A Critique of Marvel's Avengers: The Game That Did Everything Wrong

when crystal dynamics avengers game came out in september of 2020 it was met with pretty negative reviews and then promptly forgotten about seriously the game has been getting semi-consistent updates ever since its release yet no one seems to care but i don't think this is a game that deserves to be forgotten not because i think it'll make some kind of miraculous turnaround and become good or anything like that but because i think this game is a very rare example of a game that made the worst possible decisions at every turn a game that did everything wrong [Music] before we even get to the game proper let's look at the initial trailer that was shown in june of 2019. this was the real first impression people had of the game and first impressions are everything the immediate reaction from most people was harsh criticisms of the character designs with the most common critique being the characters looked like stunt doubles or knockoffs of the mcu cast this was and remains a very common critique of the character designs yet i've never seen an in-depth analysis as to why this is though i am by no means an expert on character design i'd still like to give three reasons as to why i think these designs are so poorly received number one the designs are closer to the mcu than the comics there's no way to get around the fact the designs of the game do bear resemblance to those seen in the marvel cinematic universe to demonstrate this let's take a look at captain america captain america's movie suits specifically his suits from age of ultron to avengers endgame since they are basically the same suit with only minor differences between them are very different from what he wears in the comics the movie suits have a helmet with a chin strap the white and red stripes on his torso are only on the front of his chest instead of going all the way around he has short dark non-red fingerless gloves dark non-red boots a generally muted color palette and an overall more militaristic style these are all traits that are not present in captain america's classic comic book look but these traits are all present in crystal dynamics version of cap so while crystal dynamics version of cap still doesn't really look that much like mcu-cap he still looks more like him than he does comic camp which invites immediate comparison this point goes for the other characters in the base roster to varying degrees except for miss marvel for obvious reasons number two the faces are generic while some people might say this is subjective i have a pretty strong reason to say this i don't think this game uses facial models for those who don't know facial models are often used in modern video games to give characters a more realistic look the process is that video game developers scan the face of a real life person and then use that scan as a base to work off of for a character model some examples of video games that have done this are devil may cry 5 the last of us 2 and spider-man on playstation 4. avengers doesn't seem to do this i don't exactly have concrete proof of this but i also can't find anything that says that they do use facial models however there is one thing that makes me fairly confident that they don't black widows face change black widow's face was infamously changed after the initial trailer reveal when it was criticized for looking too manly i don't think you could change a face that much if there was a facial model involved you'd either have to get a new facial model which would become public news or you might run into some kind of legal trouble if the model's face was changed too much the point though is that if i'm right then the faces in this game are not real people and as such do not have the same level of detail nor the imperfections that come with having a real face so while people say that the faces look like store brand versions of the movie actors faces the truth is that the faces are so generic that they could really look like anyone number three the designs are just bad i know that this will definitely fall into more subjective territory but i want to make an argument that the designs of this game's characters are subpar specifically these default designs are as they refer to in-game the iconic suits i will talk about the alternate costumes later though just you wait once again i will be using captain america's suit as an example if it feels like i'm picking on him uh well i kind of am cap and iron man are the only two characters i really like that are in this game so i'm a little biased towards them also iron man's suit isn't that bad outside of his silly helmet so i just have more to say with cap before getting into the costume something worth pointing out is that this version of steve rogers has a 5 o'clock shadow while this may seem like a minor detail to some it is still something that i think is worth pointing out captain america is supposed to always be perfectly clean shaven it's a part of his design so when he isn't he looks weird i think this was the change cd made in an attempt to make his design look more realistic while a novel idea after all no one is perfectly clean-shaven all the time in real life it is still a misguided one again steve rogers is supposed to be perfectly clean shaven that's simply how he is supposed to look so changing this detail not only looks wrong but it also adds to the feeling this isn't captain america and is instead just some guy wearing a captain america inspired costume that's not even mentioning the fictional symbolic meaning of having facial hair in fiction having a five o'clock shadow or a stubble is often a sign of falling on hard times i mean just look at john walker in the falcon in the winter soldier tv show you can practically use his facial hair as a metric for the decline of his mental state throughout the show okay now let's discuss the actual costume the first main problem of cap's suit is that it's too bulky captain america is a super soldier with a near god-like physique that comes with that but the bulky costume hides his musculature and makes him look out of shape additionally there's really not much reason for his suit to have so much padding and armor captain america already has the best protective item known to man with his shield he has superhuman levels of durability and he should be agile enough to dodge a lot of potential threats so then why is he covered in armor and padding wearing that much armor is admitting that he needs that much armor which just makes him look weak and inefficient then there's the issue the design of the costume is a little too generic i understand the idea the suit is supposed to look like military gear because cap is a soldier the problem though is that the costume now no longer looks like a costume or a super suit and instead looks like normal real world military gear that was painted over in an attempt to cosplay as captain america that's not to say that the suit is comprised of real world military gear because it's not seriously you'd be hard-pressed to find tactical year that looks exactly like this in real life but it looks like it is and that's the problem to make another comparison to the mcu mcu-caps costume is clearly inspired by military and tactical gear and while it does look like believable military apparel it still looks like a uniquely designed super suit it also doesn't make chris evans look fat the last large problem of the suit is the stripes on the front of the chest or more accurately the lack of them the red and white stripes on captain america's chest is one of the most important elements of his costume literally emulating the american flag and this costume doesn't really have that the white stripes are there but the red ones are these extremely small pinstripes that don't even touch the white stripes this makes the red stripes feel less like an actual part of the design and more like an easter egg again this largely absent part of the design lends credence to the feeling these are not the actual characters we know and are instead knock-off characters or normal people that are attempting to look like them now there are a few other parts of this suit that i don't like the overall gloomy color scheme the nonsensical pouches that form the white stripes on his chest the flag on his shoulders and the wings on his helmet but the issues i've highlighted are the main problems with the costume [Music] when discussing this game it is common to see people say that the story is not only the best part of the game but that it is a genuinely good story all by itself that last part is completely untrue while the story is relatively one of the best parts of the game it is still nonsensical poorly explained and too short to be of any real substance there's no real way to go through this other than to go through the story and address the issues as they come up so here we go the 8 a scenario that the game opens up with is already a narrative misstep the premise of it just doesn't make sense the avengers are unveiling a new untested power source while also announcing the winner of their fan fiction competition those two events don't really go hand in hand at all yet the story expects the audience to believe that this is a totally rational and normal thing to do there's also the fact that this self-celebratory parade doesn't really feel like something a team of honest superheroes would do it feels more like something you'd expect to see out of the boys or some other form of media that depicts superheroes as narcissistic and self-indulgent most of the first section of this a day level is seen through the eyes of kamala khan the game's main character while many will say that kamala's inclusion in this game is a sin by itself i disagree i think having kamala being the main character of this game is fine but there are issues with her that will come up later kamala goes through the a day event and has a little meeting with nearly every avenger she doesn't get to meet bruce but she does get pretty close as she watches him discuss the plans for terrigen with monica and tarleton later after tarleton's presentation on terrigen gets interrupted by iron man an explosion in the distance catches the avengers attention and they fly off to deal with it this is where the attention of the game briefly shifts off of kamala and focuses on the actual avengers that being said they don't really do much here gameplay wise this is because this section is kind of a tutorial narratively this is because not much actually happens until taskmaster arrives taskmaster pulls up on the golden gate bridge with a truck carrying a sonic bomb something that can apparently liquefy the entire city even with taskmaster defeated and the bomb disarmed there's still no time to relax as trouble arises on the chimera so quick side note the chimera i don't think the chimera is ever properly introduced the game just starts referring to it and you just kind of have to infer what they're talking about the chimera is a helicarrier that has been modified to run on terrigen the new energy source that tarleton and the avengers were unveiling anyway the chimera has started to go into the air something that shouldn't be possible as the characters themselves point out the reasoning that the ship goes into the air anyway is that its security protocols haven't been activated but that doesn't really make any sense i mean you'd think that security protocols would be based around defending the ship you know locking all the doors activating the ship's weaponry that kind of thing how does starting the engine and going into the air help security they also say that the ship isn't meant to be airborne yet and if that's the case and they knew that the security protocols would force the ship into the air then why even program the security protocols in yet regardless of any of that captain america and tarleton are on the chimera as it rises into the air the territorian substance which has been in a rocky crystal form up until now breaks down into a gas cap mentions that the ship seems to be getting pulled to some sort of heat signature underground keep this in mind this will be important later iron man and thor try to fly over to the chimera once taskmaster is dealt with but the teradine reactor detonates before they can get there this leads into a glorified slideshow presentation where the game shows what happens in the 5 years between this event and the rest of the game captain america is declared dead the avengers are blamed for the death and destruction caused on a day the team disbands stark industries and shield are somehow legally liquidated and given to tarleton and monica who then use it to propel their company aim into a mega corporation that seemingly controls the world the mist emitted from the territorian crystal gives birth to a race of superpowered individuals called inhumans