First of all, I was under the impression that this Beta was still only available to the press and maybe only a pre-order bonus because I hadn't really heard anything about it outside some impressions pieces, but turns out this is freely available to the public via at the very least the PSN store. Personally, I'm pretty let down by its initial showing, though I just finished the big Hulk sequence and switched to Ms. Marvel so I know there's a bit more to go and this is the character a lot of people have had good things to say about. Still, I'm not sure liking one character and disliking another will be enough to change how I'm feeling about this demo so far.

Above all else, it just feels kind of sloppy. The environments are frankly very unimpressive after playing Last of Us 2, Ghost of Tsushima, Death Stranding, FFVII Remake and what little I got out of DOOM Eternal this year. Sometimes (there's a specific arena with a waterfall that has a bit of a Naughty Dog walk-and-talk involved) I've found myself amazed that this is a game saying goodbye to this console generation rather than hello to it; I went scrolling through my trophy list and I'm really not sure that there's a game I've played that felt this uncannily stuck in between things as this game has at times.

It's also a pretty rigid gameplay experience, and so far has felt like it wants to remind older players of other superhero games of the past two generations (we know the one[s]...) without coming off inaccessible or overly difficult to younger players, and so everything feels loose and gelatinous in weird ways on Normal difficulty while also offering almost zero challenge because, at the end of the day, these heroes ought to feel relatively invincible, right? The Bombcast guys got into a bit last week but the Hulk scenario just doesn't feel right - you're constantly being stun-locked and booted from attack animations, yet you're never lacking for health, yet the fights take forever because every enemy takes four or five hits and they all have projectiles that arbitrarily force you to re position and stop the smashing.

But more than anything, I worry about trying to inject more narrative into a game with clear Destiny influences (as a guy that usually likes a "mouse cursor" UI and can look past having to hold a button to confirm a menial choice, this UI is trashy) given what Crystal Dynamics was willing to show here. This is some very barebones stuff that only feels of its time in any way thanks to some shiny visuals (that, again, don't always feel that shiny at all) but otherwise give me flashbacks to the format of PS1 and PS2-era superhero games.

Obviously I'll finish the demo, but as somebody who was tentatively excited for this to become my new time-killing game du jour as I inevitably fade out of wanting to play MLB The Show over and over in the late fall, so far Marvel's Avengers feels like a mediocre brawler at best and a potentially super scummy micro-transaction haven at worst. I loved the gameplay of Tomb Raider and Rise of Tomb Raider, as well as the general world building and level design, and I thought Crystal Dynamics did a fine job of aping the Naughty Dog school of prestige cutscene direction without steadfastly adhering to their "no, it's a movie, dude!" ethos. I had really hoped that they'd be able to pull all the disparate interests of this Avengers game together into something truly fun, cool and a unique twist on the Diablo sort of formula they seem to be going for here...but I'm now among the many who are worried this game is going to be a bland yet mind-numbingly crowd-pleasing dud of the highest order.

Probably. I played the demo last year and my overwhelming impression was how much it felt like a game from the PS2 generation with modern day graphics. There would need to be some serious variation in the gameplay and boss fights outside of what I played (the Golden Gate Bridge section) to make me even remotely interested in picking it up but judging from what's come out since then about the structure of the game this seems extremely unlikely.

That being said, I'd be willing to bet that it still does decently just off the strength of the IP alone. Probably not good enough if SE's standards for the sales of the last Tomb Raider game are anything to go by, but decently.

I played a ton of the beta the past two weekends and really enjoyed it, to the point that I fully leveled up all four characters while running through missions with friends. It’s admittedly not the greatest directed single player experience from what I’ve played, but the multiplayer experience where you beat up bad guys with your buds is a lot of fun. And I really like the variety between each hero, it’s almost Overwatch-like in how I’m excited to see new characters and messing with how they play. I’m very intrigued to see how this game unfolds post-launch.

Caveat that I’m a big Marvel fan, so that may be carrying some of my enthusiasm here.

