So here it is. My first impressions of the playable heroes in Square Enix’s Marvel’s Avengers... This will be done over the next few days and keep in mind that the beta goes live for those who preordered on the 7th of August (this Friday) for those of you on PS4 and for everyone who preordered next weekend, the 14th. Before we do begin, I should mention again that my time with the game was an earlier build. Not everything was perfect and by no means was it complete so as with everything in a pre-release format, a lot is subject to change and tweaks or could work better/worse with the full game’s options at your disposal, also please keep in mind that I must keep some things vague but I will begin with a breakdown of the characters I am allowed to share with you in detail; Black Widow, Iron Man, Hulk and Thor. Both Captain America and Ms. Marvel were unavailable due to story impact reasons. So! Let us begin with:
Black Widow
Black Widow plays like you would expect. She is extremely fast, versatile and agile. She is highly acrobatic and I must say that Crystal Dynamics made it a dream to traverse fights with her. I never felt like she was at a mobility disadvantage alongside characters like Iron Man and Thor who can fly. Her kit is fairly deep and offers a wide variety of abilities and a comprehensive move set that will take a long time to master (which I am a massive fan of) For a more traditional comparison, think of her (at least without tweaking her play style significantly, which is possible) as a rogue. She attacks super fast, her punches and kicks can be combo’d and chained together to create different animations that look like they were ripped straight from the MCU and have different effects on both enemies and the environment. She has a variety of gap openers and gap closers and once you get into combat with her, it honestly just feels so good. Her movement is fast and fluid but flows very nicely. It’s extremely cerebral to move in and out of melee, stealth up, stun... Again, typical rogue things. Her weapon ****nal, both ranged and melee is quite impressive too. She has a few ranged options that let her engage completely at range if you wish (think about archer or ranger archetype for a rogue) but unfortunately I cannot tell you all of the ways she can be played because two of the three trees for her and every hero were locked off but what I did get to experience made me just want to play so much more; it was a supremely satisfying gameplay and combat loop. Black Widow’s kit, while not complete because of the aforementioned trees I did not have access to, was as follows;
[Melee]
Heavy Attack - Kick and punches (including electric batons)
Light Attack - Kicks and punches
Grapple (which she also uses to swing from objects or chain mid-air takedowns in the game sort of like Spider-Man)
Block
Dodge
Ability 1
Ability 2
Stealth
Super/Ultimate/R - At least one for every tree and a super electroshock purse was available for my tree (Think Destiny here for layout and the ability to swap these in and out)
[Ranged]
Autopistols/SMG
Semi-auto handguns
High-calibre pistol
(All these seem to be loot-based but I could be wrong here, they might be also swappable by tree or by a toggle so there may be different variants I was unable to play with)
I will be back tomorrow with Iron Man’s breakdown and my impressions but feel free to ask me any questions today and tonight about Black Widow! Friday onward I will be able to discuss different features and game types as well as things like customisation and gearing! I hope you enjoyed this and thank you again for all your interest and support