an aim from their new position of power now seeks to round up and cure these inhumans so a lot of things have happened and not a lot of them make sense captain america is presumed dead yet no one ever finds a body this is brushed off like it's a minor thing but that is a major thing to be concerned about it's basically an unwritten rule in fiction especially superhero fiction that if there's no body then the person isn't dead yet no one ever mentions how it's weird that a body was never found it's absolutely insane to me that none of the remaining avengers consider this and that they all just believe that he died black widow does later mention that she searched for cap to no avail but if anything her inability to find a body should have at least inspired the thought that someone else found it before her but again none of this is brought up or even discussed as a possibility until after cap is found next is the issue of how stark industries and shield have their assets seized and given to tarleton and monica i can understand shield being dismantled and maybe having tarleton and monica acquire them later but how on earth does it make any sense at all that stark industries is given to tarleton i'm not a legal expert by any means but i've never seen any situation where a company has a massive failure or mistake and then is completely taken away from its previous owner and given to a random third party and even if this is how things operate is this game seriously saying that tony stark doesn't have any kind of backup at all he just goes back to his crumbling family home with no money iron man suits or even jarvis how tony stark is either the unluckiest bastard in the world when it comes to the legal system or he's incredibly stupid and didn't have any money or assets saved up then there's also the confusion on how aim as a company was created i originally thought that aim only came to be after tarleton monica seized stark's assets and money but apparently aim existed as a company before that and was just much smaller it's not a huge deal i guess but the lack of clarity is still a little confusing then there's the use of the inhumans in the story while not exactly a problem is baffling this game deals with inhumans at all i mean after the colossal failure of the inhumans tv show and their general lack of popularity ever it's confusing that they would be such a seemingly large part of this game's plot and world i say seemingly there because the real issue of the inhumans in this game is that they barely matter at all their existence basically kicks off the main plot of the game but outside of kamala i can only remember two other named inhumans the firepower dante who only has one scene and basically does nothing and theo the guy of portal powers working for the resistance you never have to fight any inhuman enemies only one inhuman is playable and most confusing of all there is no appearance of or even reference to the inhuman royal family i'm not saying that the story would be better or more complete with them in it but it's still incredibly odd that they don't feature at all it would be like writing a story where mutants are front center yet never having a single appearance from any of the x-men finally the biggest and i mean biggest problem with this setup is how the avengers are blamed for the destruction on a day in the story the characters say that the public needed someone to blame so they blamed the avengers but there is already someone to blame taskmaster taskmaster is the one who led the attack on a day taskmaster is the one responsible for the bridge collapsing taskmaster is the one who brought a bomb capable of liquefying the city and so it was ultimately taskmaster who caused the destruction on a day i understand the avengers getting some of the blame but how is it possible they get all of the blame and the actual culprit seemingly takes none of it to make a comparison this would be like blaming first responders for the events of a terrorist bombing what's even more strange is that taskmaster again the character who practically sets the entire plot in motion is only mentioned one other time after the a day section when cap and widow realized that it was monica who hired him taskmaster should have been a key figure in the a day hearings being thoroughly investigated for his actions and motivations but instead he disappears almost entirely from the game story so already we have a lot of stuff that doesn't make a whole lot of sense and this is just for what is essentially the prelude of the story and not the actual story itself it's clear to see that a lot of the narrative decisions in this game were made not because they make sense but because they were necessary for the story to progress the a day celebration has a new power source unveiled and a fan fiction competition at the same time in the same place despite being an obviously terrible idea not because it's something that makes sense but because it allows for kamala to be there and get her powers the chimera goes into the air despite supposedly being non-operational not because it makes sense but because cap needs to be separated from the team so he can die cap dies and no one questions it because if he was alive then he would have rallied the team back together and the rest of the game can't happen tony stark gets his company taken from him and given to a lunatic not because that's how the legal system works but because the developers thought it would be cool if tony didn't have any money and had to start back at square one taskmaster isn't investigated for his actions on a day and found to have been working for monica because that would have prevented tarleton and monica from taking over stark industries which would have prevented the story from happening instead he needs to be forgotten about so the avengers can take the full blame for 8 a and the story can progress from there it's clear to see that a lot of the story beats seem to have been made backwards the developers came up with an effect they wanted to see and then wrote the cause for it afterwards regardless of whether or not it made sense this problem is something that continues to persist throughout the rest of the game now that the opening is out of the way it's time to start the story proper it's been nearly 5 years since 8a and kamala has gone from a small child to a teenager there is now a resistance that is formed in response to aim's global control and subjugation of the inhumans kamala finds a link to tony stark's uh work accounts on the resistance subreddit and after correctly guessing his password which is just i am iron man she is able to access his account this somehow grants her access to aim servers where she copies the available files onto a thumb drive during the data transfer purple electricity surges from her computer and boots her off the server with her computer bricked and aim literally right outside looking for her she decides to go into her headquarters to take a look at what was on the flash drive so what's wrong with this picture a lot of things really what exactly is the account that kamal is trying to access it's tony stark's account yes but his account for what i hesitate to call it his work account because it's not an account for stark industries it's an account for aim i guess it could be that stark's account with stark industries was changed to an aim account once stark industries was absorbed into aim but that still doesn't make any sense because tarleton and monica should have deleted his account or the very least changed his password or limited what his account can access once they acquired his company to prevent him or anyone close to him from using his account to do something like this additionally it's baffling that tony stark hasn't tried to look into this account himself especially because as we learn later he's still furious at tarleton for stealing his company so it only makes sense that he would want to do something about it yet he just doesn't for some reason people have gotten pretty angry about tony stark's password being i am iron man because that's really stupid but i'm largely fine with it tony stark is a pretty big in this game so something like that is perfectly in character for him as kamala heads off to her headquarters we noticed something else the game is completely skipped over kamala getting her powers you're thrust into gameplay and she just has them there's a ton of narrative potential that is completely wasted here we know from the slideshow intro that the inhumans become wrapped in some sort of cocoon and emerge with their powers what was kamal's reaction to going through that how did she hide becoming a human cocoon from her family or do they know that she's an inhuman to make a comparison this would be like if in the first spider-man movie peter is bitten by the spider and then after that it cuts directly to the wrestling scene i can absolutely see how it would confuse casual players when she just shows up with powers in this section of the game ah what she can already do this her hands grew yeah wait when did she get the powers moving on kamala is able to get to her headquarters and access the files on the thumb drive there's a video of the terragen reactor on a day where tarleton seemingly shuts captain america in the reactor just as it's about to blow kamal is convinced that this is the smoking gun that could take down aim and tarleton as in tarleton's testimony about the 80 event he claimed to be on the chimera's command deck when the explosion happened so not only did he lie about that he also seems to have killed captain america after this kamala gets a message on her computer from a person named tiny dancer who says that aim is on to kamala and she needs to get out now tiny dancer then tells kamala to meet them at heroes park near the captain america's statue kamala does as she's told yet when she arrives at heroes park instead of finding tiny dancer she encounters a group of men bullying a guy kamala interferes with her honestly disgusting gigantic hands and forces the bullies away the guy she saves isn't very thankful and scurries away with tiny dancer nowhere in sight kamala is forced to flee and after seemingly getting away through the sewers she is found knocked out and taken captive she awakens in a limo seated opposite tarleton and monica this is where we see the beginning of tarleton's transformation into modoc his head is considerably larger than normal but it's not quite there yet it's also here that we see that tarleton has acquired a superpower technokinesis aka the ability to control technology tarleton offers to help kamala by finding a cure for the inhumans but kamala refuses and escapes she runs away from some aimbots and as she does so she encounters a human and aim gear that is seemingly able to teleport this person tells kamala to stop running but kamala refuses and keeps going keep this in mind this will be important later when kamala is cornered in a building she's forced to fight her way through some aimbots and once that's finished she gets on a bus to go to utah utah is where their resistance is rumored to be so kamala figures it's your best bet to find someone to show the drive to after this we get a brief cut scene with tarleton and monica monica is showing tarleton a variety of powers possessed by the inhumans they have captured and are now experimenting on one of these inhumans is a woman who is able to clone herself near perfectly but the only difference being the clone has differently colored eyes keep this in mind this will be important later the pair talk about how they plan to implement these powers into their programmable adaptoids before monica tells tarleton he's due for another shot of her regenerative formula after injecting it into him he seems to get a boost in power kamala makes it to utah and when she gets there she finds the chimera so quick side note how did the chimera get here the last time we saw it was on a day where it was in san francisco so how did it cross nevada without its terrigen power source and get to utah the game doesn't act like this is a concern at all and just moves along so i guess i have to too kamala searches the chimera and finds that it's deserted but while searching she finds captain america's shield unfortunately this attracts the attention of the hulk who chases kamala through the chimera hulk corners kamala after nearly scaring her to death takes back the shield and disappears kamala has a weird line after this where she says that hulk has probably turned back to banner now which is just a little odd because how could she even know that anyway kamala tries to escape the chimera but just she's about to get free she's cornered by aimbots though she tries fighting them it seems she still has a few kinks to work out with her powers because she starts to pass out after she tries to grow in size lucky for