Marvel Rivals became one of the most highly anticipated games of 2024 the moment it was announced, with its striking visuals and new take on the hero shooter genre capturing the interest of hardcore gamers and casual Marvel fans alike. But, while the launch has been a tremendous success in terms of player count, there are some festering problems beneath the surface that are serious cause for concern.
From the get-go, creating a hero shooter set in the Marvel universe was a brilliant idea. There are literally hundreds of heroes and villains to choose from across decades and decades of beloved source material.
Marvel Rivals delivers when it comes to pure visuals and art direction, and the first couple hours you put in are true bliss. When everyone’s still figuring things out in a match and everyone’s just having fun with their favorite heroes, it’s unreal. There’s a lot of fun to be had here.
However, due in large part to the way the game is built, Marvel Rivals is going to have one hell of a hangover once its honeymoon phase is over. Having played the game for dozens of hours before release, I’m on the other side of it at this point, and my interest in the game has already waned.
Once you get rid of that layer of new game shine, it becomes apparent that Marvel Rivals has some huge problems with how roles and the heroes within them are structured. Rivals is going to have some very real problems with retaining players if major changes aren’t made.
Jumping off the page and into Marvel Rivals
From a visual standpoint, Marvel Rivals doesn’t seem real. Screenshots look like the sort of fake video game you’d see in a movie that looks like it’d be really fun to play but could never actually exist. I mean, who could make a game that looks that good? As it turns out, the answer to that question is NetEase.
This game is drop-dead gorgeous. It’s unrivaled in this aspect from the perspective of both raw graphical horsepower and art direction. There was clearly so much love put into this game. Every character has a certain hand-drawn appearance to them, with small pencil lines and subtle cell shading. Marvel characters have genuinely never jumped off of any screen like this, it feels like they literally brought the comics to life.
Combined with maps that visit iconic locations like Yggdrasill, the World Tree to a dark and dreary symbiote planet to everything in-between, every locale you’re fighting in has its own personality and flair.
It is worth noting however that, at the time of writing, this game has some serious optimization issues. Even on a 3080TI and Ryzen 5950x, Doctor Strange using his portal tanks my framerate on medium settings with DLSS on. You’ll also at times get sent down to single-digit frames for seemingly no reason or just have the game crash on you entirely. The release state is rough.
Technical issues notwithstanding, the devs have clear reverence for the source material and have done an excellent job adapting it, with NetEase using that deep understanding to bring lesser known comic characters into the spotlight.
For instance, Psylocke’s “redesign” is actually based on her iteration as Sai from Peach Momoko’s take on the character in her Demon Days run. This game has some deep cuts into the source material casual fans of the films and shows won’t know about, and it’s a testament to just how many wonderful characters are buried deep in the comics. Seeing these characters fully realized in Marvel Rivals is such a treat.
Almost every hero has a combo or signature move that can put them in the driver’s seat and give that player the ability to carry. Even Jeff, a seemingly cute little shark with legs, is able to devour an entire team and throw all of them off a cliff. There’s something to love about every hero, even if some of them feel more complete and well-designed from a gameplay standpoint than others.
This is where problems arise. Once the vibrant presentation of Marvel Rivals wears off, the game beneath it shows its cracks.
Marvel Rivals is a beautiful game with a flawed foundation
It’s going to be impossible to avoid Overwatch comparisons, so might as well get them out of the way now. Blizzard’s flagship hero shooter is a product of years and years worth of development time and troubleshooting. The modern 5v5 role queue format may not be popular with everyone, but the recent 6v6 test was very telling.
If you got to play the limited-time return to Overwatch Classic, you’d know the modern form of the game is vastly superior at most times. Player freedom isn’t always a good thing. Yes, being able to lock in your favorite heroes and goofing around is great and all, but that won’t work the moment your enemy tries to build an actual functioning team composition. Overwatch learned this lesson. Marvel Rivals didn’t.
What’s more, most of the interesting heroes in Marvel Rivals are Duelists, AKA DPS. 18 of the game’s 33 characters are confined to a role that does nothing for the team but provide damage and, at times a little CC. But most DPS heroes have significantly more thought put into them than most Strategists (Supports) and Vanguards (Tanks).
So, in order for Marvel Rivals to function in most matches, at least half of the team often has to make the decision to have less fun than everyone else to have any real shot of winning. I don’t want to paint it like everyone hates Support and Tank and has less fun in these roles, but those who actively want to play non-DPS heroes are in the vast minority.
