"Kamala, AIM only wants to free us from being at the mercy of the powerful."
--George Tarleton, Avengers
Avengers takes a very promising gameplay premise and merges it with a host of production issues and the strengths and weaknesses of a live service game. On a single player level, it can actually be quite good. Beyond single player being a great introduction to each hero's powers, the story mode does fittingly focus on antagonists that have not been used in the MCU as of yet, and it also forgoes the tendency to have the characters engage in dialogue that is out of place amidst the drama due to its asinine silliness. These artistic choices give it more of its own identity. What still holds the game back from greatness is its convoluted menus, significant performance issues, the audio and visual glitches in the single player Reassembled campaign, and the way some parts of character progression are not accessible offline. However, since free DLC campaign expansions and characters have been added since its debut in 2020, this review will be able to address some of the content that does make the purchase a stronger one, such as the Take Aim and War for Wakanda stories or The Mighty Thor and Spider-Man characters, the latter of which is currently available on the PS4/PS5 versions of the game only.
Production Values
What could have been one of the most polished, smooth gaming experiences of recent years--the Avengers have an almost unprecedented level of cultural and global popularity at this point--is even now, years after release, plagued by random slowdown, visual or audio glitches, and even menus and submenus that are, purposefully or not, sometimes very difficult to navigate as a newcomer with no additional assistance. Indeed, this might be intentional, as the single player components are not as prominently displayed as the multiplayer, and upon first playing the game, I found myself accidentally playing the endgame content (endgame as in post-campaign, not as in the 2019 Avengers movie) and had to quit to the main menu to uncover the Reassembled story mode.
The graphics themselves are at least strong and the character models deviate enough from the MCU versions for people to be able to easily tell that this is not connected to the recent films and Disney+ shows. Additionally, the art style reflects the more somber tone of the narrative than that found in the general MCU, and the characters are distinct in personality, voice acted well, and largely unique in their move sets, aside from the very similar characters like Kate Bishop/Hawkeye and Thor/The Mighty Thor--and even they have their differences. Long loading times, though, add to the many inconveniences and weak areas of the production values, which are thoroughly mixed in quality overall, with some aspects being competent or excellent and the rest seeming very rushed.
Gameplay
The thing that Marvel's Avengers gets the most right with its gameplay is that the different playable characters have attacks or even ways of getting around environments that reflect their individual nature. Kamala can use her stretching arms to swing like Spider-Man and Black Widow uses a Batman-like grapple tool, while Thor, The Mighty Thor, and Iron Man can fly, making navigation much easier for these characters. For the Hulk and Captain America, moving around in environments with different floors or levels is not as simple. Still, once in the heart of combat, Avengers plays not unlike Ultimate Alliance 3 on the Switch, with the most obvious differences being how the third-person camera can actually be controlled this time and playing flight characters is more like playing the Iron Man movie tie-in game from 2008. ISO-8 equippables, special attacks, and squads of heroes are all features shared between the two games, though the much smaller roster of playable characters is a notable difference. Even so, even going mildly out of the way to destroy boxes for bonus items is very similar to Ultimate Alliance 3 on the Switch.
When it comes to actual fighting, the characters are at their best very diverse in how they fight and move, although it is only the same very small spectrum of abilities and attacks that can be used for each one. The free DLC character Kate Bishop, for example, can teleport vertically or horizontally until a meter is depleted, and her melee attacks feature a sword, as do Hawkeye's. Black Widow has special abilities where she can become invisible or pull out a special staff to inflict more melee damage for a limited time. Thor can use the Bifrost and can pin human-sized enemies to the ground or wall with Mjolnir. Iron Man has his unibeam and can summon the Hulkbuster armor, Captain America can use his shield as a ranged weapon, and so on. The ways that each character utilizes their basic melee or ranged attacks, three special abilities, and navigation around levels matches up with their powers or skills well. There are also upgrades for many of these things that can be unlocked using skill points obtained from leveling up, but leveling up has no other benefit besides allowing access to new item slots or upgrades.
The live service nature of Avengers means, though, that it has changing daily and weekly tasks, the completion of which gives points for a specific Avenger to move them along their respective challenge card. These challenge cards reward players with things such as a new nameplate, character skin, or units of the in-game currencies for each full section that is complete. With 50 sections for each character and the daily tasks not granting enough progress to complete a whole part of the challenge card on their own, these cards could take a while to exhaustively finish, and will at least take far more than just the initial single player playthrough to take care of. Co-op Avengers Initiative missions that can still be played without other humans and with up to three NPCs provide a relentless stream of content for leveling up the Avengers, who will probably only reach level 5-9 out of 50 hero levels, which are different from the challenge card levels, each in the Reassembled campaign. It is just that the extreme repetition of only a few types of missions might deter some players from actually leveling up each Avenger or finishing all of the challenge cards. In almost every mission, you find and protect Inhumans or agents of SHIELD, hold small circular positions while JARVIS hacks enemy systems, eliminate a group of especially powerful AIM units, or defeat one of two kinds of massive AIM machines. Variety in the environments, objectives, and attacks is gratuitously limited.