her the hulk returns and defeats the remaining aimbots when kamala wakes up she finds herself in a lab on the chimera with bruce banner sitting opposite her kamala shows bruce the video on the drive which doesn't fully convince him to tag along with her and help out the video is also corrupted and doesn't have any audio which certainly doesn't help kamala gives a mini speech about being inhuman that i slept through and this convinces banner to help her their plan is simple go to an old shield bunker or maybe it was an old stark industry spunk i don't remember to find jarvis and then use jarvis to find tony when they get there the duo is ambushed by aim and they have to fight their way through kamala manages to find a hard drive copy of jarvis but not before finding a picture of the original avengers a picture that includes hawkeye so quick side note where is hawkeye obviously the real world answer is that he came to the game later as dlc but i'm asking about the narrative of the game the story gives no explanation as to why he isn't present during the events of a day and nobody even once wonders where he went this is incredibly bizarre because the avengers are supposed to be close friends as well as teammates but not a single member of the team says anything about him if you weren't already familiar with these characters you'd probably be confused by the random guy in this picture and why nobody talks about him say what you will about the marvel movies but those films have an incredible attention to detail when it comes to these kind of things when a character is absent they usually give some kind of explanation as to what they're doing and why they aren't available it doesn't have to be a full 10 minute explanation just a single line of dialogue could explain this away but instead we get absolutely nothing moving on kamala turns to leave and comes face to face with the abomination there's no buildup or anything he just appears hulk then also appears out of nowhere to tackle abomination away and the two fight so quick side note there's this really odd line abomination has here he says something to the effect of you're not looking well to hulk which i thought meant that abomination had fought hulk before hans's comment on hulk not looking well in relation to the previous times they fought but if you look at the in-game character bio for abomination it says that he only became abomination after the five year time skip post a day so that means that this is the first time hulk has ever fought abomination not only that this is basically the first time anyone has seen abomination in this world yet no one comments on this kamala doesn't look especially surprised to see him she never asks banner if the two are related in some way she never questions if abomination is a gamma-mutate like banner or if he's some kind of inhuman or maybe a combination of the two then there's a fact that banner doesn't really have a reaction to the abomination either at least in the comic books one of banner's greatest fears that the military will try to turn the hulk into a weapon here stands that fear made flesh and banner says nothing anyway hulk defeats abomination and kamala arrives and finds a video that shows a seemingly successful inhuman cure with that kamala and bruce leave the facility when they get back to the chimera kamala has a little speech about not fitting in and not really liking your powers to the hulk of all people and bruce just sort of goes there there with jarvis restored they can finally wait hold on he doesn't have full power yet so kamala needs to flip some switches in another room now that he has full power they can wait hold on jarvis needs something called a neural uplink in order to have full access to his files banner contacts maria hill and asks her where they can find one and she gives them the location of some shield bunkers or there might be a neural uplink stashed away somewhere so kamal and bruce head to the shield vault see a message from nick fury about these things called the shield protocols go back to the chimera give their protocols to maria hill and give the neural uplink to jarvis so now he can find tony but wait first kamala needs to use the harm room which is literally just the danger room from the x-men to play the game's second tutorial on iron man and now they can go find tony all of what just happened was completely pointless padding none of that needed to happen i could cut out that entire part of the story from this video and nothing would change in the overall narrative why couldn't the story just have jarvis be able to locate tony as soon as he was plugged in while this is more annoying on the gameplay side of things it's still a pointless narrative journey that accomplishes nothing else but make the campaign a little bit longer so jarvis pinpoints tony's last location to the stark's ancestral home of golden acres in nevada kamal and bruce then head over there and find a disheveled tony living in a trailer in front of his decrepit family home tony and bruce have a heated altercation that ends once kamala shows tony why the two were there after watching the thumb drive's contents tony realizes that what seems to be video corruption is actually a clever encryption that he offers to help decrypt before he can do that a message from tiny dancer appears on tony's screen warning that aim has found them and that they don't have much time tiny dancer is correct as aim almost immediately appears and forces the heroes into battle tony dons a makeshift armor in order to help out and the heroes ultimately emerge victorious with the aim forces defeated we switch over to tarleton who's frustrated with his loss abomination comes into the room complaining about tarleton's choices in leadership where he's then challenged by monica tarleton interjects and what follows is an incredibly bizarre and baffling scene tarleton tells a story about how as a young boy he found a wolf cub in the wild his father told him that it was too dangerous to keep yet tarleton refused to listen and decided to raise the wolf cub tarleton explained that he thought if he could instill the proper sense of rules and boundaries within the wolf that he could make use of its abilities one day the wolf snapped and attacked tarleton as tarleton gets to this part of the story he begins to choke abomination with one of the mechanical claws on his floating chair back in tarleton's story he explains how his dog fought off the wolf long enough for tarleton to call for help ultimately ending tarleton's dad shooting the wolf monica then interrupts telling tarleton to stop choking abomination as they need him tarleton seems to then come out of a sort of trance and he lets go of abomination and apologizes to him abomination leaves never to be seen again so just what was the point of that whole story clearly tarleton is trying to use it as some sort of metaphor but again what point is he trying to make is abomination the wolf in the story because if that's the casing is making a point on abomination's insubordination why does he not repeat the events of the story and once again kill the wolf maybe he would had monica not stopped him but why does she she claims that they need abomination yet he never appears again in the story so clearly that isn't true i mean what would they have needed him for anyway or is the wolf the inhumans or even all super powered people in general if that's the case then it kind of makes sense given tarleton's hatred of super powered people but that just raises the question of why he's even employed abomination in the first place if he already held this disdain towards superhuman abilities also there's the issue that tarleton's story and the message behind it have a glaring flaw the fact that you can domesticate wolves while incredibly difficult wolves can be somewhat domesticated and historically they have been and after many years of breeding and domestication we were able to get dogs from them who are far easier to domesticate yet admittedly less useful so again i must ask what is the point of this story i honestly don't know and i don't think the writers knew either i think the only reason this scene even exists is because they wanted to give tarleton some sort of villainous speech so they wrote something that sounded profound and just went with it after this tony bruce and kamala need to do some busy work before they can progress the story tony goes and finds some components in order to fix the chimera's fabrication machine a device that can create new costumes narratively he does this so he can get his normal iconic iron man suit gameplay wise this machine is used to acquire new costumes then tony splits up from bruce and kamala to look for initiator cores in order to power the chimera to the point where he can fly tony searches a city and finds an oversized arc reactor which he promptly destroys he then has an odd moment of self-reflection where he realizes that he can't just sit by as others use his tech for nefarious purposes a lesson that i'm not sure how he hasn't already learned as it's supposed to be literally the entire reason he even becomes iron man regardless of this he does not find any initiator cores neither do bruce and kamala who have searched the utah desert tired and feeling a sense of defeat the two take a breather kamala once the invoices doubts about her powers to the hulk and then she asks where the other inhumans are and why they aren't fighting back against aim almost immediately after she asked this a portal opens near them that leads right to the inhuman resistance the resistance is led by former ant-man hank pym the resistance base is called the ant hill a name curiously not suggested by hank but instead by tiny dancer who is confirmed here to be an anonymous hacker working for the resistance the place is bustling within humans and full of salvaged aim tech including the initiator cores needed to power the chimera before we continue there's something a little strange i want to address hank pym is present yet there is no mention of his wife janet van dyne aka the wasp janet was one of the founding avengers in the comics and has been the wasp for decades since then however she's not mentioned at all here which is just incredibly bizarre i mean the story goes out of its way to explain why hank doesn't suit up his ant-man apparently he was captured by aim at some point and experimented on where his biology was messed with to the extent that if he tries to manipulate his size in any capacity he will die with such an incredible limitation to his physical abilities you would think he might ask his wife for help her absence in the story doesn't really make any sense unless the character just does not exist which might honestly be the case in the game's codex files there's a reference to hope hank's daughter hope is a character invented solely for the movies and does not exist in the comics i would not be remotely surprised if the developers of this game decided to completely ignore janet's decades-long existence in order to copy what the movies have done in order to avoid any potential confusion it seems like hope will be the wasp in this universe and janet will simply not exist as weird as that may be anyway after doing a mission that i completely forgot the point of we get back to the main story kamala speaks with an inhuman named dante who's practicing the use of his firepowers he tells her that his mom is still in one of ames inhuman prisons and that there's no chance in saving her because by the time the avengers get together all the prisoners will have been moved to a different location and there will be no way to find her kamala is distressed by this and goes to speak to bruce quick side note kamala actually met dante on a day he's the kid you need to trade a comic with in order to get the full set and gain access to the vip seats this fact is never addressed by the game itself when kamala goes to see bruce he's with hank who is using artificial intelligence named roy to send the initiator cords to the chimera so that issue has finally been addressed kamala explains that they need to hit the aim prison now but bruce disagrees and reassures her that tony will be with them in less than a day and they can do it then kamala has a small freak out but bruce shuts her down and tells her that she's not ready so quick side note why can't they just attack the prison now because they attack the prison later anyway once kamala gets captured bruce says they can't do it now because it's too risky and that it would be better if they wait for tony to arrive with the chimera but when they attack the prison later tony only gets there with chimera after the prison has been liberated surely they would have been fine if both kamala and hulk had struck at the same time i'd even go as far as to say that the two of them could have liberated the prison by themselves