I really wanted to like this game. I loved Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 1 & 2. I'm a huge fan of Marvel (comics and movies). I played 4 hours of the beta, and it just wasn't fun. Ms. Marvel was definitely the best of the four characters in the beta (with Black Widow being second, and Thor felt fun, but you only get to be him for like 3 minutes). I have been trying to figure out why this game just doesn't feel fun, and I think I figured out why.

1) You get 3 super powers that are not changeable (big reason I didn't like Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 3). Where in MUA1 & 2, you unlocked powers as you went and could set any 4 to use with a mana pool.

2) The 3 super powers are on Destiny-style timers. It feels like you don't get to use them enough. Now, one is an ult and I'm ok with that being on a timer. One is what I call a "special" ability (healing, invisibility, etc.), which I'm also ok with a timer. But your third power feels like something that you should be able to use at least on a very short timer. Now, in Destiny, in addition to powers, you also get a grenade and a melee timer. So, it usually feels like you can constantly use your super powers, because there are enough of them.

3) Every character feels very similar. You can either run up and do combos, or do a ranged attack. However, neither makes you feel like a super hero. It feels like you're just attacking damage sponges. The Hulk should be able to pulverize the minions. It shouldn't take six 6-hit combos to take out a minion.

4) There are upgrade trees, but they are uninteresting. It's things like, "while sprinting, you can do a basic attack." Why isn't that a basic ability?! Or, add an attack to your combo. It's not anything cool like MUA1 & 2.

5) This one I can see both sides of, but every character levels separately and gets gear separately. Now, if you're a streamer, you have a lot more game to stream. However, if I spend all my time playing one character, then start playing online, I'm possibly screwed, if someone else picked that character. Alternatively, if you and your friend both only like the same character, then one of you is stuck playing a character you don't want to be (where as in MUA, there were a LOT of characters). I wasn't sure, but I think if you play single player, the AI controlled characters at least gain some XP.

6) Each character has a "challenge card" that looks like a Battle Pass. You get resources, costumes and face plates. I gained enough credits that I easily purchased out 38 levels and maxed Ms. Marvel's challenge card after just a few hours. However, almost all of the costumes just feel like color swaps. In the original MUAs, the costumes had significant differences. Cap had different shield shapes, Ms. Marvel (Carol Danvers) had significantly different clothing designs (like where it existed, not just a different color). Now, this is personal taste, but none of the costumes felt cool. They all just felt off-brand.

7) Which leads to my final point. The whole game just feels like an off-brand game. Like, if the makers of Go-Bots suddenly gained the Transformers license or when the quality of materials used in making something is replaced with a worse quality. Now, maybe it's not fair to make so many comparisons to MUA, but how can you not. When a game with so may basic, on paper similarities that released 14 years ago just feels better in so many ways, how can you not make comparisons to it?

I think a big part of the problem is that they are focusing very specifically on The Avengers(TM) as the playable characters rather than just having the game exist in that universe. It kind of doesn't work on a number of levels.

First, as other people have mentioned, it feels very "off-brand." Given the ubiquity of Marvel in the world these days, using these characters without being able to have the likeness and voice of the actors who played them is just really off-putting. And because those are the playable characters that problem is going to be in people's faces for the entire game.

Second, this doesn't really work with the "Destiny-ification" of the gameplay. Since all of the Avengers have "cannon" powers and equipment, it doesn't really feel correct to have different gear dropping for them all the time. In some cases, it doesn't even really make sense (i.e. Hulk).

I really think they would have been better off letting players create their own hero character. The plot of the game seems to allow for this (some future techno-chemical leak gives a bunch of people super-powers) and it would have side-stepped a lot of the other issues. Gear and character progression suddenly make a lot more sense, since your character would essentially be "learning" to be a superhero, and you wouldn't be confronted with not-quite-right faces and voices quite as often.

@therealturk: While I get the desire to have fully customizable, unique heroes for players, from my time playing DC Universe Online, I just didn’t find it very satisfying. I didn’t want to be fake Green Lantern, I just wanted to be Green Lantern, yknow? And Avenger’s method allows for a fun live service rollout of new characters every few months that appeals to my comic book geek heart. Can’t wait until it’s year three and they’re serving up some deeper cuts like Jubilee or Moon Knight.

I played the demo until it crashed, which was about 15 minutes.