Story
Some spoilers are below.
A young girl named Kamala Khan gets to participate in a public event called Avengers Day or A-Day, where Captain America, Iron Man, Black Widow, Thor, and Bruce Banner are all present as scientist George Tarleton presents a new SHIELD helicarrier powered by a substance called Terrigen, but a terrorist attack involving Taskmaster, an earthquake, and the new helicarrier being functionally destroyed ruin the celebration. The Terrigen unexpectedly grants some people powers, now called Inhumans, adding to the factors that make A-Day a disaster culminating in the disappearance of Captain America and the disbanding of the Avengers. The next five years see Tarleton and highly devoted fellow scientist Monica Rappaccini work towards supposedly curing the Inhumans who have been persecuted by Tarleton's Advanced Idea Mechanics (AIM) on the basis of stereotypes. Kamala has not forgotten her childhood love of the Avengers, though, and while she keeps her Inhuman polymorph (stretching and size manipulation) powers a secret from most people, she hacks into AIM information using an old Stark Industries account, triggering a series of events that bring her to Bruce Banner with video evidence that Captain America was betrayed on A-Day and that the failure of the Avengers was conspired beforehand. AIM's following actions eventually trigger consequences far beyond A-Day, with a looming extraterrestrial threat pressuring an AIM leader to take drastic measures.
Intellectual Content
The Reassembled campaign is where the majority of the thematic content is placed, as it would be quite difficult to make multiplayer of the kind offered here have any sort of purpose beyond entertainment and keeping the player's attention across the life of the live service being offered. Could it have benefited from exploring the villains and their worldviews more? Yes, but there is still a blatant hypocrisy in how George Tarleton opposes all powerful superheroes and still targets figures who are not truly superheroes in the strictest sense, like Iron Man since he does not even have any powers tied to his mind or body. Tony Stark only has abilities derived from technological creations, just as Tarleton's own AIM soldiers and even, as the story progresses, Tarleton himself do. Beyond this, the fact that he works with Abomination, a gamma radiation-altered being like the Hulk, shows his hypocrisy even before he slowly becomes a technologically-fortified entity comparable in many ways to Iron Man. Details such as these add nuance to the story even if they are never commented upon in the game. As he more and more develops into MODOK, Tarleton also becomes more open about his anti-Inhuman biases, which is also hypocritical given that his fear of super-powered beings is an emotionalistic/fallacious reaction to the deaths on A-Day, yet he is the one who thinks that people should suffer or die because of his own petty fears. Kamala even specifically points out the irony of denying the humanity of the Inhumans, as they are humans with powers activated by Terrigen, not some sub-human animal that people do not share many things in common with.
Conclusion
At its best, the single player has a story with a clever plot, strong choices for the two main villains given that the MCU has not yet tackled them, and the chance to let multiple heroes take the spotlight without depriving Miss Marvel of the ultimate narrative focus. The single player is just a fragment of the full game, and even with three free additional DLC campaigns, it does not take long to actually play through the story missions. A very repetitive set of multiplayer missions is what waits before and after single player. Additionally, whether one plays alone or with other people, there is a very limited range of moves, so while various characters do have special abilities that match their powers or strengths, it is not as if there is a great deal of gameplay diversity to choose from even aside from the extreme repetition of the levels outside the campaign and its DLC follow-ups. As a live service game and as a single player experience, Avengers had so much more potential than the game ended up actually capitalizing on. It should not have been difficult to better construct and refine a game about one of the most popular groups in entertainment history at the height of that group's cinematic success. At least there are the DLC mini-campaigns and new characters to come back for as they are added, but even with these additions (and charging for them would have been outright exploitative of players with the game in the condition it is in), Avengers is lacking as a whole in so many vital areas.
Content:
1. Violence: Like in much of the MCU, the actual violent imagery is tame despite there being lots of physical fighting and use of projectile weaponry. That many enemies are AIM robots or humans in full-body suits only further distances this game from actually showing blood.
2. Profanity: Words like "shit" are sometimes used in the campaign.
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