without the resistance's help what's even weirders that bruce arrives at the scene of the breakout in normal clothing which to me at least implies that he didn't even help as the hulk so that means that the resistance could have sprung the prison the whole time without bruce kamala or tony so why didn't they the only reasoning i can think of is that they might have wanted to use the chimera to transport and house the escaped prisoners but the resistance already had an inhuman who can make gateway portals the fairy people out rendering the chimera pointless if that's what they were planning on using it for anyway kamala ignores bruce's command and sneaks out at night to try and liberate the prisons single-handedly she gets help from theo the portal guy who portals her over to the prison in order for her to start her assault quick side note why can't theo just teleport her inside the prison the most reasonable assumption is that his portal powers work the same way that teleportation works in most other media that being that he needs to see or know where he's teleporting to in order to avoid teleporting into a wall or something if this is the case it's never stated and the logistics of his powers are never discussed so anyway kamala gets captured after she tries to grow larger again and passes out due to the strain she wakes up tied to a table inside the aim prison monaco is there and she discusses villain stuff with a senator over some kind of holographic skype goal where he demands to see progress on her cure tarleton appears and reassures senator that the cure is coming along nicely then the coal ends monica and tarleton then briefly discuss how they both know that the cure is and while monica still wants to keep working on it tarleton tells her to shut it down tarzan leaves and monica starts messing with stuff on her holographic ipad and kamala starts squirming monica puts kamala to sleep with some sort of drug and then we cut to tiny dancer surprise surprise it's black widow she's infiltrated the aim prison and has informed the resistance that's time to strike as she needs backup in order to try and rescue kamala so yes not only has black widow been tiny dancer this whole time she was also the teleporting aim agent who pleaded with kamala to stop running back in jersey so this raises the question how is widow teleporting there it's actually explained in an elevator conversation that widow was using aim tech in the aim uniform she was wearing to teleport and once she was found to be a spy aim remotely locked away the teleportation ability on the suit so widow threw the suit away and stopped using it before finding this conversation i was incredibly confused as to how widow was teleporting the explanation of how she was able to do it and why she stopped doing it is in an optional conversation outside the main story which is very weird anyway black widow traverses through monica's lab and sees the truth of what she's doing monica's cure made of dark terrigen what is dark terrigen who knows don't ask forces them to use their powers to the point where they seem to die from burnout this process somehow allows for monica to copy the inhumans power onto the new adaptoid robots after learning this widow goes deeper into the facility facing off against the adaptoids and then against monica in a mech suit widow defeats monica and the day is won or so it seems kamala isn't with the other escaped inhumans so widow goes to find her she finds kamala sulking in the compound blaming herself for her failure and poor decision-making widow goes there there and kamala feels better with monica captured she's brought to the chimera for interrogation bruce handles this and does poorly being unable to find out any information about her secret lab monica says scour the earth you will not find our lab which should give away the obvious location of the lab but whatever moving on before widow can go in and continue the investigation the chimera is attacked by aim forces a large-scale battle ensues throughout the chimera and monica escapes during the confusion the aim robots damage the chimera's power source which makes the entire ship bound for a crash landing on the city of manhattan luckily thor just decides to be a hero again and shows up to help he uses his lightning to power the chimera back up so he can avoid crashing once everything has calmed down thor approaches the rest of the team and they all bicker for a bit thor comes down once they explain all the evil that tyrolyn and monica are up to and they have evidence of what really happened with captain america on the chimera thanks to kamala in a really sweet moment thor shows that he remembers kamala from their brief encounter on a day and then the team watches the fully decrypted video from kamala's thumb drive the footage shows the cap actually ordered tarleton to leave and shut the doors to the reactor room while cap purposely detonates the reactor shocked of the revolution that cap's death wasn't orchestrated by tarleton and that it was cap who caused the explosion bruce and tony get into a heated argument widow and thor decide to leave as bruce and tony's argument escalates the two then begin to fight and they burst out of the chimera to have an off-screen hulkbuster battle i have to say i'm absolutely stunned that we don't get to play this fight or even see it kamala gets sad and accidentally calls her father her father pleads with her to come home saying that he misses her greatly due to a mixture of sadness guilt and fear kamala doesn't speak until he hangs up something interesting though is that the father says i should never have told you to hide your powers which shows that he was aware of her inhuman powers that would have been nice to know much earlier in the game but it's nice to see it addressed kamala re-watches the tape of bruce questioning monica and she focuses on this scour-the-earth line realizing that this means that monica's lab is not on earth she rushes to tell tony and bruce about her discovery once she tells them tony realizes he'll have to don a space armor and head into outer space to reach ames secret satellite lab but before he can do that you have to play a filler mission so that tony can get the necessary components to complete the suit once that's over iron man rockets into space and just barely makes it to the satellite after traversing the inside of the satellite he finds the source of monica's regenerative formula a living being kept there inside a chamber iron man opens the chamber containing the formula source and it's none other than captain america so quick side note how did the regenerative formula derive from cap's blood to give tarleton his powers the super soldier serum in cap's blood should basically just be a very powerful performance enhancer so i'm not sure how something derived from that could give a person the power to control machinery with just a thought it could have been reasonable to assume that the formula can make someone incredibly smart and even increase the size of their head in a similar vein to the leader or something like that but i think that the technokinesis is just a stretch too far cap and tony share a moment and then work together to escape the satellite also i just want to point out that when i played through the scene cap shield appeared on his back even though it's not supposed to be there this seems to be a pretty common bug but also a much more recent one as it does not appear in any of the playthroughs i found online from when the game first released monica appears on a hollow screen and threatens them while tony pieces together that monica is so adamant to stop them because tarleton doesn't know about the satellite or what's on it managing to find an escape pod tony and cap get off the satellite just as it blows up but the explosion seems to damage the escape pods systems so the two are left to drift in space with seemingly no way to get back to earth now that they have a moment to breathe tony asked cap why he smashed the terrigen reactor cap explains that the terragen was being pulled towards a subterranean heat signature and if given any more time the entire san andreas fault would have collapsed and millions would have died quick side note i have to say that the intrigue behind captain america and the territory reactor's destruction is the most interesting thing in this game story at first you're led to believe that tarleton sabotaged the reactor and killed cap on purpose because of course he did he's the bad guy but then the rug is pulled out from under you once it's revealed the cap actually tried to get tarleton to safety and then detonated the reactor himself like the other avengers you the player left reeling wondering why on earth captain america of all people would do something like that then when this scene happens and cap's noble reasoning to save as many people as possible is revealed it's a nice resolution that makes you wonder why you ever even doubted cap in the first place furthermore it plants another seed of mystery as you now wonder what that underground heat signature was it's just a shame that this next mystery isn't resolved very well anyway thor miraculously shows up to save tony and cap so quick side note what if thor could have done this at any time then why didn't they get him to go up to the satellite in the first place i know that he leaves with widow once bruce and tony have their argument on the chimera but widow came back once kamala gave the team the clue of where the secret lab was i know we don't see him come back with her but he doesn't really have a reason to stay away at that point also why did no one think to ask where thor was after that section seriously once he leaves all the other characters just forget that he exists until he comes to save tony and cap how did he even know to go to space to save them did he reunite with widow and kamala on the chimera after tony left for space and they filled him in did he just look up into the sky and see what was going on why is thor's reaction to seeing cap alive again so subdued cap's death had such an effect on him that he left his hammer on cap's grave and stops being a hero yet when he sees his thought to be dead friend again all he says is welcome back anyway we cut to monica in her lab where she's confronted by tarleton who has now completed his transformation into modoc he angrily accuses her of infecting him and stealing his hope and while monica tries to spin the situation to her advantage and calm modoc down her attempt fails modoc injects her of her own regenerative formula killing her so two things to point out here number one is that monica doesn't actually die here as she's injected with the formula we get a close-up of her eyes that show they are actually two different colors where they have previously always been the same color as we saw earlier in the story there wasn't a human that could duplicate herself near perfectly the only imperfection being that the duplicate had different eye colors monica has seemingly been able to copy this power onto herself no doubt using a similar method to how she copies powers into the adaptoids so the monaco we see die here is actually a clone while the real monika is alive somewhere else i've seen a lot of people express confusion as to how monaco is still alive after this but this is the explanation as with a lot of things in this game's story i don't think this is ever flat out stated to be the case you instead have to piece it together yourself the second thing i want to address is tarleton or modok now the subtitles refer to him as modoc now in a later scene he admits that this is now what he's calling himself but i have to ask why in the comics modoc is an acronym that stands for mental organism designed only for killing is he using the same acronym here if so he doesn't explain that if he's not using that acronym and modoc instead means something else he doesn't explain that either there's also the fact that he now has his iconic incredibly oversized head but there is an issue with this over the five year time skip tarleton's head only increased in size by a little bit but over the course of what a few days a week he has now had a far more dramatic cranial size increase i guess it isn't a huge issue but it's still a little weird and shows to me that there wasn't a lot of thought placed towards this aspect of modoc anyway back on the chimera cap reunites with his shield and black widow it's here that the two of them pieced together that it was monica who hired taskmaster with the intent of stealing some of the terrigen crystal but this doesn't make any sense taskmaster's attack on a day seemed far more like a personal attack on the avengers with the express purpose of discrediting them taskmaster was literally planning on liquefying the entire city how was that an attempt to steal terrigen and if taskmaster was just