In September 2020, Square Enix released Marvel’s Avengers – a team action game about the famous team of heroes. At the start on Steam, 30 thousand entered the game, but in just a month this figure fell 30 times. Now the PC version of “Avengers” is played every day by fewer than 1000 users, and the fate of the promising game seems hazy. Let’s figure out why the potential hit did not live up to the expectations of the publisher, critics and fans.
Marvel’s Avengers was announced three years before the release, and users wondered for a long time how to fit such different characters in one game. Despite a huge number of problems, which will be discussed below, Crystal Dynamics managed the most difficult thing – to balance the heroes and make a good gameplay core. Fighting in The Avengers is fun, and it’s fun to play for all the characters – even those who look boring in the movies. Therefore, it is doubly disappointing that the rest of the game is disappointing, and a sufficiently experienced team could not cope with the rest of the tasks.
It is difficult to single out any main problem of Marvel’s Avengers: the developers and the publisher made almost every possible mistake that could be made. Take the campaign: for some reason, Miss Marvel, whom the mainstream player has hardly heard of, is at the center of the story of the famous Avengers team. In the story, the girl is looking for heroes around the world and is trying to reunite the team, but any other, more famous character could have done it. Kamala Khan in the story plays the role of an enthusiastic, eternally squeaky fan who constantly rejoices in cameos and references, although the player himself does an excellent job of this task.
Despite Kamala’s tiring nature, fighting for her is still fun – just like for other heroes.
The release window for Marvel’s Avengers is not a good one either. The game was released not even at the end of the MCU, but much later – 1.5 years after the release of the movie “Avengers: Endgame”, which completed the 11-year-old movie epic of 22 films. By this point, even the most loyal fans had calmed down, and for many, the history of the classic Avengers team was already considered complete. And although the game has nothing to do with films, the hype around the MCU would surely help her a lot.
Also, Marvel’s Avengers didn’t have enough content to keep users for long. There are very few types of opponents in the game, and they do not require any unique approach – the main thing is to beat enemies and activate superpowers in difficult moments. The scenery in the game is also sparse, and there is nothing to catch the eye: only a few empty biomes and buildings with laboratories. After the story campaign, it is enough to do about 5-10 missions to watch all the key content.
When the game needed to be saved with new, preferably cult characters, the authors decided to add two very similar archer heroes
Usually, service games lure players in with customization, but here, too, the developers made a mistake. The appearance of the heroes is tightly tied to the standard skins, and the new equipment in Marvel’s Avengers affects exclusively the characteristics. Because of this, progress in the game feels bad, and fiddling with numbers is perceived as a burden, not a reward.
Later, another, more unexpected problem is discovered: users can wear downright stupid costumes that ruin the entire dive. More than once you can catch yourself thinking that you are not playing “The Avengers”, but some kind of porn parody. Here is Thor in a boring T-shirt and jeans, here is an archer in a bright pink suit, and here is Iron Man, who did not seem to have enough money for a full-fledged suit. Probably, with the help of different skins, the developers wanted to please as many fans as possible. But after The Avengers, you understand why the authors of Battlefront 2 forbade the Jedi and Sith to change their costumes and were allowed to choose from only a few iconic skins.
Thor took a break from watching movies and flew in to save the world for 15 minutes
Finally, during the worst times for the game, the authors continued to make very controversial decisions. In early March 2021, the developers released a patch that slowed down leveling from level 25. Crystal Dynamics decided that users were gaining levels and new abilities too quickly and that this “robs the players of the fun.” Sounds familiar? This is exactly how the authors of the same Battlefront 2 reasoned when they wanted to force players to grind legendary heroes for tens of hours.
Then the developers thought of making skins from films paid for – you can get them only for money. Fans reacted to the news not even with negativity, but with amazement: the game continues to rapidly lose users, and the creators seem to be deliberately trying to finish it off as soon as possible.
The list of problems can be continued for a long time. Poor optimization, bugs, stupid AI, mediocre design of levels and missions, an excessive number of special effects that make any battle turn into a visual mess – all this led to the fact that after the end of the storyline campaign, you don’t want to return to The Avengers.
Black Panther Trailer
Square Enix itself adheres to the version that the “Avengers” simply did not have enough content, so the game can be saved. In a report to investors, the publisher has assured that it will continue to support online action, releasing additional story episodes and characters. Archer Kate Bishop has already been added to the game with her campaign, and then Hawkeye.
It is pleasant to play for the new heroes, but they did not solve the main problems: in missions they still offer to kill dozens of enemies of the same type and capture key points. In the summer of 2021, Black Panther will join the team, and then they promise to add Spider-Man. The hero flying on the web, by the way, will be a PlayStation exclusive: another controversial decision, for which PC and Xbox users promised to boycott the game.
Marvel’s Avengers came out at the wrong time and in the wrong form: if you look at the history of the action, it seems as if it was deliberately doomed to failure. And when the game had to be urgently saved, the developers began to make progress more boring and more aggressive to monetize the “Avengers” than only angered the loyal fans.
If you look at other similar stories, then things often go to relaunch: Anthem, for example, wanted to be heavily remade and re-released. But when the question of resources arose, the publisher decided that it would be more profitable to simply close the project. Perhaps the “Avengers” will face the same fate: for some reason Square Enix has not yet made a single step towards the players, and the action is feeling worse every day .
