Marvels Rivals Is The Hero Shooter We Didn’t Know We Needed

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One of 2024’s biggest success stories has been Marvel Rivals, a third-person PVP shooter starring Marvel heroes and baddies. The game has already picked up over 20 million players and shows no signs of stopping. Which is cool but also very surprising!

I think I speak for many of us when I ask: Weren’t we done with hero shooters? After the market was saturated with them and Overwatch 2 turned out to be a slow-moving train wreck, it felt like the trend of having a colorful roster of heroes shoot each other over moving a payload was done. Concord, Sony’s failed hero shooter, seemed to really cement that when it launched and died in just about 4 weeks earlier this year. And yet, here we all are playing and loving Marvel Rivals, a free-to-play hero shooter with a big roster and plenty of payloads to move. Life is funny sometimes, huh?

Because Marvel Rivals is such a big hit, with many of us at Kotaku playing it, we’ve also been thinking about it a lot and writing up guides, stories, and other posts about it. So here’s everything we’ve written about Marvel Rivals in 2024 in one handy-dandy location.

Marvel Rivals is the hottest new thing in the realm of hero shooters. And, it has launched with over 30 popular characters from the Marvel universe. While it’s important to spend time trying out every character to find one that works best for you, they all have different skill ceilings to consider. So, if you’re new to the game (or even hero shooters in general), here are three characters that are easy to pick up and play. — Billy Givens

Gif: Marvel / Kotaku

Marvel Rivals is out now and free to play on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S. The hero shooter pretty shamelessly draws inspiration from Overwatch. As a result, NetEase’s swing at the genre feels like putting on a familiar glove to long-time players of Blizzard’s game. However, there are a few bits of minutiae that are different and worth keeping in mind, even if you’ve spent hundreds of hours in similar games. I put about 15 hours into Marvel Rivals during its test periods and about a few additional hours since its launch on December 5. So here are a few tips for newcomers if you’re jumping into the game for the first time. — Kenneth Shepard

If you’re a Support player in a shooters like Overwatch 2, you’re probably on the hunt for the best Strategist in Marvel Rivals. Despite the different name, Strategists serve the same role as a Support: Keep your team healed, use utility effects like revival, damage boosting, and other augmentations. At launch, there are seven Strategists on the Marvel Rivals roster. — Parker Johnson

Superheroes race across the screen in concept art for Marvel Rivals.

Fans of the hero shooter genre are sure to notice some familiar ideas in Marvel Rivals, whether it’s the game modes or certain character abilities. That said, the new superhero title does attempt to spice things up with fun concepts like destructible environments and Team-Up abilities. One of the more unique original ideas the game puts forward is the Season Bonus, although it’s left most of us just confused if anything. — Samuel Moreno

Baptiste and Rocket Raccoon are juxtaposed next to each other.

Marvel Rivals is the newest hero shooter on the block, following closely in Overwatch’s footsteps. It takes inspiration from Blizzard’s game in plenty of ways, from general game modes to its style of monetization. Another way it takes inspiration is in its characters. — Parker Johnson

Magic beams surround Doctor Strange as he floats in the air.

Doctor Strange’s portal—a skill that lets the sorcerer create a pathway between any two points on the map—is one of the most useful abilities in Marvel Rivals. Players have used it to set up game-changing plays like giving teammates a shortcut into the enemy backline, or sending foes falling to their deaths by putting a portal in front of their spawn point. Developer NetEase had already reduced the power of the portal through the game’s first patch, but given all the creative ways players are using it, I would not be surprised if we see this ability tweaked more in the coming months. Because now a streamer has probably found the most hilariously broken way to use it I’ve seen thus far. — Kenneth Shepard

An image shows Marvel heroes as seen in Rivals.

Guangyun “Guangguang” Chen, creative director behind Marvel Rivals, says that while many players have requested a role queue system, a matchmaking option to help create balanced teams, there are currently no plans to implement one in the free-to-play character shooter. — Zack Zwiezen

Every hero shooter has characters players loathe to fight against. Marvel Rivals is no exception. Jeff the Land Shark has become an early love-to-hate hero because he literally eats his opponents (and allies) and then spits them off the map. I personally hate to see Hawkeye coming because I know his arrows will find their way right between my eyes, even when I’m in flight as Star-Lord. But Iron Fist has emerged as a surprise pest, even for characters you’d think would be a good counter for him. — Kenneth Shepard

Psylocke poses with the moon as a backdrop in her Vengeance skin, based on her classic attire.

