As a premise, Marvel Heroes

While it isn’t a huge surprise that the more popular characters like Deadpool and Wolverine have to be obtained as drops or bought with unreasonably large gobs of real-world cash, the free starter heroes - Daredevil (melee damage), Hawkeye (ranged damage), Scarlet Witch (ranged caster), Storm (ranged controller) or Thing (tank) - do a good job of catering to a variety of playstyles. It’s a good thing too, because while you can theoretically unlock all 21 heroes in the roster without spending a penny via drops, in reality drop rates are so low and so random that the likelihood of you acquiring any new character, let alone the one you actually want, is slim indeed.

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When you do unlock another hero, another issue raises its head. Because each hero levels independently, I quickly found that I was left with one or more under-levelled heroes, with the problem only getting worse the further I progressed. So while my starter pick of Storm was joined by both Daredevil and Hawkeye, I struggled to find any incentive to switch between them for one simple reason: the notion of grinding through familiar areas all over again was just too boring. Going through it all once with my main character was draining enough.

That boredom comes from failures on two fronts: combat and loot. In regards the former, Marvel Heroes feels rather stilted and lackluster. The lack of variety in both enemies and customizable character abilities makes both content and combat feel shallow when compared to the likes of Diablo 2, and made it feel like I’d seen all Marvel Heroes has to offer after an hour. For every exciting encounter with a Sentinel there are dozens of dull slogs through nameless Maggia goons, and I regularly found myself spamming Storm’s Chain Lightning ability and little else. Issues with balancing also meant that rather than jumping out the way of attacks and trying to find the optimal time to strike back, standing still and clicking until the enemy’s health bar depleted was often a winning strategy.

So while combat leaves something to be desired, does the other quintessential element of ARPGs - the loot grind - succeed? Sadly not, but probably not for the reasons you think. Judged by numbers alone, the loot is good. A wide range of statistics and boosts to abilities encourage you to search for items to complement your playstyle, and the ability to reshuffle items’ attributes via the crafting system was a similarly pleasant surprise. Unfortunately, all this statistical progress pales into insignificance when compared to other ARPGs because gear doesn’t change your character’s appearance.

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While dressing your heroes in famous vintage costumes, such as those from the ‘90s X-Men cartoon, is a nice idea in theory, in practice it’s actually a bit of a drawback. Even if you enjoy scrutinising every piece of gear to see which will give you the biggest edge (and I do), one of the key things that keeps loot drops worth chasing in most games is seeing what your character looks like with bigger, better, and flashier gear equipped. But while I was getting stronger and unlocking additional powers, nothing aesthetically differentiated my Storm from the 10 other Storms I found standing around me at Avenger’s Tower or in dungeons. This is one of the problems of trying to incorporate aspects of MMOs: while in Diablo 3 everyone in a character class starts out looking the same, you’re probably going to have a fairly unique look after a few hours. In Marvel Heroes, your appearance is only as unique as you’re willing to pay for. As a result progression is trivialised, which in turn made me feel that much less inclined to hunt for more loot. Sadly, the endgame only compounds this problem, which really isn’t a good thing when you consider that the whole draw of it should be focused on making you care about loot.

The PvP section is still in beta and needs balancing, but currently places you on one of three teams and tasks you with assaulting the bases of the two while protecting your own. It’s a confusing experience, with higher level players running around and one-shotting everyone else and no one quite sure what’s going on. Seeing as the reward system is also heavily underdeveloped, it’s really not worth participating in at this stage.

The post-campaign PvE, meanwhile, revolves around three Daily Mission Terminals. The green one is your starting point, and they send you back to areas you’ve already explored to re-kill familiar bosses from the story missions, like Sinister and Magneto, each with a random enhancement. It’s not particularly compelling; daily missions feel repetitive at the best of times, but encountering the same bosses with the same moves in the same environments only compounds the problem. Completing the green terminal missions in turn unlocks harder versions, accessed by the red terminal…but this is where the free-to-play business model again becomes problematic.

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To access the harder versions (and earn better loot) via the red terminal, you need an item called a Cosmic Key. These can be obtained as drops from the green terminal missions, but that’s by no means guaranteed. The other way to get one is from the cash shop. As a result, you can quickly find yourself running out of productive things to do each day, unless you fork over some cash. Whilst it’s only around a dollar for a key, there are over 30 missions that require a key to do each day. This quickly adds up. While it’s important to acknowledge that free-to-play games need to make money somewhere, this implementation is jarring, and means that once you reach the endgame you’re pretty much forced to pay if you want to seriously progress or pursue the best drops, like heroes or costumes.

While that may sound bleak, the purple terminal missions are much more enjoyable. Dubbed the “challenge” terminal, it tasks you with two different mission types: group and survival. Group mode pits you and four friends against powered-up enemies and a final boss, with a limited number of lives in which to defeat them. They’re a good time the first few runs, but quickly get repetitive, especially as it’s both time consuming and more or less exactly the same thing you’ve been doing up until this point.

The survival missions, however, are much more fun and frenetic. After being automatically placed in a group of around 14 others, you’re then tasked with surviving waves of enemies, working together to kill foes, and reaching checkpoints to reduce the amount of damage you all take. It’s fast, encourages teamwork, and for the first time since I started playing I truly felt like I was part of a superhero squad. If a teammate dies and isn’t resurrected, they’ll be removed from the challenge, giving you one less ally to rely on against the final boss. It’s also worth noting that survival missions are the fastest way to get experience and level up when you reach this stage, as well as the most fun.

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There are other enjoyable parts, too. While parts of the story may ring bells for anyone who played Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, it’s still pretty engaging thanks to the graphic novel presentation and faithful depictions of familiar characters. The drawback is that it does focus largely on the Avengers and X-Men, so if you’re playing as a character with no particular connection to either you’re probably going to be sidelined from the plot.

It’s also important to remember that while the pricing in the cash shop is hugely overzealous in places in its attempts to eke money from people ($20 for Spider-Man or Deadpool is far too much, especially as they then start at level one, and that’s before you even consider getting a costume too), you can experience one heck of a lot without ever paying a penny. Additionally, there’s nothing on sale that increases your strength or breaks gameplay, which is always the worry for a lot of gamers when approaching a free-to-play game. It’s worth giving a go if you’ve got an interest in the Marvel Universe or enjoy Action RPGs, but I struggle to think of anything that’ll make anyone but the most hardcore fan stick around once the campaign ends.