(Marvel's) Avengers, ASSEMBLE!

[Craig H]

I've had a gameplay stream on my other monitor while working today and man, you sure do destroy countless numbers of drone bodies. There's some parts where the person playing is just...endlessly jogging around as Iron Man and it's kind of silly to me to go to a weapons expert...for Iron Man...see that you could add an upgrade to your suit and then not be able to add it because you're lacking in something or another. I mean, it's Tony Start. Why does he need someone like Q from James Bond to design weapons for him? That's what Tony Stark does. The movements characters while jogging around is a little on the weird side too where there's a lot of shoulder movement when they run or walk. It almost looks like a strut or a pimp walk.

Iron Man flying around and dodging backward, shooting at things in the distance, while fighting a robot close to him looks fine. Nothing looks especially bullet spongy except for a couple bosses, but bosses and enemies that are bullet sponges are never going to go away. At least in this I could think, well, it's a super villain so they should absorb this kind of a beating, unlike the Division where it's bananas to have to shoot someone dozens of times to kill them.

And on the flipside, the stealth stuff looks pretty bad, combat looks like it lacks a lot of weight since strikes often just go right through enemies so that looks awkward, and boy do you have destroy so many glowing boxes. Just the most glowing boxes you've ever seen. Some blow up in hilarious ways. In one section the guy is pilot Iron Man around in a vertical position, Iron Man just gets barely near these glowing boxes, and they all just explode without him having to do anything.

Of what I've watched, there's a lot that works and looks fine and a lot that looks unrefined. The visuals for the game are largely good even if everyone appears slightly plastic-y.

[RIPPA]

2 hours ago, Casey said:

Yeah, I hadn't read about the premium and free tiers for the new heroes' cards, but even knowing that now... still doesn't make much of a difference. Other games that do this have those things be timed, whereas Avengers doesn't.

And let's be perfectly clear - I'm seemingly the only one defending this game, and even I can admit that the stuff you get in the premium tier probably isn't even worth it. Just look at the outfits you get with any of the numerous Deluxe Editions, or the promotional skins for companies like Verizon or Virgin or 5 Gum or whatever. They aren't that great. Even the skins that aren't exclusive that'll be in the Marketplace are pretty bad, with a few exceptions (Hulk's skins from the beta being the worst offender). Everything else is, like I said, just resources and credits and emotes and nameplates.

You can make an argument for the takedowns - maybe. I'm not sure they're even needed, since the skill trees for heroes like Thor and Captain America leaked the first weekend of the beta and they are EXTENSIVE. Way, way more than the handful that was in the beta for all the playable heroes, so they seemingly purposefully unlocked only a few to show what the trees would be like and what you could unlock.

Considering how I see people react regarding the Eververse store in Destiny - which is nothing but cosmetic items that have zero impact on game play - I am sure there are going to be lots of people who are upset in regards to skins and "just resources and credits and emotes and nameplates" being locked away.

So while I probably agree with you in regards to Avengers (I would need to play the actual game to know for sure) I just say that I would caution against dismissing out of hand what could easily turn a portion of the potential player base away

[Death From Above]

I'll say this for it, at least the patching they did during the beta did a lot on the technical issue side of things. It's kind of refreshing to see a real, actual beta that serves the purpose.

[Craig H]

*sigh*

I'm a rube. I wound up pre-ordering the game late last night to play it at midnight. I don't know what the fuck is wrong with me.

So I wound up playing it for a couple hours. Within the first 30 to 40 minutes there were some really bad hitches in frame rate. Other than that it ran mostly fine. 

As far as how it plays, it's kinda fun, but also kinda dull. I feel like I'm just doing the same shit over and over again, which isn't all that different from Destiny where you're just shooting the same shit over and over again, or WoW where you're grinding the same shit over and over again, or any other MMO or GaaS.

My biggest complaint is just how linear and on rails the game is. From what I've played so far, there's literally only ever one path to take and no variance in what you can do. You enter combat, you have your one objective and your one path to get there, you either fight shit or try to avoid detection along the way, and then you get to the end. I'm hoping I'm still in a tutorial period and the game opens up more and it's not this same shit where it's incredibly linear. If it is, I'm going to regret this purchase. If things open up, then I think it will have been a worthwhile purchase.

Oh, my other big complain are that the cutscenes are too damn long, but I tend to expect that from Crystal Dynamics and Squeenix.

So far I think it's thumbs in the middle slightly tilting up, but that could change if I'm 6 or 7 hours in and it's still dull. For something that is a GaaS, I was really hoping the world would be more like Destiny or even Anthem where you had a lot of space to roam around.