I wasn't overly keen on the gameplay, it reminded me of Metal Gear Rising or something. I wouldn't pay full price for it.

I tried it, but was pretty underwhelmed by, well, almost everything. Although my biggest issue was the constant camera shake, I find it extremely annoying in games and it makes me sick after a while (could not find an option to turn it off either, but I could have just missed it).

I played for like 4 or 5 hours Saturday and thought it was ok but I had no desire to play it again on Sunday which speaks volumes. Also, given it was nearly impossible to get 4 players together in matchmaking it's starting to look dead on arrival too.

Funny enough, there was a Marvel VR game a couple years ago for Oculus Rift which had many of the same issues arguably to a worse extent (extremely repetitive, very barebones gameplay) that I honestly enjoyed more because at least you could kill things quickly which made you feel more like a superhero.

I enjoyed parts of the gameplay, but jumping into the online missions to do goals like "defend this position for x amount of time" with a paper thin narration and then thinking how I'd have to a countless amount of those like in Destiny 2 and The Division 2 (as other examples I've personally played), my interest died out pretty quickly.

The story missions were okay, but also generic as hell, at least based on what was there. I would still rather play a game featuring just those than any of the multiplayer stuff, but not for a full price. So if the story itself turns out fine enough and you can just play it without touching the online components, I might give it a go once the game's heavily discounted.

This thing also feels like it came out couple of years too late, for various reasons, Avengers: Endgame wrapping up the ten year Marvel phase being one of them. Of course this is seperate from the movies, but it still feels odd.

There's just not much to say, it's a pretty simple beat em up, i watched Jackfrags play 2 hours of it and about the only notable thing worth mentioning is that there was too much motion blur.

I thought I would pick this game up just for Ms. Marvel but the story content in the Beta was just so boring. The gameplay was okay, but I also had a moment where my AI buddies just got stuck halfway across the map and I had to run all the way back to pick them up. Early on I had the realisation that I felt the same as I did when I first started MuA3, but in that game I at least had a huge variety of heroes I was unlocking that enabled me to force myself through the game. Here there's just nothing. Maybe there's some way that the combat changes later on in the game that could make it interesting but nothing about the beta made me want to pick up the game at launch. Also a lot of the unlockable skins seemed not great? Spiderman PS4 had great unlockable skins but this game seems to have avoided having any fun skins.

@jamesyfx: I WISH this reminded me of Metal Gear Rising. It's just nothing special and the focus on repeatable missions and loot killed my interest in it.

The beta would be good if the game still had 1-2 years of development time left but with less then 3 weeks till release things ain't looking good. The motion blur and framerate in the 20's during most fights feel awful. They made every hero feel the same strength wise an enemy will take the same number of hits to defeat if your using Black Widow or the Hulk I get you need to make them balanced but it just feels lame. The loot is all crap even legendary gear it just gives you 3 perks instead of the 2 that rare and epic gear have no unique ability's like Destiny. I really hope AIM is not the only enemy type there is cause that will get old fast think Destiny if it only had the Vex in it. All the insides of the facilities looked the same no mater what location you were in. I put around 30hrs into the beta and have no desire to play the full game till its on sale for under $15.

At least it has this

Oh man, I forgot the beta went wide last weekend. Seems like the kind of thing I could get into with my brother across the country, but I'm not really up for another GAAS Destiny-type thing, especially if the combat isn't incredible. Only thing that would change my mind is a 50% off sale and Black Panther.

I'm always on the lookout for a mindlessly fun game I can just sort of play at night to wind down, so this may very well scratch that itch. Kamala Khan being playable AND the narrator is a plus, she's one of my favorite characters WHEN she's written WELL, so...not exactly filled with confidence this time around.

Frankly, the fact that a big-ass Avengers game might rise to the level of "fun game to have while watching Youtube/listening to podcasts" isn't exactly a glowing review. I didn't hate Ultimate Alliance 3 (it was MASSIVELY FLAWED and easily the bottom of the 3, but it was also mindlessly fun once you got into the loop, and the DLC was actually pretty neat), so the fact that this just sounds like it's going to be a bigger budget version is...yeah, I'll wait for a sale.

