Marvel’s Avengers: Generation Next
Well, Square Enix had their own version of a “Direct” yesterday, and while there wasn’t any news on any kind of new Kingdom Hearts games, there was a bunch of other stuff announced along with a long-awaited major update on the still struggling Marvel’s Avengers.
New content dropped in the form of completing archer Hawkeye’s arc along with a new area to fight in, the futuristic apocalyptic Wasteland, seemingly ruled by an evil bearded Hulk who goes by the name of Maestro in the future. Along with a fairly detailed roadmap showing when can expect more content updates what’s planned in the near future and when the next really big expansion, featuring Black Panther and Wakanda, is coming.
So with this new content and a next-gen upgrade assuming you have been able to get your hands on a next-gen console, which is still very hard to do and all indicators point to that being the case for a good while longer, is Marvel’s Avengers finally living up to its potential?
The next-gen upgrade definitely does what it was supposed to do. I can only speak to playing on a base PS4 but on that platform, the game just didn’t run super well. It wasn’t unplayable, heck I put in about 100 hours on my PS4 playing this game I certainly wouldn’t do that if it wasn’t playable. However, it did look rough, stutter plenty and boy did things take a long time to load.
On the PlayStation 5, Marvel’s Avengers runs incredibly smoothly and looks great. The loading is also incredibly fast. I did have a couple of times where it seemed to freeze up for a few seconds and when a mission was done and then I was suddenly back at a menu rather than a smooth transition, but that was a pretty minor thing.
Honestly, my only complaint about this next-gen upgrade is how it uses the new tech in the PlayStation 5 controller. The PlayStation 5 controller can vibrate and has haptic triggers to supposedly make things like pulling a gun trigger feel more realistic. At least in Marvel’s Avengers, it just makes the controller shake. A lot. Like they clearly had no idea how to implement this to feel like anything good I’m wondering why they bothered. Why does it need to vibrate when I’m running? It’s just bizarre.
As far as the new Hawkeye content goes it’s… fine I guess? Hawkeye is another quippy self-deprecating super-hero so he just feels reminiscent of Tony Stark in this incarnation and as I previously worried, he’s not bad but why play him when he’s basically Kate Bishop without the cool teleporting abilities. His only cool unique ability is he can fire an arrow that heals in a radius for a bit but if I want to play a good healer that’s Kamala.
The Wasteland is a new area to explore but it’s not super different from the others and there aren’t new enemy types to fight so again it’s just not that impressive an update as far as content goes. This release would’ve frankly worked better if Hawkeye was the first in a series of regular hero updates then he wouldn’t seem so underwhelming.
Marvel’s Avengers does finally be on the road to some regular compelling content but the question is will anyone care by the time they get there? I already have the game so I’m not the one they need to convince. But hey in a year that’s bound to be pretty light because many things got delayed due to pandemic issues, maybe Marvel’s Avengers will find a willing audience. We’ll just have to wait and see. At the very least, they are giving it some serious support for the rest of the year rather than just giving up and cutting their losses as is which is noteworthy. If you can get Marvel’s Avengers on sale and you are looking for a new game on your shiny new console when there isn’t all that much out, it’s probably worth your time and money, which I couldn’t have said six months ago.
That’s all for now, see ya real soon!