a distraction while his goons were meant to steal the terrigen that doesn't check out either because the goons made no apparent attempt to steal anything why would monica even go to these lengths in order to try and steal terrigen anyway she worked on the terrigen project with bruce and tarleton if you really wanted to steal some then all she needed to do was discreetly stash them away when no one was looking regardless of any of that the fully reunited team is called to the chimera's war table where they see that aim is making their big final play aim has deployed gunships over major cities holding down conventional military forces using their adaptoids the avengers decide that enough is enough they're taking the fight to aim in order to end this once and for all except not yet because before you can do that you have to do a resource hunting side quest so that tony can build these stark tech outfits for the whole team in preparation for the final assault now at this point i have to be honest this is where i stopped playing the game the absurd level of boring padding wore me down to the point where i had no interest in playing anymore so from this point forward everything i speak on will not be from first-hand experience but instead from watching the cutscenes online before moving on to the story though i do have a quick side note to make here why does the team need the star tech outfits for the final confrontation with modok as far as i know there's nothing particularly dangerous about modoc that necessitates the use of a more powerful suit of armor and even if modok was strong enough to warrant new suits these suits shouldn't be used for thor and hulk thor is a thunder god and hulk is power made flesh it doesn't make sense for there to be any kind of technological suit that could boost their power beyond what they're already capable of but that's another issue right there the stark suits are technological suits monok's super power is the ability to control technology is no one concerned that he might be able to use his powers to affect the stark tech suits or maybe even control the heroes through them the entire premise of these new costumes make no sense whatsoever and it feels as if the only reason they even exist is because the developers saw how the playstation 4 insomniac spider-man game had spider-man get a new costume for the final boss so they copied that idea without factoring in the reasoning of what made that decision work in spider-man anyway the avengers gear up and head to where it all started san francisco while i understand the attempt to make this a poetic thing ending where the story started the final area looks nothing like the starting area so this might as well be a completely different part of the planet the team confronts modoc working together to defeat him just as it looks as if modok has been defeated he reveals the heat signature that has been underground a gigantic extraterrestrial robot emerges from the earth and the only reaction we get from that is captain america asking what is that only for thor to reply and that's it how long has it been there why is it there keep in mind that this crease entry is basically the reason this entire story even happens and we know next to nothing about it modoc gets the upper hand as he starts to directly pilot the sentry the sentry is powerful enough to battle away iron man like he's a house fly sustain no real damage from thor's lightning and even overpower the hulk so how can the avengers win the day perhaps by working together through their combined strength defeating this villain nope it all comes down to kamala who uses her shape shifting powers to grow to the size of the crease entry despite growing to a much larger size than she ever has before she's able to sustain this form for long enough to defeat the sentry before passing out so quick side note i think this might honestly be the worst part of the entire story kamala suddenly being able to grow as large as she wants without suffering from the drawback that had been set up twice by that point is nonsensical kamala being able to defeat the creased entry all by yourself even though we've seen it tear through iron man thor and hulk is flat out indefensible this scene indirectly establishes that kamala is the strongest member of the team which just feels incredibly bizarre and kind of unnecessary people complain about kamala a lot in this game often saying that she feels like a fan fiction self-insert character and as a person who doesn't really like kamala i have to say i don't think this is true for the most part for most of the game she's fine a reasonable and fun addition to the team however her taking down the crease entry by herself after the other heroes are unable to do so is the exact type of thing a fan fiction self-insert character would do kamala is praised by the other avengers once she wakes up has a little heart to heart with bruce and then is sent home where she reunites with her father there's another scene after this showing that monaco is alive and in full control of aim then the short post-credits scene showing the full increased entry send out some sort of pod into outer space while this is the end of the campaign there's still a little bit left for the story after completing the reigning supreme mission chain kamala is officially inducted into the avengers team and with that the main story is completed overall i think the main campaign suffers from three fatal flaws the first is that there's a severe lack of world building and characterization hardly anything is properly explained leaving the player to either figure things out for themselves or to simply create the answers they want in their own head canons ideas and plot lines that should be entire stories are either shortened to a single line of dialogue or flat out ignored furthermore there's this bizarre disconnect where the game tries to establish itself as being different from the comics and the films yet at some points foregoes explanations because it expects you to know things from the comics and the films this leaves the game's world and characters feeling confusing hollow and artificial the second biggest issue is that the campaign is very short due to its short length not a lot really happens and nothing is given the proper amount of time to be established as i've already said there's a lot of pointless busy work that you have to do between missions which tells me that the developers were aware of how little their story had to offer and scrambled to add more stuff to try and extend the runtime i think it's possible that a lot of the narrative issues i've talked about could have been fixed that the story had more time to breathe unfortunately we're stuck with what we have the third and largest problem is that it is simply not a good avengers story had this game's story been focused on the avengers team working together to fight evil throughout the entire campaign then all the other issues in the story could have been overlooked this is where the real issue of kamala khan being the main character arises the issue isn't that the story focuses on her but the fact that she draws so much time and attention away from the other avengers the only two avengers to get a decent amount of screen time are iron man and hulk widow has some screen time but cap and thor are basically glorified cameos some of the best parts of this game's story are when the avengers are allowed to interact with each other but because the full team is only present in the intro section and the final boss this rarely happens as a result of this the campaign does not feel like an avengers story that focuses on kamala khan and instead feels like a kamala khan story that just so happens to feature the avengers before i get to the gameplay there are a few post-launch narratives that are added with the dlc characters one for each so i'd like to run through those quickly kate bishop taking aim kate bishop uncovers a plot by aim that involves time travel nick fury and clint barton are working together with monica as well as a future version of monica to develop a super weapon called project omega to stop the upcoming kree invasion clint then sent on a mission into the future by monica but kate manages to bring him back to the past clint tells the avengers everything he knows about the incoming cree invasion and then passes out from time sickness hawkeye future imperfect clint wakes up six weeks after the events of taking aim he and kate go back to the future to look for fury they find clint as an old man and the trio work together to find fury their search leads them to the maestro an evil future version of the hulk after defeating him with the use of gamma arrows maestro tells him that they need to go beyond the storm to find fury the two clints find an area encased in a massive energy field where everyone inside is frozen in time theory is there as well as monica who's holding the project omega superweapon the cosmic cube the story then just kind of ends but it's followed up in the beating the odds mission the avengers find where monaco is creating the cosmic cube in the present fight her and ultimately defeat her with the sacrifice of old man clint the avengers then seal away the cosmic cube though pym's robot roy takes an interest in it black panther war for wakanda the avengers arrive in wakanda to inquire about the origin of corrupted vibranium mounds that have started to sprout around the world t'challa allows the avengers into his city and allows them to help in the fight against aim as aim is trying to invade wakanda for their vibranium specifically aim has hired ulysses claw to acquire vibranium in wakanda the avengers work together the black panther to defeat claw and t'challa passes over his role as leader of wakanda to his sister shuri in order to join the avengers full time these post-launch mini stories aren't awful but they aren't particularly impressive either both of the hawkeye stories feel like a two-parter episode from a tv show and really should have been included together as one story i wouldn't be surprised if that was the original plan seeing as how clint was revealed before kate also there's the fact that monica's boss fight fits squarely as the finale of clint's campaign which ends awkwardly otherwise again i would not be surprised if that mission was originally intended to be released earlier as part of clint's campaign but had to be pushed back due to time constraints the time travel aspect is not something i think is integrated into the story in a meaningful and logical manner the original campaign is relatively grounded and normal so seeing such a complicated concept like time travel show up in these later stories with very little fanfare feels incredibly weird i also don't think that the concept of time travel is utilized well for example one of the most fun elements of time travel stories is seeing characters interact with themselves from different points in time but we only really get to see hawkeye interact with his future self future monika just kind of disappears after a little bit and then there's maestro banner losing control of the hulk and becoming an evil intelligent maniac is only briefly touched on and not explored at all this is an incredibly interesting story beat one that could carry its own game and nothing really comes of it the war for wakanda story is comically detached from everything else in the game it doesn't follow up the cree invasion storyline that the game had been setting up until that point and it realistically could take place at any point in time in the avengers history just like the main campaign it's really short and there's a lot of things that are underexplained or flat out unaddressed for example crossbones who is typically a normal human character shows up and just has firepowers apparently he's now an inhuman but the story does not actually say this once again you have to piece together this aspect of crossbones for yourself additionally crossbones new powers are a huge missed opportunity for the narrative as this is the first time the avengers have ever encountered him this means that there's no way for them to compare how much of a threat he was before to how dangerous he has become now with his new abilities stuff like that permeates a story and makes it difficult to care about the narrative and the characters because they just don't feel real they feel like video game characters inhabiting a video game world where nothing really matters because it's just a video game normally after discussing a story one would then discuss the characters and or performances in further detail i won't really do that here because there really isn't much to say most of the characters are just fine i honestly can't say much about them positively or negatively simply because of how little screen time they have even the dlc characters who have entire