marvel

The world is in danger. Doctor Doom has the Cosmic Cube and for once, isn’t solely focused on launching the Fantastic Four building into space. Yet again. It’s up to you, several Hulks, a couple of Deadpools, a dozen Spider-Men and one Rocket Raccoon to step in and save the day. This should be the event of the decade, or one greasy fan fiction existing in a seedy corner of the Internet. But it’s not. It’s Marvel Heroes, and it falls flat on its face with this premise.

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Free to play! The latest buzz word in gaming! The thing is, there’s nothing wrong with the idea. But much like communism, when it’s in the hands of the people, things quickly go sour. Marvel Heroes plays to this concept, offering gamers a free tour of the now Disney-owned universe that is home to the Amazing Spider-Man, the Avengers, the X-Men and the deadliest hero in the universe, Squirrel Girl.

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It’s a clicker through and through, reminiscent of games such as Diablo and Torchlight, where you click in blows and earn some experience towards learning newer, and better moves. We’ve all played this kind of game before, and on this fundamental level, Marvel Heroes works.

It’s just that the thrill quickly wears off as you progress further.

Now before we go further, let me just clarify that for this review, I was given 10 000 points in in-game currency, with which to get the full experience. In terms of cash, that’d equate to around almost a $100/R1000 based on the in-game pricing structure.

In other words, the extras ain’t cheap. So I played the game with a free character, such as Daredevil, while the argubly far more popular characters such as Iron Man and Deadpool would cost you 2000 credits to have in your roster.

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It’s not that you need those characters though, it’s that you’ll want them. After all, why be Storm when you can be Hulk? Still, this isn’t exactly a bad business strategy, but bloody hell, it is prohibitively expensive to newcomers. And while there is a chance to unlock those characters with super-rare item drops, you won’t see that happening very often, if at all.

With that out of the way, there’s the matter of what archetypes these spandexed heroes fit into. Characters like Iron Man work well as ranged fighters, while brutes like the Thing and the Hulk are obviously the type that likes to mix things up in the thick of battle. And then you’ve got inbetweeners like Deadpool, who are Jack of all trades at any range.

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It’s also a very busy game, with online players also taking part in the action, events and random battles. And that’s another aspect of the game, that quickly becomes infuriating. It’s fine to have some backup, but having the stage instantly regenerate and throw more villains at you while you’re trying to equip some items or see where your skill tree should grow, is annoying to the extreme.

As an online game, Marvel Heroes is crawling with players. After all, it is free. But it’s also pretty damn weird to see a half dozen Hulks take on Electro. In fact, most of the time, you have no idea that an event like this is even happening, as you find yourself dropped smackdab in the middle of it. A feature that once again leads to constant waves of enemies regenerating right in your face.

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But the worst sin of this game, is that it’s just so damn boring. Marvel Heroes has all the right ingredients to be successful, from a varied roster of characters with unique abilities through to a faithful recreation of the Marvel Universe, but it just doesn’t put any effort in making it worth the ten gigabyte download. And thanks to the monotonous nature of the mission and enemy structure, those various abilities are wasted.

And being given the option to tailor your hero so that he has a slight cosmetic bump, for a price tag of around a hundred bucks or so, is a downright slap in the face. Somewhere along the line, the developers of Marvel Heroes forgot that players would gladly fork over cash for a good game, and concentrated on expensive costumes and fluff instead.

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Sure, the comic book cutscenes are a nice touch, but if I have to warp into Avengers Tower and hear Iron Man admonish Spider-Man for the thousandth time, chairs are going to be thrown. This could have been something great. But instead, Marvel Heroes is a prime example of how big businesses are ruing the core idea of free to play.

 

Last Updated: June 27, 2013

Marvel Heroes
It may be free to play, but the cost of actually spending time with Marvel Heroes is too damn high. The idea is solid, but completely lacking the spirit of what makes these timeless heroes so popular over multiple decades of action.
4.9
Marvel Heroes was reviewed on PC

16 Comments

  1. This doesn’t look much different from my copy of Marvel Ultimate Alliance which, according to the box, was released in 2006. I should play it again.

    Reply

  2. Admiral Chief Groot Wors

    June 27, 2013 at 15:44

    ugh, wake me up when its over

    Reply

    • RinceWind

      June 27, 2013 at 16:10

      Agreed, yawn. I do feel sorry for the parents though. Little Timmy is going to be demanding MOAR money now…

      Reply

  3. brad coetzee

    June 27, 2013 at 15:50

    Ultimate Alliance and X-men legends series are some of favourite games ever. I would love to give this a go but this free to play, pay to win or unlock cool stuff is the worst model I’ve ever experienced.

    Reply

  4. RinceWind

    June 27, 2013 at 16:09

    You said Rinceandrepeat?! Stolen I say, Stolen!

    Reply

  5. Nick

    June 27, 2013 at 21:30

    The Bitraider client for the game has been down for over 2 days, so only people with Steam and in certain regions even have access anymore. The devs said (after 2 days of silence) that they’re “working on it”, but people are leaving the game in droves.

    Reply

  6. Johann

    June 28, 2013 at 13:09

    Why don’t they make a proper bloody Marvel Universe MMO where you can design your own superhero? I know it’s been done with DC Online (I didn’t enjoy it very much) but with the right developers it might actually be one hell of a MMORPG.

    Reply

    • JZSquared

      July 15, 2013 at 04:53

      They did, it’s now called Champions Online. You know, before Marvel pulled out.

      Reply

      • mtheumer

        July 22, 2013 at 20:08

        Dude! Don’t even go there. Honestly, I can understand why they pulled out, the cell-shading alone made me want to cringe.

        Reply

    • Kevmo

      September 23, 2014 at 08:02

      Seriously, just head over to DCUO. The lore might not strike a chord with you if you’re not a fan (I’m not), but the gameplay, content, custom characters, depth of development, social aspects… Everything wrong with Heroes is right in DCUO.

      So just do what the rest of us do and make a Marvel character on DCUO. Marvel Heroes is just a slap in the face, IMO.

      Reply

  7. Duke_v2

    July 1, 2013 at 09:12

    Because this is the Marvel we deserves, but not the one we need right
    now. So, we’ll hunt marvel, because they can take it.

    Reply

  8. John Ambitious

    July 2, 2013 at 07:47

    I downloaded it, played for a few minutes and then went back to something more exciting. Haven’t been on it since. Seems a bit dull.

    Reply

    • JZSquared

      July 15, 2013 at 04:54

      Very dull. I don’t get it. I loved X-Men Legends and Ultimate Alliance, as well as Diablo II. How could they mess this up so badly?

      Reply

  9. Customer

    October 3, 2013 at 02:22

    The funny thing is that they started to fix a lot of the complaints, and then did a 360 and started to bring all the bad bits back. Lol.

    Reply

  10. staggerlee

    January 21, 2014 at 02:13

    it is a ton better now. at the start it was pretty bad. but now its pretty decent.

    Reply

  11. Kevmo

    September 23, 2014 at 08:00

    Two years later, they’ve “relaunched” under a new title to bury reviews like this. Scummy move if you ask me, it earned the middling reviews it received.

    They still only have 2 unique endgame instances, one of which was literally released last week. And they’re just now getting around to fiddling with a raid. As in, one raid. After two years on the market.

    Quite frankly, Gazillion stopped short of doing their jobs, secure in the knowledge that enough people would plunk down $20-$100 in microtransactions before learning that there’s no endgame content.

    Reply

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