In an all-too-expected turn of events, Marvel Games is trying to milk every last pixel of video game revenue opportunity out of the silver screen success of The Avengers. To wit: just this year, we've seen Marvel Avengers Alliance on Facebook, Avengers Initiative on iOS, and Marvel Avengers: Battle for Earth announced for Xbox 360. If licensing issues could be overcome, surely someone would make "The Sims: Avengers Edition," complete with Whedon-approved Simlish angst.

Lost in this year's film-fueled gold rush is another Marvel game with a title so wimpy you'd think it was describing a line of big-headed Burger King kids' meal toys: Marvel Heroes. I might have walked right past its piddly PAX Prime booth last week, but after a quick glance at the PC screens full of well-known Marvel characters engaged in isometric, Diablo-style combat, I remembered: Oh, right. This game.

Marvel Heroes comes by that Diablo-style combat honestly. The game's creator, David Brevik, founded Blizzard North and co-created the first two Diablo games. More recently, he earned a tasteless jab from the current Blizzard production team after leveling criticisms at Diablo III during an interview. The ensuing hubbub around those comments almost totally obscured the game that the interview was actually supposed to be about: a free-to-play, superhero-fueled take on his old Diablo pedigree. In fact, in a statement defending Brevik following the interview, his company, Gazillion Entertainment, went so far as to call Marvel Heroes "the spiritual successor to Diablo II." Big words!

"I mean, our marketing person feels that way [about the game]," Brevik told Ars with a laugh, speaking from Gazillion's San Mateo, CA office. But he's quick to stand behind the sales pitch, reminding us that he was the guy who came up with the idea for Diablo in high school, then asserting that Blizzard North's original "action-MMO" plans for Diablo III have been reborn in Marvel Heroes.

Based on my time with the Marvel Heroes' PAX demo, Brevik has put his money where his Adamantium claws are. The demo opens with a superhero of your choice dropping into a fortress full of quest-givers (naturally, Professor X is your first) along with vendors and open spaces to chat with other players. From there, players can click through a portal to venture off on quests.

Other than the instant focus on MMO-like character interaction, this is a pure Diablo experience from the get-go. Each of the first slew of characters even fit neatly into Diablo's D&D-esque classes; Hulk is a defender, Cyclops is a controller, Wolverine is a striker.

While the demo has been tweaked for overpowered bombast, its many characters immediately feel unique, stylish, and powerful. The game's speed and ability-juggling feels less like Diablo III and more like Torchlight (another isometric RPG made by ex-Blizzard North employees), which is a good sign. But the game does take some intriguing, big-picture strides away from the Diablo games of old.

During my demo, associate producer Matt Group recommended I tap the T key to swap characters on the fly during my first quest. I smirked and told Group that this seemed like a nice way to let people try multiple characters during a brief demo session. But Group interrupted to say that the feature will be in the final game; so long as your character isn't actively engaged in combat, you'll always be able to instantly warp a new hero in.

It's a curious feature, specifically because Brevik (along with thousands of vocal fans) has bashed Diablo III for its somewhat similar "re-spec at any time" option for characters. Brevik takes issue with the comparison, though. Hardcore Diablo fans are often liable to log out, then log back in with different characters, he points out. This just removes some of the hassle from that process. "Some people are going to find it too convenient, maybe," Brevik says. "But each one of these things is a character [that] has its own inventory, its own set of skills, its own control panel setup, its own quest states."

Also unlike Diablo III, Marvel Heroes' will be split into three types of zones: "towns," where Professor X and friends dole out quests and offer chat spaces; "public combat zones," which see tons of players completing solo missions side-by-side while cooperating for larger public events (in the PAX demo's case, a huge battle against Sentinel); and "instanced areas," which tie into a specific character's story and include only a hero and his/her party members. While these zone types should sound ancient to MMO fiends, no other isometric RPG has adopted them until now.

And then there's the free-to-play aspect, details of which are still under wraps before the game's early October beta reveal. Brevik is quick to say that players won't pay after they hit a certain level, nor will they ever pay for "powers" or better gear (and almost certainly won't pay for an in-game auction house). He's coy about what will players will pay for, mentioning "convenience and cosmetic" purchases before name-checking free-to-play titan League of Legends, a game that charges for additional heroes. He admits that fans can expect a constantly growing roster of heroes over time—"We have access to the whole Marvel universe, 8,000 characters or something like that"—so paid access to extra heroes seems likely.

Brevik is no slouch when it comes to Marvel knowledge and lore. When he slips up calling foes in the game "monsters," he corrects himself: "I guess we do have monsters; Mole Man has monsters." But he's less interested in living up to the universe's 8,000-character count and more excited about tuning Marvel Heroes as a free-to-play experience from the ground up. That means the game will never have its core play muted by cost requirements, yet it will be able to invent tons of new character classes along the way—already, Marvel Heroes is up to 22 announced characters, compared to Diablo III's piddling five-hero selection.

Citing his Blizzard experience again, Brevik says he's been anticipating the Western free-to-play boom since its rise in Korea and China ("I've been ringing this bell for years! Here it comes! Here it comes!"). Considering that Marvel Heroes began taking shape in early 2009, Brevik's market assumption couldn't have found a better time to come to fruition, as free-to-play games like League of Legends and World of Tanks begin making real Western in-roads with larger audiences.

Gazillion says closed beta invites will ship out after October 1st, but Marvel Heroes won't open its real-money economy until the game's official launch, the timing of which Brevik declined to estimate. Sounds like he'd like at least a few more months to get a bit closer to that 8,000-character limit and to blow those tired Avengers film comparisons out of the water.

"We have a big library to work with," he says with another laugh. "I'll be busy for at least the next few weeks."