operations dedicated solely to them don't get a lot of time to shine the only three characters i can talk about at length are tony bruce and kamala i liked bruce a lot troy baker does a really good job of making him seem shy insecure and really intelligent a great depiction of bruce banner the other two i really didn't like it's not an exaggeration to say that this game might have the worst rendition of iron man ever made he never comes across as particularly intelligent his jokes are never funny and worst of all he never does anything cool or impressive that could redeem him i don't really think this is the fault of nolan north's performance as i know he's an incredibly talented voice actor and there are brief moments in the campaign where he actually seems like a good fit for iron man this seems more like an issue with the writing and directing especially during gameplay during cutscenes iron man is a little annoying but in gameplay iron man becomes completely insufferable kamala has the opposite problem where i don't really like sandra saad's performance in the campaign but find her quite likable in gameplay in cutscenes she seems far too over dramatic as if she's doing theater while everyone else just acts normally in gameplay though she seems much lighter and natural as far as villains go modoc monika and claw are all performed well by their respective actors but that's about all the praise i can give them modoc would be a decent take on a modernized and serious version of the comic book character if it weren't for his ideals and plan that are so beyond idiotic he's still difficult to take seriously monica started as an alright idea for a villain but has really overstayed her welcome apparently somehow still being alive despite seemingly being erased from existence with the cosmic cube claw is just okay like i said performed well but not particularly interesting or memorable [Music] so that's enough on the story and characters it's time to move on to the gameplay before we can jump into combat and loot there's a few other gameplay aspects i'd like to address the level design of this game is awful the environmental layouts are generic and lifeless and the actual design of the mission areas themselves feel algorithmically generated even though i know for a fact that they're not people have already addressed this criticism and nearly every video review for this game ever made i just wanted to confirm this issue hasn't changed at all there are a few stages for the campaign that are exempt from this but even then those stages are extremely few and far between not nearly being great enough in number or quality to negate this point as far as the mission types go they're all pretty standard stuff destroy x objectives protect x point defeat x boss and that's about it these aren't necessarily bad mission types but they're quite bland and basic with absolutely no variety when combined with the generic environments it creates a generally unexciting experience after beating the campaign you're left to face the real game of the avengers initiative aka the multiplayer section i say the real game because this is clearly what the game itself treats is the most important aspect the entire campaign is in actuality just a tutorial for this section no seriously the reason the campaign gives the heroes so little screen time allows you to unlock only a snippet of their skill trees and has tutorial prompts during the final boss is that you can get just the basics down before proceeding with the main duration of your total playtime that being said the avengers initiative is incredibly lazy tedious and far worse in quality when compared to the story earlier when i said the story wasn't good by itself i was still agreeing with the fact this story is one of the best parts of the game this is why it's not enough to just say that it's bad why is it bad there are a few reasons ranging from the mission types i spoke about earlier being repetitive lacking of variety but the real reason is simply that there's no incentive to actually play this game mode there isn't any real story progression here and you can't unlock alternate outfits or new takedown animations additionally there's no pvp element at all i need you to understand i'm not asking for a full-fledged pvp battle mode between players as i understand that would be hilariously unbalanced and legitimately impossible for these developers to implement but a simple ranking system with a leaderboard and seasonal resets would be enough yet nothing like that is present the only real reward you get is loot but it sucks and here's why avengers is a looter there's no getting around that loot is the only reason to continue playing after you finish the campaign so then why is the system so bad i won't claim to be a total expert on the subject as i personally don't care much for loot based games in general if you want an expert's opinion on why the loot system sucks there's several high quality write-ups on reddit that break down why the system fails anyway these are the reasons as to why i feel that the loot system sucks number one the idea of the avengers looting for gear does not make sense and does not fit the fantasy of being the avengers the very simple fact of the matter is that the loot system simply does not make sense for these characters it doesn't make sense for a team of superheroes to essentially be robbing their enemies and repurposing enemy technology into equipment of their own it doesn't make sense for naturally superpowered beings of vastly different origins to find tricketts in the same boxes that boost their power it doesn't make sense for characters that have status effects that don't match who they are or what their abilities are the system simply does not make sense for these characters the youtuber geekgarden has a great video on why the avengers should never have been a looter in the first place where he talks about this point in greater detail number two gear does not change your character's appearance since the character's appearance in avengers is dictated solely by whatever cosmetic skin you have equipped there's no room for gear to affect your look this is a massive mistake as having character's appearance change with gear is the easiest and most surefire way to keep players engaged personally i play a lot of rocket league despite not really liking the actual gameplay much because i love unlocking new car pieces and customizing my different rides so people like me that love visual customization will instantly be turned off by this gear system number three gear does not provide enough gameplay difference to be meaningful there's a rampant misconception that the gear in this game does not affect gameplay in any meaningful way this isn't true gear does affect gameplay there's several different perks and status effects granted by gear that directly affect how you play the issue though is that these changes are not nearly significant enough for most people to care at the end of the day these statuses and perks are simply modifiers tacked onto your existing moveset they don't drastically change your moveset and as such are unsatisfactory number four the battery effect the battery effect is a product of the gear system that's so bad it ruins any kind of potential build diversity because using it is the strongest option at all times basically how it works is that there are eight different status effects that luke can apply to enemies of these eight they are divided evenly into two groups hot and cold or positive and negative the battery effect happens when you apply one effect and then apply the opposite effect which then deals double damage as i said before building your characters to be able to use the battery effect is the best course of action because of how much damage it does so it negates the need to try and build your characters to do anything else it also kind of completely ruins the combat outside of the story avengers most praised feature is its combat like the story it's praise that i feel is overblown and largely unwarranted in short i do believe that the individual character movesets are satisfactory and fun but combat as a whole is not allow me to explain first i will break down the basic components of the combat i'll be using playstation controller buttons in my description so keep that in mind every character has a light attack a heavy attack and a range attack there's a dodge on circle and a counter-like ability on r2 except for spider-man who does not have a counter pressing in the right stick turns lock on on and off the left and right arrows on the d-pad are only used on some characters like iron man and black widow to switch between their weapons there are three super attacks called heroics that charge up on a timer and can be used as follows the support heroic is on l1 and usually applies some kind of buff to you or your teammates the assault heroic on r1 is a more straightforward attack and the ultimate heroic activated by pressing l1 and r1 at the same time varies between characters usually either being a powered up super mode or a large one-off attack for a traversal pressing the left stick allows you to sprint x is the jump button but it also has other traversal properties in the air such as kamala's grapple captain america's double jump or iron man's flight that's the basic control scheme you unlock new moves by leveling up and using your required skill points to get new abilities on the skill tree in addition to the normal skill tree there's also a mastery skill tree that grants optional changes to abilities that can be changed at any time for example you can choose to either extend the duration of iron man's unibeam attack or change it to a shorter burst attack where he fires his two repulsors in tandem with the unibeam the moveset variety that this control scheme and mastery system allow for is surprising while none of the characters reach the amount of depth and complexity of something like devil may cry each of them is able to bring something different to the table i'll admit it the characters move sets are fun however combat is not just what moves the characters have there are other things to consider such as enemy design general gameplay feel additional combat mechanics and in this game the loot the enemy design in this game is atrocious and almost single-handedly ruins the entire combat system there are basically two different enemy types cannon fodder that can be killed with basically anything and the ones so irritating that they drive rational people to commit extreme acts of violence the cannon fighter enemies can be dispatched pretty easily which is kind of its own problem but at least they aren't frustrating and they provide the feeling of being a superhero the aggravating ones don't get staggered by your attacks usually only being staggerable if you parry them this leads to a player having only two options when dealing with them engage in hidden run tactics which make you feel like a wimp instead of a superhero or stop dead in your tracks in order to slowly wait for a parry opportunity there is even an overshield mechanic that can be applied to all the enemies even the cannon fodder ones that makes them unstaggerable until the shield is removed effectively turning them into one of the aggravating enemies also there are a handful of nasty effects that enemies can apply to you that ruin combat one effect drains your heroic abilities which sucks major ass since they already take a long time to charge another enemy applied effect removes your ability to dodge which is probably the most baffling debuff i've ever seen in a video game thankfully neither of these effects show up often but the fact that they're in the game at all shows the inconsiderate approach that the combat team took when designing enemies so we have our playable characters and we have our enemies now then how does combat actually function essentially you hit all the enemies until they die in most other games that statement would be in oversimplification but here that's really all there is to it the overall combat experience in this game is hollow underdeveloped and lacking in options and creativity there are several reasons as to why this is the first is that avengers does not have a combo counter of any kind in nearly every other action game there's a combo meter of some sort that keeps track of how many hits you've landed how much damage you're doing or simply how cool your combo is people have this notion that all they do is provide an ego boost by telling players how good they are but this isn't true combo counters always serve an in-game purpose most games have enemies drop higher amounts of resources upon defeat when you're at a higher combo count other games like insomniac spider-man grant more super meter and higher combo counts and the arkham series makes batman faster with a higher combo multiplier since