[Craig H]

Played it some more and it's growing on me, but I still don't like how everything right now is just corridor fights. I will also say that the voice acting is top notch. Bruce Banner delivers his lines better than most other game voice acting.

[RIPPA]

18 minutes ago, Craig H said:

Bruce Banner delivers his lines better than most other game voice acting.

Well when you are paying for Troy Baker - I hope so

[Craig H]

I'm surprised that since the full game is out no one else is now talking about it.

My tentative recommendation at this point is to buy the game. This campaign is a lot longer and broader than I thought it would be. I've played for 4 hours or so and I'm less than 10% through the story. In fact, I only just got to the War Table in the single player campaign last night. The War Table is where you wind up picking and choosing which missions you want to go to and when you first get to that, you only have one mission.

So I choose the mission, pick the superhero I want to play as (at this point there's really only two options), apply any upgrades, and then you head out. What I thought was neat about the mission was that it's in a snowy area with AIM forces that use weapons with cold damage. Not only do you take damage from the environment, but some enemies there add on that same type of damage. It helps to have upgrades that provide defense against that element. I also should note that for where I'm at in the mission, it's wide open. You can choose to just go straight towards your objective or you can roam some and Jarvis will tell you that there's a high value target in the area or whatever.

What I didn't like is that 3 or 4 times trying to do this mission it just stopped and said I failed. I didn't die. My companion didn't die. I just somehow failed the mission somehow. It doesn't tell you how or why you failed either. I'm going to give it another go later today.

I like what I've been playing. Even playing as Hulk I feel pretty powerful. Yeah, there's probably too much dodging involved with him and it's all pretty button mashy, but this is a lot better than the demo.

One last gripe, the camera is shit. The camera is pretty much manual control only, but when you're attacking everything on an X, Y, and Z axis, there's just so many times you want the camera behind you and the camera winds up in front of you so it looks like you're just attacking the screen. It's not game breaking, it could just be better than it is.

I haven't gotten to any multiplayer stuff yet, I want to finish the campaign first, but I don't regret my last minute pre-order like I first did with Star Wars Battlegrounds 2.

[EVA]

I think it’s only available in early access right now if you preordered it digitally or got one of the special editions.  The game doesn’t actually release until Friday.

[Casey]

Speaking of the voice acting - Ashly Burch is voicing Kate Bishop (who is rumored to release in October, with Hawkeye coming in November).

They were going to announce Black Panther as one of the DLC characters, and Wakanda missions/warzones, but due to Chadwick passing they've pushed that back.

[Craig H]

1 hour ago, EVA said:

I think it’s only available in early access right now if you preordered it digitally or got one of the special editions.  The game doesn’t actually release until Friday.

Ohhhhhhhh ok. I thought midnight Tuesday was the actual release date. 

I thought almost all games were being released on Tuesdays for awhile, now it seems like it's all over the place.

[RIPPA]

The more people say its Destiny with punching, the more likely I will play it

[Craig H]

Having not played the multiplayer yet, I can't say if that's completely the case, but for the mission I got to, it is like a very arcadey version of Destiny.

Reading reactions online, it looks like I'm not alone in doing a 180 on this game. I don't know what happened between the E3 showing, the demo, and now, but this is way better than anything they showed.

[The Natural]

 

[Craig H]

Ok, ok, ok...This game is fucking good.

[The Natural]

SPOILER WARNING:

 

From what I gather, there's fuck all villains to face. MODOK, Taskmaster and Abomination. The rest are repetitive cannon fodder. That's poor if true.

Edited September 3, 2020 by The Natural

[Jiji]

Games as a service my dude. 

[Craig H]

5 minutes ago, Jiji said:

Games as a service my dude. 

Pretty much. I expect them to add more villains over time. At the very least, those expansions or whatever will wind up being free. It's not a great solution, but it's better than nothing. Not to mention that I prefer these named villains over the somewhat generic ones in Destiny.

[Casey]

I’m tearing into this bad boy later tonight when I wake up, got my copy this morning but I was at the doctor when it arrived.

Fuck, I can’t wait.

[Craig H]

7 minutes ago, Casey said:

I’m tearing into this bad boy later tonight when I wake up, got my copy this morning but I was at the doctor when it arrived.

Fuck, I can’t wait.

Be warned, the first 2 to 3 hours are really boring.

[Raziel]

28 minutes ago, Craig H said:

Be warned, the first 2 to 3 hours are really boring.

That's not really a good thing.

[Craig H]

13 minutes ago, Raziel said:

That's not really a good thing.

