by Dawson T
If you’ve been in the gaming community recently you might have heard about the new Marvel hero-shooter Marvel Rivals. Hero Shooters allow players to play as characters with special abilities fitting with their lore from their source material or in game lore if they’re characters made for the game. Marvel was the perfect fit for a game in the hero-shooter genre. With
almost 100 years worth of comics, movies, games, and shows there’s so many characters, both hero and villain, that can be added to the game. What’s more, the hero-shooter genre had reached a decline with failures like Concord being taken down in a mere two weeks after launch and Overwatch losing most of its player base and developing an infamous reputation for awful management by Blizzard Entertainment. With the support of credible influencers who were given access to the closed beta, expressing both praise and critique of the game, Marvel Rivals seemed like it could be king of the hero-shooter genre. Upon release the game would prove to live up to the hype with a launch day record of an astounding 480,990 players. That huge record would again be broken upon the release of Season 1 with a peak player count of 644,249. With so many players active complaints and problems would inevitably crop up, yet, Marvel Rivals’ quality isn't anything to scoff at.
Marvel Rivals launched with 33 characters to pick from including iconic heroes like Iron Man, Spiderman, Thor, Captain America, and even obscure characters like Jeff the Shark. Characters boast great designs that allow them to stand out in combat and look cool if you care more for aesthetics than practicality. In terms of gameplay, the characters have a wide variety of abilities and viable playstyles. Many characters require a considerable amount of finesse in order to use properly, and these characters are accompanied by a difficulty ranking. When viewing a character and their moveset there’s a five star ranking of how difficult a character is to use, one star being rather basic and simple and five stars being complex and difficult. The more difficult a character is the more you’ll have to utilize their entire moveset to pull off game-winning moves while characters with lower difficulty rating can be viable with only a modicum of skill.
The maps for Marvel Rivals have a unique feature not seen in the hero shooter genre before, that being destructible environments. For many hero shooters, maps remain stagnant except for a few moving platforms or such, however, Marvel Rivals decided to make fights a bit more dynamic, allowing you to destroy certain parts of the map, getting rid of enemy cover or opening new paths for shooting or for pushing the objective. Not only does this help fights feel more varied and unique but it also allows for characters to feel more powerful when they use a strong ability and it wreaks havoc on the environment. Some maps have more to destroy than others meaning some maps will have more variables than others. In season 1, two new maps were introduced boasting a new method of map destruction known as Recursive Destruction. Parts of the map start off broken and destroyed as the game goes on the damage will rewind to a post destroyed state that allows you to break it again. Recursive Destruction helps spice up the destructible environment mechanics a bit more and could be a sign that future maps could also boast new unique forms of map evolution.
Marvel Rivals provides a fun, unique and in depth hero shooter experience, drawing in even non-shooter gamers. While some may believe the hype to be overrated or struggle with the rare performance issues, that doesn't diminish the fact that Marvel Rivals has proven itself to be one of the best games to be released last year. Marvel Rivals’ developer team has made promises that, if followed through, will mean Marvel Rivals will undoubtedly dominate the Hero-Shooter genre for years to come. They have promised to release a new hero at a rate of about one every 45 days which is far quicker than Overwatch’s hero release period of one every four months. What’s more, Marvel Rival’s has kept its player base incredibly well. Queue times for games are incredibly quick for both quickplay and competitive and its immense popularity has led to cultivating a huge community. At the current rate of Marvel Rival’s success, it’s safe to say that it, very well, may be the greatest hero-shooter anyone can play.