It's the same song in every popular game service. Like Helldivers 2 at the start of the year, Marvel Rivals exploded the counters by bringing together 10 million players in 72 hours. A grace period driven by the power of the Marvel brand, free access and fear of missing out quite robust for any multiplayer game enthusiast. But the game can also count on the virtually infinite financial potential of NetEase for its development.
The result is a very solid game from its release with already around thirty characters available, neat models and a plethora of attractive cosmetic skins, some based on the MCU films, others with well-made animations. The resources invested could not be more visible on the screen and the communication work around the game did the rest. Marvel Rivals took advantage of a positive buzz around its economic model ahead of its release, with a battle pass system with no expiration date in particular. All the ingredients for a successful launch are there.
If Mike Ybarra shamed himself a little by declaring that the name of Black Widow was too similar to that of Widowmaker, as if the second preceded the first, this stroke of brilliance seems to have obscured the heart of his point, know the gameplay similarity between the two. It's obvious: Marvel Rivals is Overwatch in TPS version. For any player who has spent time on the hero shooter from Blizzard, the affiliation is obvious, and we even have fun looking for similarities, whether in the level design of the different zones, or in the abilities of the superheroes. We are not at a level of plagiarism of Light of Motiram on Horizon, but Rivals benefits greatly from the codes and work done by Blizzard in 2016.
This monitoring of specifications means that Marvel Rivals is a good game, without offering anything exceptional, and it encounters the same problems asOverwatch in his time. It lacks readability and when all twelve players are in the fray, it is sometimes difficult to understand anything of what is happening. However, it is a safe bet that everything will gain in readability when we better know the skills of all the characters to know who does what, as can be the case on Overwatch or in a completely different register, League of Legends. With that in mind, it might have been nice to start with slightly fewer characters.
The game also has some serious balancing issues that the various betas haven't quite managed to iron out. The fact that Jeff the Shark can eat the entire enemy team, take the time to go to a hole and jump in to kill an entire team is absurd. Just like seeing a fully channeled Scarlet Witch go through a Dr. Stange portal to clear the entire area with a single nuclear blast.
Game is called Groot
However, it is difficult to deny pleasure in the face of this very large cast, both in terms of notoriety – shared between big names and less popular heroes – as well as the variety of playing styles offered. The discovery and taming phase of the game is pleasant and therefore invites us to try everything and anything before finding the character with whom we will like the most. The artistic direction has its little charm with its slight pencil effect and the animations of each character are very neat.
We will particularly appreciate the great effort made by NetEase to offer a huge number of melee characters, truly allowing for variety in the pleasures, and this is undoubtedly the point on which it stands out the most.Overwatch. The concept of synergy between characters is a little extra that makes the difference, by inviting players to more team cohesion by playing Loki and Thor for example, to obtain a small skill or a statistical boost to add to our arsenal.
It therefore remains to answer the question initially asked about the sustainability of the title. NetEase has a card to play in the development of the competitive aspect which could have an important role in long-term success. Even more so in China, where esports is an extremely well-developed sector. At any rate, Rivals can count on an almost infinite number of heroes from the House of Ideas and does not risk running out of content.
As explained by Daniel Ahmad, specialist in the Chinese market, the production of AAA games free to play is becoming a fairly clear trend in this territory. The emerging model thus offers a narrative single-player mode, consistent and free to access, coupled with a solidly monetized multiplayer mode. Although this model is not applied to Marvel Rivalssince there is no single-player mode, this could be an avenue to attract an ever-larger player base.
In fine, Marvel Rivals is a fairly academic game in what it offers, but it had all the means at its disposal to do it well. A fairly unique case which, we hope, will not lead publishers from all walks of life to think that the hero shooter is back in fashion and decides to launch the production of a game which will be released in 2027 and will be forgotten a few months later.
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