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(Marvel's) Avengers, ASSEMBLE!


SirFozzie

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Ok, Marvel's Avengers Beta. (there are spoilers in this that I will mark).

If you preordered on PS4, there's a beta this weekend, and a open beta next week. X1 and Steam will be delayed one week I believe (in that preorder beta next week, and open beta in two weeks)

I've played through the Tutorial (and part of one War Table mission). My thoughts:

Control Scheme will be pretty familiar to those who played Spider-Man. Light attacks, heavy attacks (needed to break shields or something similar) and special abilities. (for example, Hulk can grab someone and either batter them into the ground like Loki, hit other people with them (damaging both of them) or throwing them at people.)

Due to the Beta nature, I only controlled Thor, Iron Man, Captain America, and Black Widow briefly, but they all felt pretty different (Iron Man with his hovering abilities, Captain America with his shield, etcetera). The two main heroes I controlled after the "Five years ago" mission are Kamala Khan and the Hulk.

The main system feels a lot like they took Destiny's gear system and matchmaking and paired it with the Avengers. There are random gear drops, things to upgrade gear you have, and you can dissassemble unneeded Gear for upgrade parts. Same White/Green/Blue ranking of gear I believe.

I didn't get to try matchmaking (wonder if not enabled until scheduled opening tonight). But here's some thoughts.

 

So, pretty good so far. It's not perfect, (I failed my first war table mission, which had a control point mechanism, by one percent. You control it when one of your team is on it, AIM controls it when no heroes are on it). Instead of sending me back in the mission, it failed me out. Which is frustrating in Singleplayer. But again, if you liked Destiny's gear system and like the avengers, it's a good time. If you're iffy on it, the grind may be your undoing at some point.

The last part of the single player mode before the War Table unlocks involves

 

Kamala and Bruce Banner trying to find an old Stark getaway for a copy of JARVIS

. You fight as the Hulk for a good portion of it, but Kamala does get her time in the spotlight.

One thing I do not like is that sometimes it's unclear what your next step is or how to get to a place (there was a jumping bit with the Hulk that drove me nuts for about 10-15 minutes) I think that I may have been spoiled with WoW clearly spelling out "Go here, do this". Between that, and long reload times if you slip up and fall (as you can do in the tutorial if you don't avoid hazards), it got a bit annoying.

But the one on one "boss" fights were pretty interesting.

 

First, in the Five Years Ago part, Black Widow takes on the Taskmaster. Again, I was pretty frustrated over the jumping puzzle that BW had to go through to get there, but I managed to finally get there, and win the fight on the first try. It's kinda like a graduation ceremony, as you dodge and can either shoot Task from a distance or grapple and fight up close. You end up using most of what you learned so far in the fight

The other one takes place in the current day, and involves...

 

  so, pretty good so far. It's not perfect, (I failed my first war table mission, which had a control point mechanism, by one percent. You control it when one of your team is on it, AIM controls it when no heroes are on it). Instead of sending me back in the mission, it failed me out. Which is frustrating in Singleplayer. But again, if you liked Destiny's gear system and like the avengers, it's a good time. If you're iffy on it, the grind may be your undoing at some point.

 

Hulk taking on the Abomination. Funniest moment was at the end of the fight, when Abomination was taunting Hulk, Hulk pounces on Abomination and starts pounding on him. "SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUTTTTT UP!" then a couple second pause ala when Hulk threw Loki around in the first Avengers movie, before looking at him, and deciding to slam him a few more times. In this case, Hulk decides that he needs more weight to his argument and smashes upwards bringing the ceiling and several tons of gear down on top of Abomination.

Kamala to Hulk afterwards: "Is... he.. dead???"

Hulk: *Satisfied snort*

I love the banter. It does sound like the Avengers. Stark snarks about the weapons the bad guys are using...

 

(gets shot at by laser guns). I knew I shouldn't have made that for SHIELD. At least they don't have tan...

(Tank shows up and starts tracking IM)

Well, they do have tanks. (this is paraphrased here)

Also, there is an intensely hilarious discussion between Bruce and Kamala as they prepare to enter the old Stark hideout.

 

Which has been converted into an AIM base.

Kamala: So, what are we looking for?

Bruce: It will look like a 90's Hard Drive.

Kamala: Great. (Beat) What does a 90's hard drive look like?

So, pretty good so far. It's not perfect, (I failed my first war table mission, which had a control point mechanism, by one percent. You control it when one of your team is on it, AIM controls it when no heroes are on it). Instead of sending me back in the mission, it failed me out. Which is frustrating in Singleplayer. But again, if you liked Destiny's gear system and like the avengers, it's a good time. If you're iffy on it, the grind may be your undoing at some point.

Edited by SirFozzie
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Further comments after doing the first storyline mission and one "Danger Room" challenge (HARM Room)

I can see how fighting synthoids all the time would get repetitive, but I swear, even with AI Companions, you know those slow motion shots where it shows all the Avengers being awesome in one great shot? That's what four player feels like. While I'm (Kamala) dodging a exosuit's attack and then clearing around me with giant fists, Hulk has grabbed a pour synthoid and is beating another one with it, while Iron Man fires his handbeams and Black Widow is shocking the hell out of another one.