YMMV. The game is also really freaking long. The first two hours is the demo, a lot of linear and on rails type shit, simply walking around and finding stuff, etc. After that, the game opens up. Even still, the parts I thought were boring have some really great voice acting and connect you with the characters more.

[Casey]

I'm okay with the first two hours (or 9% of the game), because it's just storytelling basically. And I love Ms. Marvel, so it's very welcomed.

[EVA]

We have a clearer picture of how the challenge cards work now:

It takes 200 CP to complete a card.

The max CP you can earn in a week is 64.

If you max out every week, you can finish a card in 3-4 weeks.  Which doesn’t seem too bad.

However, 42 of the available weekly CP points are tied into daily challenges, which means you’ll have to log in and play for some amount of time every day to hit the weekly cap.  If you fall behind, there’s no way to make up for what you missed.

Its still unclear how long it will take to finish a challenge.  The descriptions I’ve read don’t sound horribly grind-y, but I’m not playing the game, so I have no frame of reference for how difficult anything is.

[Craig H]

I put in 3 more hours last night because I'm both addicted to the game and I suck and keep failing at missions.

For where I'm at, I really like it, but I want to keep it as a solo experience for now instead of using matchmaking to partner up with someone to take on missions. After completing the first War Table mission, you're basically given a side story to start for one of the characters, you can go and keep doing a main story mission, or you can do HARM missions/challenges. I'm surprised at how it went from being very linear to very open. It wouldn't surprise me if a lot of people get turned off during the first couple hours because they're so incredibly slow and linear.

My biggest concern actually has to do with the hero ability trees, character cards, dailies, and weeklies that earn you points towards completing character cards. This isn't spoilery, but I'm trying to main Hulk because for the videos I've watched, everyone basically says to focus on maxing out one hero first and then move on to your next hero. That's fine, but when you go to your ability tree screen, you have, I think, 10 ability trees? Maybe 11? The first 3 or 4 have to do with your attacks and I have no idea which is best to put points into first. So far for Hulk, I'm just putting points into my strong attacks and aerial attacks. On the next screen there's 3 or 4 more trees that all have to do with your play style and what you want your hero to be. Do you want your hero to be a healer, tank, ranger, etc. That's all done on the second ability screen and it opens up after level 5. Finally you have the mastery screen which has something like 3 more ability trees. It's all very overwhelming.

On top of that, I'm finding dailies and weeklies to be much harder to complete than what is in Destiny, WoW, FF14, Valorant, and really any game that has daily and weekly challenges. Right now my 2 daily challenges for Hulk are to collect 100 items and to destroy 15 enemies with aerial attacks. The collecting 100 items is pretty easy. Destroying 15 enemies via aerial attacks is much harder because some enemies are just total bullet sponges, you'll hit them with a massive flying elbow drop, not kill them, and then Kamala, your NPC companion in the mission, winds up finishing the enemy off. There are no controls for your companions to have them stay put, attack when attacked, etc. So what I keep running into is Kamala killing shit before I can. After two long missions, that left me at...THREE KILLS VIA AERIAL ATTACKS. THREE. OUT OF FIFTEEN. Mind you, I'm always doing aerial attacks. Maybe I'm just unlucky, I don't know. Then there's the two weekly challenges, one of which requires me to do something in the Vault. I DON'T KNOW WHAT THE VAULT IS! So I don't know how fast it's going to take me to complete character cards, but it may be more than two to three weeks at this point.

This all gets to my biggest complaint for the game, which is that the UI and systems sucks and are very overwhelming. The vast majority of graphical hitches occur on the ability screens. I'm on a regular PS4, but it's weird that slowdown and shit like that would happen on menu screens and not during the gameplay. In addition, there's so much that just isn't explained, like Vaults and other shit.

So I guess, yes, it really is Destiny with punching. Still really good, but that feeling of being lost when it comes to character builds, not knowing where everything is, and more kinda sucks. For now, I'm chalking it up with being unfamiliar with the game, which is exactly how I felt when I went back to Destiny 2 for a little bit. It also just shows how big the chasm is between these games and stuff like WoW and FF14, where their menus and systems are so intuitive. These GaaS have gameplay down pretty well, story too, but they need better UX designers.

[Casey]

You can refresh the daily challenge, you aren’t locked into it.

Objectives > Challenges and I think it’s triangle on the PS4 to refresh. I did that once or twice with Kamala since I’m mainly focusing on her right now. From what I saw, there wasn’t a penalty for doing it either - no credits or units were taken out of my current balance.