PixlBit

Daredevil, Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch, Storm and Thing. These are your starter heroes in the new free to play MMO game based on the Marvel Universe called “Marvel Heroes”.  I’ve been playing this game since it launched yesterday and I haven’t quite formed a final opinion about it just yet. How could I since I’ve only played about one-third of the game so far. MMO is kind of a weird category to put this game under because an MMO typically entails having a large sprawling world with deep customization features and epic storylines and community driven game play. This game does have a great epic story, by heavily borrowing from the canon of Marvel comics and its heroes and villains how could it not be epic. The game lacks the large open ended world in favor of a more fragmented level design divided by chapters similar to “Diablo III” or the recently released action RPG “The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing,” which I recommend you all run out and buy if you like that sort of game. Marvel Heroes is better categorized as an action RPG, because it’s very similar to the simplistic left-click, right-click, click-click-click-click game play style of the Diablo and Torchlight series.

The game starts you off in the Avengers Tower, serving as the main hub area where you do all your preparations before battle: selling and buying, storing or crafting items and receiving important quests to proceed to the next main chapter in the story. Each chapter has its own hub area and warp points to get around, as these areas tend to be pretty big. Each character has a unique skill tree, for their respective types, I presume, as you can only play with the character you chose at the beginning of the game and unlock new characters after finding “extremely rare” character drops. I’ve only found one un-lockable character so far so I will need to keep playing if I want a bigger roster...and so begins the addiction.

I won’t go into details any further since I still have a bit more to research into the game and actually play it some more, but so far what I’ve played of the game I’ve enjoyed. I probably should also confess that I love the Marvel universe and comics so it’s pretty cool to have a simple action game with all the familiar characters taking down foes together. I like walking down the pier in New Jersey and then being supported by Punisher and his machine guns or Scarlet Witch or Storm with their area of effect spells. Hey! There goes Wolverine and Spider-Man teaming up with Thor and Captain America taking on Venom in an epic battle, slowing down the frame-rate of course.  I’m finding that the game actually gets more challenging as you progress through it, having waves of enemies or larger groups of enemies with higher damage ratios or damage resistance against your character. Also it seems players might drop out of the game after a couple of chapters so later chapters seem a lot emptier compared to earlier chapters.  The game strives on team work. I chose to play with Hawkeye as he has one of the better comic book storylines out right now and I like his range abilities and shock and freeze arrow abilities. I suspect that the only people interested in this game will be comic book fans, like me, because as a stand-alone game, there are other games that play similar to it which have a bit more depth, challenge and level design to them. Then again the game is free easy to play and looks really great too.