Main Street Mobile Arcade: The (Marvel) Revolution will not be mobilized

It’s a good time to be a fan of Marvel and video games! You just had a major expansion to Marvel’s Avengers launch, next month you get a Guardians of the Galaxy game and there was a bunch of stuff just announced at the recent PlayStation showcase.

Mobile fans weren’t completely left out either as a huge and potentially ambitious new MMO for iOS and Android launched just a few weeks ago in Marvel Future Revolution, drawing many comparisons to Marvel’s Avengers.

Well friends I’ve spent a decent amount of hours now with Marvel Future Revolution, and while it definitely has a couple of advantages over its big console cousin, I don’t think it’s particularly revolutionary in any way shape, or form.

So one somewhat pedantic complaint I want to get out of the way is that the title, Marvel Future Revolution, is complete and utter nonsense that has nothing to do with the game. The basic setup is fine enough, multiverses are colliding, the villains think the way to stop it is to destroy all but one of them and you’ve got to stop them while finding another solution. But this isn’t the future, there’s no “revolution” happening. Granted, titles for all kinds of media can often be silly and not make a ton of sense but this is a standout even by those standards

But there are some really good positives I want to highlight here. One being that Marvel Future Revolution offers a pretty good amount of customization, especially compared to say Marvel’s Avengers which while the latter has tons of costumes available, most are terrible, cost too much money and many don’t even look all that different along with the fact getting new and better equipment never changes how your character looks. In Marvel Future Revolution, gear is doled out at a pretty regular rate so you are regularly changing your look and you can see tons of other players that have your same character looking very different which is pretty cool.

Second, the presentation in Marvel Future Revolution is pretty top-notch for a mobile game. I’ve been playing it on my new iPad I got at the beginning of this year and it looks great overall with some cool cinematics and it’s able to display a lot on screen. I admittedly have no comparison to other mobile MMOs because I am just not in that space but I do think it looks very good.

Also, the game has a huge cast of both recognizable and fairly obscure characters so it’s not like you’ll just be seeing ones only MCU fans will recognize.

But ultimately, where Marvel Revolution falters for me long term is it just isn’t that interesting to play. You start with a decent enough roster of heroes to choose from, but the game is like the lightest version of World of Warcraft I’ve ever played. The characters don’t feel drastically different because literally, all you do is go from one battle point to the next tapping icons and waiting for cooldowns. Hell, the game can practically run itself and the few times I’ve really had to take control (usually for a big boss fight) key mechanics like using healing items or dodging are flimsy at best.

There’s also no real sense of discovery in Marvel Future Revolution. Each area is just a pretty small contained space and I understand that might just be the limits of the mobile platform, but it is what it is. There’s not much if any reason for me to go looking around an area, I just go from point to point fighting enemies in the extremely dull manner I described. Traversal can be completely automated which is often preferable because moving around with touch controls with any of the heroes can be awkward.

Maybe it’ll come in a future update, but also the ability to play on the side of the villains, or maybe at least some villains who switch sides for the purpose of saving all the multiverses would be a cool idea too.

I am not saying Marvel Future Revolution is a terrible game by any stretch, But aside from some really good presentations, it doesn’t really seem to do much to distinguish itself or be particularly compelling. If you just want something to mostly mindlessly tap away at while you watch a movie or show occasionally checking in to update your loot and gear I guess this will fit the bill but personally, if I’m going to get invested I want more than that. Maybe that’s asking too much of any mobile game, I’m not sure. But if you are looking for your next mobile obsession I don’t think Marvel Future Revolution gives you much of a reason to get hooked.

That’s all for today, not completely sure if I’ll have another entry this week but certainly will next week so see ya real soon!