Role queue is a hotly debated topic in the community, even in Rivals’ early days. Whether you’re on the side of role lock being needed or not, it’s entirely off the table for at this point. Forcing players off DPS would destroy queue times.
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Rivals also seems to have a strange habit of copying Overwatch in a lot of key ways and cramming in the game’s greatest hits, but failing to innovate or do something new with those concepts. If you’ve played a lot of Overwatch, you’ll play a lot of heroes where you use an ability and go, “I’ve seen that before!” Probably because it’s a move ripped straight from Blizzard’s hero shooter.
Even its game modes are just ripped from Overwatch, the objectives are pretty much the same. We’re playing in Marvel’s sandbox, one of the most expansive universes in fiction, and we couldn’t come up with anything better than capping a point and pushing a payload?
The highest of highs come with the lowest of lows
If you’re just running around as your favorite hero without a care in the world, this game rocks. Just the experience of stepping into the shoes of a Marvel hero feels great when no one has any clue what’s happening. This wanderlust will wear off in the weeks following launch, though.
Meanwhile, high-level play with a group of friends where everyone’s on the same page is also great. The amount of diverse team compositions you can run and team-up combos you can try out add a ton of variety to the competitive experience, especially with the meta still forming. However, these situations are rare and not reflective of the solo queue experience.
The mid-level experience, however, is awful. There’s no way to set a role preference, making it so that all of your teammates could be DPS mains. If you matchmake with group of people who can’t play any heroes outside of that role, you’re cooked. Even if someone takes one for the team and tries to win by playing off role, they’re going to be worse than a seasoned Tank or Support player.
And that’s without mentioning that the experience of playing Support when your teammates aren’t looking out for you is an actual horror in Marvel Rivals.
POV: YOU'RE A SUPPORT PLAYER VS IRON FIST ON MARVEL RIVALS😭 #MarvelRivals pic.twitter.com/MzuMQMghXD
— Dre🇯🇲 (@ItsSomjuu) December 9, 2024
The memes are funny now, but the experience of getting roundhouse kicked in the face while your team flames you for not healing them enough gets old fast. Team-ups were designed to incentivize people to play heroes across a variety of roles and prevent things like the solo Support nightmare scenario, but the system has some serious pitfalls.
Sometimes, you’ll lose an essential ability in the middle of a teamfight because one of your teammates swaps heroes, leaving you out to dry. Neither player made a mistake, yet one person comes out angry they lost for reasons out of their control. Team-ups are fun conceptually, but the system often does more harm than good.
For instance, let’s say you’ve got a hardcore Winter Soldier one-trick on your team. He wants to have the Rocket Raccoon team-up ability for unlimited ammo, so he sits there and spam request the team-up and doesn’t leave spawn until someone swaps to Rocket. This sucks, and it’s something I’ve already experienced just days after launch. Imagine where we’ll be years from now.
Yes, people are this toxic at times. Yes, it sucks that they ruin matches. But it’s also a reflection of the ways in which NetEase’s attempts to innovate and create more teamplay have failed.
Marvel Rivals feels as if it was designed based on wishful thinking, with the devs assuming people would be good to each other and do everything they could to win matches. Having a little too much trust in the player is, oddly enough, the main reason why this game is so hard to enjoy.
Verdict: 3/5
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| One of the most gorgeous games ever made | Derivative in all the wrong ways while simultaneously failing to innovate |
| Faithful to the comics when it matters, heroes have a ton of personality | Some heroes feel more complete than others, with devs prioritizing DPS heavily |
| Great fun with friends, and a fantastic casual multiplayer game | Fails to foster a competitive environment and incentivize players to work together |
| In a rough technical state |
There are so many opportunities for friction or for things to go wrong because of how free-flowing Marvel Rivals is, and this lack of structure will cause more and more frustration the longer people play. Getting a ton of players to try a hot new free to play game is one thing, getting them to stay in the long term is another.
Plus, this game is still a great casual experience! If that’s what you’re looking for, I’d recommend Rivals whole-heartedly, especially considering it’s free. I was looking for a competitive experience, and this game just doesn’t foster that well. Bear that in mind and gauge your expectations going in.
While this may be a matter of personal preference, it’s worth noting people tend to move on from casual games much more quickly than competitive ones, drawing into question just how much longevity this game has.
Marvel Rivals is fantastic at times, and it does have the makings of a game that could be alive and thriving for years to come. But as it is now, Rivals has so many fatal issues that it’s impossible to fully recommend putting time and effort into getting good at the game.
Play now and have fun while you can if the game interests you. Time will be the enemy of Marvel Rivals’ flimsy foundation and flawed game design.
