Game Or Pass: Square Enix's Marvels Avengers

 Sometimes an idea is sounds so great that you just have to try it. Even when people around you think it may not be the best you still want to give it a go, but they end up being right. But some time passes, and you wonder if maybe you just had a bad experience with the game and maybe it got better over time. That is the story of me and today's game Marvel's Avengers. The 2020 release had my hopes high and after a few bad glitches and overall boring gameplay I ended up dropping the game, on PS4 that is. But seeing this game on game pass made my curiosity arise and see if maybe things got better, so one installation later and after some time, I have to wonder is this game better then I remember?

The first time I played this title I remember how Ms. Marvel was my favorite character, the graphics were nice, and I was having some fun. But soon glitches that caused me to uninstall the game and reinstall it twice, locking me out of multiplayer, and the gameplay itself left me dropping the game quickly. But time has passed so when I decided to give this game a second chance, because I was in the mood to play something superhero related. 

When I fired the game up, I was greeted with a row of updates, and cutscenes spoiling the story. I was not bothered by this, but it did make me laugh as the game was playing cinematics of a game I just started, and it was showing late game surprises and cutscenes. That may prove to be a problem for those who want to see this narrative, but in my humble opinion this was one of the first major missteps that I have forgotten. The story has the team facing great tragedy and being split up, needing to reunite to face a great evil. I do not understand why they did this; this feels like the plot of a third game or even a second but not the first. Instead of introducing the audience to our heroes and letting us get to see the team form, we have to reunite a team we have not seen together before. Ms. Marvel is still a highlight and there are some great parts to the story, but the structure keeps it flawed throughout. 

The graphics and music are great, the presentation is incredible, it looks like you are almost playing through a movie. I movie that I wish had a different, less downer plot that had us get to spend time with the team but that is neither here nor there. The gameplay is also a tad less to be desired.

This game has you going from mission to mission, leveling up, getting gear and perks and fighting hordes of enimies. That is most of the gameplay when not doing a rate chase, flight, or puzzle section, you are fighting hoard after hoard of a robot army. The gameplay can be summarized as mash the button to win, except when even on the easiest difficulty the game decides to spike the difficulty and the game becomes "OOPS all enimies". And when I revisited the game, the glitches were still there too, slowdown, some lag spikes, or sometimes locking me out of something I needed. 

This game held promise, but the promise does not hold up. The gameplay is bad, the story is an odd pick for a first game and after a couple hours, I put this game down again. There is multiplayer but honestly there are way better games for that coming soon and already out. The game had DLC that I refused to touch because it is just more of the gameplay. I wanted to enjoy this game, but it just bored me. The bleak narrative, the repetitive level grind to win gameplay, and the lack of variety had be remembering why I walked away the first time. 

Don't play this game, there are way better superhero themed games out there. This one was not worth the time, and if you have gamepass not worth the large install and the space it takes, the bad definitely outweighs the good.