Here's to hoping the lesson they learn isn't "WE SHOULD HAVE HAD DEADPOOL OR SOME OTHER DUDE BE THE MAIN CHARACTER! LADIES DON'T SELL GAMES!"-industry dreck.

To anyone complaining about uninteresting unlockable costumes...don't worry, I'm sure they will have all the fun/interesting ones....for a price.

But how else am I gonna play Marvel Ultimate Alliance?

(Rhetorical question. Don't @ me.)

It'll probably be a 6 or 7 out of 10. My big worry was how boring Hulk, and to a lesser degree Kamala, were to play. Some stuff was just corny and stupid like Iron Man has to punch people to build up energy and Hulk should be tougher as well as regen health since he can heal almost as well as Wolverine (generally speaking). I wish they focused on the skill trees and not loot. A lot of their decisions don't fit Avengers.

After playing the beta all I can say is this:

Bring back Marvel Heroes you bastards

Amen. I've had such a Marvel Heroes sized hole in my gaming life since that shut down, which made me super excited about this upcoming game....until stuff finally started coming out about it. Now, after seeing footage and quite a few takes/impressions, I'm just sad. There is so much they could do with a Marvel Super Hero game, to see it boil down to just a Destiny-like is a major buzzkill. I'll maybe pick it up when it's super cheap, but nowadays there is so much to play that I may very well just never bother.

I didn't even get to the multiplayer I was having such a lackluster time with the game. Honestly, didn't grab me at all. The combat has no nuance it's just button mashers delight. I don't feel like I can actively dodge / attack and get a specific result its just like watching two characters windmill into one another. Then every so often you can press a button to get a special which is the same every time. It had no weight to anything and I'm not really a fan of the visuals or representations of the characters. I love me some Nolan North, Troy Baker, Laura Bailey and co, but it seems like they're direction was just to give the most safe voice acting they possibly could - and we all know they can bring it when they want to. Here it's sadly just generic. Personally I don't think Nolan North suits Ironman at all and ultimately find it jarring. I won't be picking the game up - it's just not for me.

I just played a decent amount of the open beta on PC. Completed every mission (that I know of) once, mostly with Ms. Marvel but played all available heroes. I didn't play anything in co-op, just in single player.

I have to say I was very underwhelmed when it was first revealed, after being quite excited to see what a studio the caliber of Crystal Dynamics could do with a Marvel game. Unfortunately, I found the way the characters looked to be quite jarring, the writing seemed poor, the voice acting uninspiring and the gameplay looked to be serviceable at best.

Now having played the beta I can say that my initial impression was largely and disappointingly spot on. The writing doesn't seem great (so far), there are some super talented voice actors in this game (Laura Bailey, Nolan North, Troy Baker) but for whatever reason their performances feel quite bland. Especially compared to their performances in previous games, the Last of Us 1 and/or 2 for example.

The graphics are subpar and it seems very unoptimized. The gameplay seems ok. I didn't feel like there was a huge amount of variety between the heroes. It felt a little better, at least with Ms. Marvel, unlocking more skills but there still isn't a lot of nuance to the combat. The loot doesn't seem to be particularly interesting and I didn't see any unlockable costumes that got me excited either. It seems that there are daily and weekly challenges and some sort of battle pass looking thing per character.

The thing that sort of surprised me was that when actually playing the game, the issue with the way the characters look didn't really bother me... or at least I got used to it pretty quickly. I don't really need them to look or sound like the characters in the movies, especially after playing 100's of hours of Marvel Heroes. Saying that, it did feel a bit jarring when they do make some reference to the movies that they are different. Also there are at least 2 distinct lines from Ironman during combat that reference Ghostbusters which felt a bit weird and out of place.

I like that it will populate your squad with up to 3 other heroes but it doesn't appear that any of the computer controlled characters (when playing single player) will level up or acquire any loot? A lot of the missions are very generic. Unfortunately there is really nothing else (in the beta at least) that is even close to the, I guess, complexity of first mission you play on the bridge. I enjoyed to boss fight on the recommended gear score 20 mission but then there is also a mission type where you are dropped into a facility and all you have to do is beat up 4 generators (or whatever) to succeed. The enemies will spawn endlessly (I believe) so you can just ignore them completely, destroy the mcguffin, the enemies will despawn, mission over. All done in a couple of minutes.