avengers lacks such a mechanic there's not much reason to experiment with the combat system to create and maintain combos outside of the player's own desire to do so there's no real difference between a fight where a player can only string together a 5-hit combo and a fight where a player has amassed a 1000 hit combo not that you would even know that you've accomplished that since the game doesn't tell you the second reason is that there's a surprising lack of synergy with your teammates for a game that's entirely centered around a superhero team there are no real mechanics that make use of your teammates the only ones i can think of are the battery effect which can actually be triggered with only one person and captain america being able to reflect iron man's unibeam outside of this team combat and synergy don't really exist i already mentioned the battery effect but i need to bring it up again here as it really does ruin combat the absurd amount of damage dealt this effect removes the need to try and do any real kind of combo that takes full advantage of your movesets because statuses only apply on certain attacks it's best to only use the attacks that will allow for the battery effect and to simply ignore everything else in your moveset this allows for the fastest way to dispatch enemies which is really the only thing that matters lastly there are just a lot of general missteps in this game's combat design that don't neatly fall into any categories so i'll simply list them here only iron man and thor have air dodges i assume because the developers thought they would be the only characters that would be able to realistically perform them putting aside the fact that it's a poor choice to let realism dictate the design philosophy of a combat system where captain america can shrink people with his shield the issue that this brings is that aerial combos for all other characters become an inherently bad idea aerial combos are usually better than ground combos in most other action games because you are safer in the air in avengers though the opposite is true because most characters are actually more vulnerable in the air which is yet another factor that de-incentivizes using your full combat kit iron man's repulsors cost intrinsic meter meaning that he can run out of repulsors i shouldn't have to explain why this is stupid but i will this ruins the fantasy of being iron man since a lot of people just want to fly around and shoot lasers which you cannot do as you will run out of energy additionally this decision makes iron man a bad ranged character since he can run out of his range attack whereas other more traditionally melee focused characters like cap and black panther are actually better at range than iron man simply because they don't have to worry about running out of projectiles takedowns are handled in a very bizarre way as each individual enemy has a bar that needs to be filled up in order to use a takedown on them this forces you into focusing on one enemy at a time instead of giving you the freedom to switch freely between targets in combat then there's the lack of air takedowns which stilts combat by once again making aerial combat an inherently worse choice than ground combat and forcing players who are doing aerial attacks to awkwardly come back to the ground in order to do a takedown also takedowns don't automatically ko enemies they just do a lot of damage so enemies can survive takedowns why the way healing is handled is archaic while performing takedowns does grant health the main way to heal is by finding health pickups scattered around the stage there's plenty to go around i'm not complaining that they're scarce the issue is that you have to completely abandon combat when low on health to scavenge for health pickups breaking the flow of combat and making the player feel like a weak coward the amount of projectile enemies can get really annoying really quickly while not difficult to dispatch these enemies make it nearly impossible to focus on anything else as long as they're alive you can't perform any sort of impressive combo as you will constantly be forced to try and dodge their hailstorm of projectiles there's a serious lack of variety that makes combat difficult to engage with over a projected period of time there's a small pool of aimbots and aimed goons that you will face over and over and over again after a while it just gets boring if there are more enemy factions that were visually distinct this could alleviate the problem even if they were mechanically identical there are no invincibility frames during a character's knockdown and recovery animations meaning that you can get hit once and then get stun locked to death afterwards this is basic video game design 101 even if you've never played an action game before this should be an obvious thing to consider and the fact that it apparently wasn't shows a supreme amount of ineptitude and incompetence on the developers bars with all this being said let's take a look this game's gameplay in its entirety in boring repetitive levels players must fight infuriating enemies with a bland and seemingly incomplete combat system to receive boring loot rewards i think it's safe to say that calling avengers gameplay systems a train wreck would be a euphemism there's fun to be had here but very little as i said before the individual character move sets are fun with some characters like iron man and captain america having by far the best interpretations of their combat abilities in any game thus far however the combat is strangled by so many other aspects of the game until it was reduced to a boring repetitive slog it's too bad that there's still one key component left in the game that's even worse than all of this [Music] earlier i said that the avengers initiative was the real game the section that the game itself prioritizes the most this was a lie the most important part of the game is actually the marketplace the marketplace is where you can go to spend real money on takedowns emotes nameplates and costumes the premium currency of this game is called credits not to be confused with their other non-premium currency called units credits have an exchange rate of 100 credits being roughly equal to one us dollar keep this in mind this will be important later but wait you can earn credits for free in fact you can by completing hero challenge cards challenge cards are basically battle passes that are exclusive to each hero to progress through the challenge card you have to complete daily and weekly missions that grant points to level up the challenge card it takes a little more than three weeks to complete a challenge card and you can do multiple heroes at once so you're not locked into only progressing a single hero at a time the challenge cards of all six of the base roster characters are free while every post launch heroes card costs a thousand credits every challenge card grants 300 credits in total once completed so if you use the credits earned from the free challenge cards to unlock the post launch characters cards you can get a total of 8700 credits or 9 000 if you're on playstation and have spider-man seems decent so far now let's look at what we can spend it on here's the breakdown for all the prices in the marketplace keep in mind what i said earlier about 100 credits being equivalent to a dollar so you can really appreciate just how expensive this stuff is this is a game that was sold for full price at launch so having these prices for in-game items as well as having to pay a subscription fee if you want to play online multiplayer makes the total cost of this game absolutely ridiculous a common defense of these marketplace prices are the credits you can earn for free from completing the heroes challenge cards but as you can see here that amount is a poultry sum you'd have enough to buy one legendary skin for each character or six exotic skins that's not a lot oh yeah and did i mention that the challenge cards are the only way to get credits for free so after you've spent them all there's no way to get more all of this is considering that these are the reduced prices the crystal dynamics implemented after the massive amount of rightful backlash they received from their player base originally takedowns and emotes were double the price they are now and skin prices used to all be higher with legendary skins costing the exuberant price of 1400 credits that has now been relegated exclusively to the exotic skins the real problem however that i and seemingly many others have with these prices is the simple reality that most of these items simply aren't worth purchasing nameplates a simple image or gif that sits next to your username most people will probably forget these even exist so forget about paying for them takedowns not really worth thinking about especially when you can't perform them on other players to show off emotes maybe if you could equip more than one at a time costumes excluding the costumes based off the marvel cinematic universe i think it's completely fair to say that avengers has the worst selection of alternate costumes that i've ever seen in a superhero video game there are three main design decisions that ruin almost every suit in the game so i'll go through the issues using a costume that succumbs to all three problems captain america's modern suit before i get into the real issues with the costume i just want to point out how it's weird that the suit is called modern i'm sure that at the time of this game's production it was modern but the game was released in 2020 and the cap hasn't worn that suit since at least 2018. that's not even mentioning that the version of cap who wore that suit was a reality warped hydra fascist so labeling it as modern sends a really weird message but aside from that here are the three main issues with the costumes in this game number one an over adherence to reality if you look at this soon in the comics you'll find that like other skin tight comic suits the fabric hugs cap's body very closely and accentuates his muscular physique in the game the fabric is rendered in a more realistic fashion where the fabric's a little loose and this has the opposite effect and downplays cap's body and musculature the worst of this is with the neck area which looks as if it's the size too big and doesn't exactly fit him right while this is indeed a more realistic depiction of how fabric works it doesn't really look good even the live-action mcu movies understand this just look at how sam wilson's captain america mask was digitally edited to stick closer to his face while unrealistic it looks better that way additionally cap's double that i complained about earlier is even more prominent here as there's no chin strap on his costume number two unnecessary design changes in the comic books the suit has thick solid armor pieces with a scale pattern placed over top the fabric parts of the suit in the game these armor pieces are now individual scales that are underneath the fabric with the center piece being broken up by the fabric in a way that gives the appearance of a scaly bra that's just a weird it looks like he has droopy tits who designed this i really have to emphasize that these are unnecessary changes as they aren't changes made for realism it's simple change for the sake of change not only does this distance the suit from its original appearance it at least in my opinion looks worse than the original number three reused assets the lower body from this costume is reused in the super soldier suit i can't say which costume the lower body originates from definitively because the design of it doesn't match either of the comic suits that those suits were based off of while not a large problem with this suit in particular reused assets are the biggest issue with the costumes in this game so many of the alternate suits are either uninspired recolors of other suits or recolors with a few slight changes or additions to pass it off as a unique skin granted i have to admit that this specific costume is handed out for free but despite this costume being free these issues extend to all the other costumes that aren't based off of the movies so if all these changes and oddities in these costumes are they really worth spending extra money on i know that some people would argue yes after all this sort of thing will ultimately come down to personal preference i however would argue that none of these suits are worth a dime due to their lack of quality and respect for the source material this is of course excluding the mcu suits which are still overpriced but are at least good quality renditions of the costumes they're supposed to be admittedly cd seems to be getting better of their costume design black panther and spider-man suits are all decent regardless of quality though the issue remains that there's not much reason to actually play the game so there's little reason to buy any of