At first I thought Marvel Rivals was basically rebranded Overwatch, in the way it’s a free-to-play PVP hero shooter. And in some ways, it is. Fights are like if you took a MOBA and forced both teams to bash heads constantly. Success lies in picking off Spider-Man or Squirrel Girl or Marcus Fenix so as they wait to respawn, you hop on the big area that needs capturing. Or you push the cart while tanky Hulk absorbs bullets with his biceps and John Marvel snipes from afar.
The more I played Rivals, though, the more it hit me that it’s specifically a messier, more complex Overwatch. A hero shooter with a surprising amount of polish and charm, sure, but also one that slides off my brain like water off Birdman’s back. I understand why it’s supremely popular at the moment and yet, I really don’t.
Whenever a game arrives and it’s got ties to a big franchise like Marvel, I fully expect it to be middling slop. Marvel Rivals does feel very much like the result of a corporate pitch designed to hit all the keywords. “We are going to leverage the Marvel brand and generate wads of cash by making a free-to-play hero shooter, all bolstered by an in-game shop, battle pass and skins”, as everyone rubs their hands together. If you’re a Marvel fan, you’ll likely adore the opportunity to play Groot and won’t care all too much for the optional nonsense. For someone who doesn’t care for Marvel, like myself, it’s hard not to divorce it from what it is: a box check for NetEase.
Still, to judge it entirely on its corporate identity wouldn’t be fair, and it wouldn’t be fair anyway because the game is actually pretty solid. Presentation-wise, it’s very slick, where heroes have a lovely comicbook art style and they leap out of their thumbnails with bespoke animations whenever you hover over them. And since its release, I don’t think I’ve encountered a single server issue, which is a remarkable feat given however many millions have been logged in. Even the matchmaking system is lightning quick, sometimes taking all of two seconds to find another match having just finished one.
There’s even more slickness and polish coating every surface of those skintight bodysuits. In the way the characters spin and tumble and rocket about. In the pewpew of guns. The sheen of Raccoon Lad’s armour bits popping out of the little generator he puts down. In the click clack of Widowma- sorry, Black Widow’s sniper rifle as she reloads the chamber. Finish a game and you’ll be presented with the squad standing in a line, where you can check out everyone’s individual highlights with a quick button press. Again, all UI-ified as if by the smoothest, softest of hands.
That’s enough about how nice it looks, just how do the Marvels rival? Well, there’s 33 heroes at launch, all split into categories like Vanguard (Tank), Dualist (DPS), and Strategist (Healer or Support). Teams are composed of six, so you pick your hero with an aim to capture and hold objectives, push a cart as far as you can, or stop that cart from being pushed. Like I said, it will be incredibly familiar if you’ve played Overwatch.
What struck me as I shifted between many of Rivals’ dozens-strong roster, though, was how well thought-out each hero’s moves are. Naturally, some are better or worse than others, but a lot of them teeter on the edge of too strong without actually being too strong (except Iron Fist, who can get in the bin). This makes many of them a right laugh to play. I particularly enjoy my time with aquatic lad Namor, who chucks spears that can empower these octopi turrets he chucks on the ground. Cloak and Dagger are also an interesting two-in-one hero, able to swap between two entirely different characters on the fly, completely twisting their skills from light and healy to kamehameh-ing and corrupting.
Another edge Rivals gives itself is the ability to “Teamup” with certain heroes. Choose a certain combo of heroes that are, presumably, pals, and they’ll gain extra passive skills, entirely new abilities, or modified ones. And it’s easy to see who can team up with who in those pre-match lobbies, so it’s not like you need to understand the lore of Hawk Tuah or whoever he’s called to reap those friends with benefits. I, for instance, got to play with an icy version of Aquatic Man’s octopus turret because two other people team chose to wombo their own combos.
On the other Iron Fist, though, I do think the Teamup feature can both overwhelm and entice, encouraging you to adjust what’s probably a better team composition in favour of what’s ultimately a worse one. Often, I’ve found if I’m part of a Teamup that’s getting dumpstered, I feel bad for swapping out of the conga, which then causes everyone else to peel away and disrupt the team flow. As someone who takes these competitive games a little too seriously, I struggled to understand the true benefits of teaming up, and probably need another 1000 hours for the best combos to be sieved through the meta. For those who don’t take things seriously, I can at least imagine that Teamups let you fulfil a fantasy of your favourite Marvel characters fighting toxicity together on the internet, one skillshot at a time.
Having such a vast hero pool does make choice a doozy, with many of them being rather complex, too. Where each character in Overwatch was, largely, pick up and play, Rivals injects a bit of MOBA into proceedings. So many times I’ve pressed F1 to bring up each hero’s cheat sheet, and felt like I needed to take a minute to ingest it all. Thor has a whole hammer economy, and even slightly simpler heroes like Captain America have mini-skills that flow off skills you’ve already activated.
All of this is great for those who want to learn heroes and mine those complexities for meta-changing innovations. What I’ve found, though, is most of my games swing one of two ways: one, we snowball to a decisive victory and I don’t really know why, or two, we get stomped and I don’t really know why. I’m sure a part of this is just experience, which can only be gained over time with these sorts of competitive games. Yet, I think it’s also a product of the deep hero pool, with all its complexities. Where Overwatch’s compact, 12-hero launch meant it was easy to switch counters on the fly, the undeniable fun and impeccable feel of Rivals is hamstrung by its depth.
Another reason why I rarely know what’s going on: a lot of the heroes are just regular-shaped people in costumes, or small animals. Despite each of them being silhouetted in red to make them a bit clearer on the field, they’re still hard to identify when there’s an ever-present frenzy of Iron Man and Winter Soldier or a pissing shark just screaming “I’M GONNA DO THIS THING NOW” and dropping some insta-kill bomb from afar. Seriously, go back to Overwatch after a few rounds of this and see how much easier it is to understand, at a glance, who’s where and what. It just communicates everything so much more clearly.
Thing is, Marvel Rivals can still be an incredibly accessible hero shooter, one that does allow people who don’t care as much as me about Competitive Stuff to just hammer buttons and play as muscular people who frequent the screens of the Odeon as much as Kojima spends his time 3D scanning beautiful people. There isn’t anything wrong in that! In fact, I think this is great. People can just hop in and have fun in a free game that doesn’t even seem particularly predatory in its microtransactions.
The extra thing is, Marvel Rivals is also a PVP hero shooter that lacks the restraint of Overwatch and turns matches into slightly formless blenders as a result. The fact I can’t remember any of the map names is a testament to this, where normally I’d have those sightlines and chokepoints memorised. It won’t be a surprise to you that I won’t be sticking with the game. and if you’re someone after The Next Competitive Timesink, I don’t think you will either.