Overall I don't really know if I am going to pick this up. I know I sound pretty down on it but I am also the sort of person that thoroughly enjoys games that have a bunch of generic side quests/activities/tick boxes such as the newer style Assassin's Creeds, Ghost of Tsushima, etc. I know this game is structured differently but I still think that I could find some enjoyment. Plus I am a Marvel fan and that goes a pretty long way too.

I don't think I am going to get it September 4th. I do plan on getting the both next gen consoles so may get it on PS5, mostly because I don't know if there will be too much else to play at launch anyway (congrats Sony, locking up Spider-man I guess worked on getting me to buy it on your platform...)

I do hope it develops into a great game, I just don't think it is one yet.

Played a chunk of the beta last night. Probably won't be buying it, but I wasn't quite as bored with it as I expected based on the impressions I've read. Nonetheless, it's such a bummer that it's a Destinylike. Left me daydreaming about an Ultimate Alliance-meets-Dragon Age party-based ARPG which would have been a much more interesting use of all these assets. Sigh.

Since its first showing I thought this game looked terrible and uninteresting. Nothing I've seen since then has changed my opinion. I did not expect much from Crystal Dynamics. Like Tomb Raider was pretty mediocre (at least the first one which is the only one I played in the new trilogy) so my expectations weren't high to begin with. But then to make this game a Destiny-like or whatever it is supposed to be just seems like a weird choice for an Avengers game in this style. I hope they surprise me and it ends up being good but right now I am not convinced.

Runs real bad on my system (I5 6600k, Gtx 1080, 8gb DDR4 ram). Even on low at 1080p it would drop into the 30's, ran about the same at high 1440p and low 1080 tbh. Crashed once, cutscenes skipped around a lot. I have all updated drivers etc, and I believe my system should still be able to handle modern games at those settings.

Game itself seemed fine, good voice acting etc, and graphics look good. Only got to the ms marvel stuff before stopping as it was pretty unplayable and glitchy as well(Couldn't even pause to quit at one point lol).

I tried the beta on PC last night. The enemies and environments look good, but the closeups of the characters' faces are terrible, the voice acting and dialogue is bad, and the only hero that feels good to play as is Captain America--and that only feels good because it feels like Arkham-lite. Black Widow was okay, but you play as her in a boss fight that feels tedious. Hulk and Thor feel like they have no impact to their hits, and Iron Man feels like he was pulled directly from a PS2-era shooter.

The story goes from a cutscene of Bruce Banner telling Congress that the Avengers are too dangerous to be allowed to continue what they do, jumps ahead five years, and puts Bruce Banner on a mission with Kamala Khan to find some old Avengers tech. It makes no sense.

This game feels like it's a decade old already. I won't be playing any more of it.

Overall I am having some dumb fun with it, but it feels weirdly unbalanced, as if they made characters fast/agile fitting the characters but they didn't adjust power with that. So it feels like Hulk packs less of a punch than most of the others as he feels slower but takes more or less the same amout of hits to down someone. Ms Marvel and Captain America wrecks enemies pretty fast, Iron Man is a poor man's Anthem. Thor felt very underwhelming similar to Hulk in perceived power and I wasn't all that impressed with the toolset of that one section but maybe he has more fun skills later on. Overall I have spent most of my time with Iron Man as his close combat is pretty decent, his range stuff is useful and Hulkbuster suit is somewhat fun.

I don't know, I feel like I could have some fun with this game. But I don't see myself getting it until some kind of sale and a few patches works stuff out.

So with all the reactions I was expecting this game to be an absolute dumpster fire.

But I spent a good amount of time with it this weekend and, I don't know, it's fine.

It definitely targets the same appeal as the avengers films. Nothing super ground breaking or serious, just a sparkly super hero romp.

Not sure if it was just coming off of the spider man game that had expectations far higher for this thing, but I don't think it's anywhere as bad as it's being made out to be.

I'll probably pick it up on sale just to good around with some super heroes. And especially with this supposedly being a live service game, I wouldn't be surprised if they improve on some of the sameness of the enemies down the road.