the costumes since there's nothing to do with them [Music] before i close up on everything there's a list of shady practices and weirdly incompetent decisions that i'd like to talk about here accessibility options accessibility options for players such as a colorblind mode have not been added to the game more than a year after its release lack of incredibly basic features there still aren't multiple gear loadouts that you can switch between there is still no emote wheel you cannot inspect the gear that your teammates have equipped there is no join in progress feature and if you are disconnected from the game mid mission and booted out you can't rejoin the mission to continue playing where you left off chadwick boseman in november of 2020 crystal dynamics had a preview for upcoming content where they announced they would not be showing anything related to black panther out of respect for chadwick boseman's passing while this seemed like a sincere gesture at the time i've since come to believe that this move was anything but black panther released in august of the following year which i think shows that they didn't have anything ready in november to show people so instead of just admitting that they used a man's death to cover their own lack of progress granted this is just a theory but given their slow progress in releasing content i'd say it seems fairly reasonable indefinitely delayed content cloning labs were a mission type that would finish with a battle against several copies of bosses like abomination and while the mission type was originally set to be released in september of 2020 it has since been delayed with no meaningful update on its progress this is especially strange since players were able to glitch themselves into playing cloning lab missions in september so this mission type not being included over a year later when it was mostly playable near launch is just baffling patrol mode was a sort of free roam mode that was originally slated to arrive in summer of 2021 and was delayed in june with no estimated release date or any substantial updates on the content's progress since then cosmetic rework in march of 2021 the fabrication machine was disabled and costumes that were previously acquired from reaching level 50 were made inaccessible the reason being that they were disabled for the upcoming cosmetic rework with the new rework in place the fabrication machine works almost exactly as it did before and the level 50 outfits have now been placed into a pool of outfits you can unlock with their new loot box system called shipments so for nine months the fabrication machine was unusable only for it to be re-enabled with a loot box system stacked on top of it why why not simply keep the machine active and then add the loot box system later why even create a loot box system since the fabrication machine basically already was a loot box system why not rework the machine itself to merge this new loot box idea of the pre-existing fabrication machine the whole issue is so mind-bendingly backwards nonsensical xp slow down and boosters in march of 2021 the rate at which characters received experience was slowed down apparently each level cost the same amount of experience and it was changed so that later levels would cost more which is standard fare in most video games while not a big deal in a vacuum this was a strange choice to make amid all the other widespread criticisms the game was receiving at the time what was even worse was the way this change was communicated in their blog update crystal dynamics dated part of their reasoning to slow down experience progression was that players were acquiring new abilities so fast that it overwhelmed them this is such a non-issue i don't think i've ever heard anyone complain about getting abilities too fast if anything a common complaint with the combat was that it took too long to unlock enough abilities to where the combat would open up and actually become fun additionally this comment seems to be almost insulting players by insinuating that players are too stupid to figure out how different skills work when they unlock them at a decent rate to add on top of that the blog update bizarrely concludes with a line reading if you have a character who isn't level 50 and want to speed up the progress take this time to do so before the update on march 18th so crystal dynamics states that leveling up is too fast to the point that people get overwhelmed and then encourages players to level up quickly while they can before they themselves slow down the process what so do you want people to level up quickly or not the company can't even keep their own narrative straight within their blog post which just shows that even they knew that this decision was completely unnecessary after this experienced boosters became available for players they were included as gameplay rewards and packaged in costume bundles for no additional charge so far so good in october paid boosters were added to the marketplace and that set people off there's already the obvious issue that crystal dynamics previously reduced experience gain and then started selling a way for people to acquire experience quickly with real money in case you forgot but there's also the issue that crystal dynamics had previously stated that the only items they would sell for real money in their marketplace were cosmetic items that did not affect gameplay while the paid boosters were removed a few weeks afterwards the fact that it happened at all is damning enough champion system the champion system was added as a way to reward players that had already reached the max level for their characters getting champion levels would grant champion points to spend on champion perks however almost immediately after the system was implemented people found that the champion system was not correctly applying the bonuses that were stated on the perks when this information was presented to crystal dynamics they responded that the system was working as intended and that was that the system continues to function the way it did when it was released and it has never been mentioned again spider-man being a playstation exclusive spider-man was announced to be coming to the game as a playstation exclusive a month before release while it was initially seen as a bad idea to lock marvel's most popular superhero onto one console in a multi-platform game as time went on people realized it was actually an even worse decision than they previously thought the astoundingly long dry periods between new characters forced people to realize that non-playstation players would have to wait for an incredible amount of time for something new while spidey was released on playstation something else that everyone saw coming was the inevitable comparisons to insomniac's playstation exclusive spider-man games which playstation players already have access to therefore devaluing the worth of spidey's inclusion as a playstation exclusive character stranger still was the fact that spidey was added over a year after the game's release despite being one of the first post-launch characters to be confirmed the playstation version of the game advertised spider-man's inclusion on the box which is just weird i've never seen a game advertise a feature on the cover that is more than a year away from actually being included apparently the spider-man decision was entirely out of crystal dynamics hands being a deal made between marvel higher ups and sony so while cd can't really be blamed for the decision it's still a super strange oddity that i don't think was handled well at all [Music] now that i've thoroughly examined the game and explained its flaws i think it's clear to see what i meant when i said that this game was a game that did everything wrong the poor character designs created a bad first impression the narrative was clunky poorly thought out and too brief to have any real depth or significance the combat is ruined by a lot of things mostly poor enemy design and a loot system that restricts your options the loot shouldn't even be here in the first place but if you ignore that it's still not a particularly interesting system the multiplayer component is entirely unrewarding and lacks any real player to player interaction the marketplace is filled with overpriced items that wouldn't be worth having for free and all of this without even mentioning the myriad of bugs and glitches that still play this game more than a year after release now i know there are some people who won't accept criticism unless you say good things about the game as well and while i think that's a silly way to judge criticism i'll list the things i liked here to have a little bit of positivity i think that the characters move sets are fun i know i said that earlier but it bears repeating here i would even go so far as to say that avengers has laid the foundation for an excellent iron man video game the voice acting is pretty solid everyone does a good job portraying their characters and no one is noticeably awful except iron man while i do dislike the design of the iconic costumes that these avengers wear as their canonical outfits i will praise the iconic suits for having a consistent art style a lot of times in comic book based video games there will be inconsistencies in character design where some characters have looks based off of films or more recent comics giving them a more realistic appearance whereas other characters in that same game will have very cartoony appearances more reminiscent of their campier comic suits this game avoids that issue as every character's iconic suit carries a similar aesthetic so that no one looks out of place except spider-man i know i'm trying to be positive here but spider-man really stands out when compared to everyone else i actually like spider-man's design in this game but he is actually a perfect example of what i was just talking about spider-man looks like he left right off the pages of a comic book whereas everyone else looks like they came from a military shooter ok back to positives while the story is devoid of character depth and meaningful interaction between characters there are a lot of fun character exchanges in the game's elevator conversations it's in these elevator conversations that you can learn that there's an ongoing prank war between tony and kamala that thor likes pineapple on pizza that black widow is training kamala on how to fight and that all the avengers alternate cooking duties while not exactly deep characterization stuff like this really does strengthen the feeling that these characters are friends and have been for some time now i won't really bother with suggestions on how to improve avengers because there's just too much to fix in order to really fix everything you'd have to make an entirely new game and i really believe that you would have to make a new game to fix everything this game can't be fixed with a handful of updates at least not from its current development team i've seen nothing from this dev team that indicates that they are aware of just how abysmally their game is performing nothing that informs me that they've taken the game's most widespread criticisms to heart as i stated earlier avengers is still missing basic features such as an emote wheel how can anyone expect the game to improve in any way that matters when something as basic as an emote wheel is seemingly impossible to achieve that's really the final straw of this whole situation that nothing will really improve the game near release i think people still had hope but at this point it's clear that people have given up and moved on while it may be unfair to use steam numbers to show how many people are playing since most of the player base is likely on playstation due to spider-man the numbers are extremely low for a multiplayer focused online game looking at the r slash play avengers subreddit you'll find that it has a pretty low subscriber count for a game based off of the avengers with pretty low engagement as well when spider-man was finally added to avengers there was a little bit of public attention but it quickly went away people simply don't care anymore i think this is a valuable lesson that companies can learn from that it's possible to take an ip as well known and beloved as avengers and create a product with it so woefully lacking that people lose all interest in it but let's be real here these companies won't learn anything aside from the fact that you can make a lot of money by selling people costumes from the mcu [Music]

Channel: Dorito God

Views: 640,383

Keywords: Avengers, Marvel's Avengers, Avengers game, Marvel, Gaming, Iron Man, Captain America, Hawkeye, Thor, Black Widow, Spider-Man, Black Panther, Avengers Critique, Gaming critique, Video Essay, Crystal Dynamics, She-Hulk, Marvel Games

Id: wK4konJbtrY

Length: 95min 14sec (5714 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 16 2022