Avengers by SquareEnix

[Tomato]

So... I broke down and purchased SE's Avengers for PS4 a few weeks ago and played some of the beta both then and now and... it's fine? The general gameplay loop is solid, not outstanding but fun enough to get me through the story. Sadly, this is a game I think would be more enjoyable with multiplayer, but since it's not set up for split screen (at least in the beta) you're basically forced to do online multiplayer, which... is not really doable for me and my friends group.

That said, I'll say right now: The thing that really annoyed me about the game when first shown, in some ways annoys me more now. The ugly uncanny valley movie ripoff costumes, some of which get worse after the tutorial, do have legitimately good replacements... that you have to earn in-game either through specific mission chains, daily/weekly missions, or spending in-game currency that is almost certainly going to be the source of the microtransactions.

That's right: The costumes are, in effect, ugly ON PURPOSE to encourage people to spend their money on microtransactions. For example, there's a gorgeous Classic looking Iron Man (comic book Mark 4 based) that's frankly just gorgeous, and it's only in the store for in game currency.

[Silver Shocker]

Everything I've heard about this game pegs it as emblematic of modern greed-fueled AAA gaming.
So what you said isn't surprising. It's lousy, but not surprising.

[videogamersadvocate]

Thanks for sharing Tomato. I've been interested to see how this game turns out but I feel like the game is being released as an incomplete game and then there will be microtransactions and DLC galore to garner as much money as possible. I'll wait until all the content is released and they make a definitive or complete edition of the game to see about purchasing it in the future. When I bought Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3, it felt like an eternity waiting for all of the DLC characters to be released and I decided I would never go through that again.

[Tomato]

That's probably the way to go about it, honestly. I've already paid for it, so I'll play what's there... Main story, side story stuff, etc, mainly because I'm not spending money on it past base price and getting characters to where their outfits aren't abominations is going to take a lot of time.

The character I really want to get unlocked asap is cap. His outfit is probably the ugliest in the game (Thor's isn't great either) though I also wouldn't mind a decent gray hulk.

[Silver Shocker]

As someone who spent at least three years getting enough Fight Money in Street Fighter V to unlock two characters (only to find out that they nerfed the hell out of the first one)...good luck and try to have fun while you're doing it.

[videogamersadvocate]

Hey Tomato, now that Avengers is out, how do you like it?

[Tomato]

Hrm.

It's... A mess, tbh. I plan on burning through the rest of the campaign (I beat the first part, but there's postgame campaign) and I might play a bit when the dlc characters come out, but I'm already burned out on a lot of it.

The thing is, it's not terrible. The general game mechanics work fine, at least when the game isn't glitching out because you stepped on the wrong rock. But it's got a very Destiny like power system, in that you have levelups which are next to useless after a certain point, but the majority of your stats come from progressively better gear. That leads to a lot of grinding, which you'll be doing alongside the daily/weekly challenges.

Those challenges, for context, are what grant you a ton of costumes, as well as the only way of earning the currency for the store. You need 200 points to get everything from each heroes tree, meaning you have to do every daily and weekly challenge for all 6 characters for over 3 weeks to get through the entire thing.

On top of that, each character can only earn 1000 currency, but the legendary costumes in the store are 1400 each. That's a problem when the only truly good costume for Captain America is one of those.

[gengoro]

That sounds too much like work lol.

[Silver Shocker]

Say this late, but the modern video game industry, or at least a large chunk of it, IS work. Work where you do the work AND you pay instead of being payed.
And if that sounds a lot less appealing than it should be, that's because it kinda is. You gotta really like a game and be attached to it's IP, story, ect to do anything close to that kind of investment (again, I love Street Fighter V - it's a truly great game that is compromised just enough that calling it a great would probably qualify online as controversial statement)