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My only complaint is that Hulk takes way too much damage and is too easily defeated in combat compared to the other characters. Maybe that's just me and my experience, but he's the only character that I've played as and died. Well, except for the one War Zone mission where you're in a city and encounter an Elite AIM force. None of my characters are at the levels needed yet to be able to defeat them yet.

Also about the Hulk - I forget the name of the skin/outfit, but there's one that you can unlock that absolutely should have been the base model skin for Hulk instead of the default version. It looks 10000000% better.

EDIT: oh my god Iron Man's R1+L1 move, the Hulkbuster armor, can be worn by anyone in your strike team

Edited by Casey
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So the pre-order Beta (on PS4) is this weekend, 7-9 August, but for the next two weekends (14th-16th and 21st-23rd) it's in open Beta on PS4? They must think it's going to be good, and able to handle busy servers. Having an open beta (of a game that wasn't ready at launch) is one of the things that did for Anthem, as I recall.

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Quote

 

8/14 - 8/16:

PS4 (open access), Xbox (closed access), PC (closed access)

8/21- 8/23:

Open access on all platforms

 

So next weekend, if you're on the PS4 and didn't pre-order, you can still participate. Next weekend is also the preorder beta for Xbox and PC. The following weekend it's open for everyone across platforms.

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On ‎8‎/‎7‎/‎2020 at 10:28 PM, Casey said:

My only complaint is that Hulk takes way too much damage and is too easily defeated in combat compared to the other characters. Maybe that's just me and my experience, but he's the only character that I've played as and died. Well, except for the one War Zone mission where you're in a city and encounter an Elite AIM force. None of my characters are at the levels needed yet to be able to defeat them yet.

Nothing should be killing Hulk.  He should be the best tank in the game.  I would hope that there is some sort of skill tree upgrade that upgrades his damage resistance, strength, and health regen balanced by linking it to how much initial damage he takes in a fight.

Edited by J.T.
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Agreed, but...

It's hard to care about the Hulk (right now anyway) when I'm playing as Ms. Marvel most of the time, and one of the wristbands I have equipped and powered up all the way emits Pym particles during random heavy attacks - and the enemies actually shrink!

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Trying the Beta. Every sixty second it pauses and tells me it's not connected to the internet, and to make sure the ethernet cable is attached. Which is strange, because it totally is connected to the internet and the ethernet cable has been attached the whole time. Then it froze.

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I've watched more than a few streamers and YouTube gaming channels and I'm really underwhelmed by what I've seen of Avengers. Nearly everyone has the same thing to say, which is that it looks really good, but it plays like it's almost on rails with how scripted the game is and no one is quite sure how multiplayer is going to work when the game is as heavily scripted as it is. The other thing nearly everyone says is that the waves of enemies is more boring than in something like Destiny and your attacks on them lack weight. 

I'll give the beta a shot, but I feel like I've already played it with how much I've watched. 

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I’m traveling this weekend, so I won’t get to try it until next weekend.  But I have a buddy playing right now and his texts are not encouraging.  Basically, says it feels “off” in a difficult to describe way.

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If I'm playing as The Hulk, and I'm fighting a bunch of AIM robots, I should be tearing them apart like they were make of tissue paper. But instead, I have to be really careful with my attacks so they don't mess up my dodge timing, because if I'm not dodging enough, I'm getting my ass kicked. That's the problem. 

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Yeah, I don't dig it. It doesn't feel intuitive in the way Spider-Man and the Arkham games felt. Although I like Hulk's super elbow drop, and any time you can throw Cap's shield rules. 

Also yeah as I felt with the previews, the screen is just too damn busy. I'm glad others dig it, though, hopefully the full game makes me psyched as hell.

Edited by christopher.annino
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1 hour ago, AxB said:

If I'm playing as The Hulk, and I'm fighting a bunch of AIM robots, I should be tearing them apart like they were make of tissue paper. But instead, I have to be really careful with my attacks so they don't mess up my dodge timing, because if I'm not dodging enough, I'm getting my ass kicked. That's the problem. 

Oof.  That doesn’t sound good.

I kinda always figured balancing the gameplay for all these overpowered heroes would be tough.  Destiny even struggles with keeping their subclasses balanced, and there is far less difference between titans, hunters, and warlocks in that game than there is between, say, Hulk, Ms. Marvel, and Black Widow.  On one hand, you can’t let Hulk be the automatic win button, but at the same time, you can’t make the enemies so tough to level the playing field for Hulk that you make it feel impossible to be Black Widow.   Vice versa, you really don’t want to make Hulk feel weaker to bring him in line with Widow’s capabilities.  Finding the sweet spot is a tricky balance.

I think that’s why Rocksteady ultimately decided to make a game where you try to kill the Justice League instead of play as them: it’s too hard to balance gameplay for  Superman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern, etc.

Edited by EVA
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That's why that Hulk game on the Xbox was fucking cool. I thought that pretty well captured the feel of the Hulk. In a game like this, you can't do any shit like that. Although, all of the shit for Thor looks pretty cool and almost makes me wish this were a Thor game. Or at the very least, don't include Hulk.

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