs to be fixed, it’ll likely lose the very qualities that are drawing so many fans toward the game. Not every game has to become the next big esports sensation, and I hope that Marvel Rivals doesn’t sand away all its rough edges chasing the same things other games have lost players aiming for. No, don’t give me any of this “it might work for us” nonsense. Just stay the course. Stay a silly, superpowered blast to play with friends and people will come and they will stay. Don’t start a Marvel Rivals esports division. Don’t give toxic players a reason to treat casual players like they’re ruining their lives by not helping set up some viral pop-off clip. Recognize why people are playing your game now instead of chasing something that never works.
I feel like I’m coming at Marvel Rivals hard for something that NetEase hasn’t shown much interest in doing yet. It’s just that I’ve spent years watching my friends’ interest in Overwatch crater, and there’s something magical about having a hero shooter that we’re all grouping up together to play for hours on end. Eventually, yes, people will move on to other things. But right now, Marvel Rivals has the potential to learn from its inspiration’s mistakes, rather than repeat them. For now, it’s an extremely fun One of Those. Let’s keep it that way, yeah?
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