Marvel Rivals is the latest game to make a splash in the hero shooter scene, and it’s easy to see where it takes its inspiration from. That’s not to say the developers didn’t put enough of a unique spin on things. Team-up abilities, for example, are a special mechanic and there are quite a few other distinct terms to learn. A standout example of the latter is Ace, which depending on who you ask, might give you different definitions. — Samuel Moreno

The cast of Marvel Rivals all doing cool action poses.

Marvel Rivals’ 33 heroes each have a high-impact ultimate ability to wipe a team, save allies from near death, or power up your friends and tip the scales of a fight. One of the most important skills to learn is how to react when you hear one of these abilities coming, whether that’s running for cover when you hear Scarlet Witch screaming “Pure chaos!” as she floats into the battlefield with explosive intention, or throwing a shield up when Star-Lord starts raining down his autotargeting bullets on your squishy allies. But some heroes can just shut down several ultimates in the game; it’s just a matter of timing, precision, and situational awareness to ensure it’s worth the risk when you could, instead, just run away. — Kenneth Shepard

Venom emits tendrils from his body to attack Namor, Spider-Man, and The Punisher all at the same time.

Marvel Rivals might not feature a post-match ”Play of the Game” like Overwatch, but every match highlights the most valuable player, or MVP at the end. You can also see the MVP highlighted on the match summary screen if you were on their team. If you weren’t, you would instead see another player with an SVP title. — Samuel Moreno

A screenshot shows four Jeff the Landsharks.

Later this week, popular character shooter Marvel Rivals will launch its first big holiday-themed event. The new winter update will add new costumes for multiple characters, as well as a new Splatoon-like mode featuring only Jeff the Landshark. — Zack Zwiezen

Spider-Man shoots his web towards the screen in his Scarlet Spider costume.

Marvel Rivals is quite a generous game. Not only are all future heroes confirmed to be free, but every battle pass can be enjoyed permanently as long as you’ve purchased them. You’ll mostly be tempted to put your money toward skins, but there are many you can acquire for free. — Samuel Moreno

The Hulk and Iron Man team up for an attack on a building.

It certainly feels appropriate that a cooperative game based on superheroes and villains would let them work together to take out the opposition. Marvel Rivals takes that to heart with its Team-Ups mechanic, which allows certain character combinations to unlock stat boosts or even special moves. — Samuel Moreno

Doctor Strange looks at something off-screen.

Marvel Rivals is just under a week old and has already got its first big patch. NetEase’s update doesn’t have any balance changes, instead being focused on bug fixes. However, there’s slight overlap, as one glitch the patch fixes effectively gives the Vanguard Doctor Strange a bit of a nerf. That’s because fans had discovered a way to immediately charge the Sorcerer Supreme’s ultimate ability to full with just one well-placed portal. — Kenneth Shepard

Marvel Rivals launched last week, and as fans are flocking to the game in droves, they’re also figuring out who their favorite and least favorite characters are on the hero shooter’s roster. Right now, the game feels like it’s in the pre-patch state of just being a real chaotic shooter that hasn’t yet been sanded down by months of balance patches. Currently, few characters are as chaotic as Jeff the Land Shark, the strategist hero who is, at a glance, just a silly little guy. However, as Marvel Rivals players have learned, this happy dude is actually one of the biggest menaces in the game, and god, I hope NetEase keeps him like this forever. — Kenneth Shepard

A cast of Marvel Super heroes pose for a picture.

Heroes stand before a sky being torn open.

In an ever-growing platform agnostic world, crossplay in games like Marvel Rivals is more of an expectation than a feature. Even if your gaming friends branch paths from console to PC, or go to a different console, there’s usually a way to play together. — Parker Johnson

Two teams of Marvel heroes and villains clash against a white background.

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. — Kenneth Shepard

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