Sometimes, you don’t quite know what makes something work until you experience another version of it that doesn’t. This is, unfortunately, my experience of Marvel Rivals, a team battler that is eminently playable and moreish, but also never quite properly good.
Marvel Rivals reviewDeveloper: NetEasePublisher: NetEasePlatform: Played on PCAvailability: Out now on PC (Steam, Epic), PS5, Xbox Series X/S
In this case, it’s a matter of many, many little things holding Marvel Rivals back, as opposed to one major error, the result being a game that’s much a lesson as anything else: that competitive games, perhaps more than any other, are games that live and die by their attention to detail.
The setup here is brisque and simple enough. Two teams of six heroes slog it out over the usual array of objectives: take and hold a central capture zone until a progress bar hits 100 percent; or escort a payload through three checkpoints to an endzone; best of three rounds wins. Before matches you pick from a surprisingly wide range of Marvel characters, from your classic A-listers like Iron Man and Wolverine all the way to, it says here, Squirrel Girl, Namor, and Jeff the Land Shark. There are some decent tutorial bits, a well kitted-out practice arena and a spot of light PvE in a slightly perfunctory arcade mode, but ultimately this eternal 6v6 competition is the crux of it. It isn’t reductivist to just say this really is Marvel Overwatch.
I should preface all this by saying I really haven’t had a terrible time with Marvel Rivals. It is not a disaster, and despite its very obvious free-to-play trappings it is still somewhat inoffensive there (albeit perhaps only because the sheer, maximalist opacity of its UI is too busy getting in the way for me to ever really engage with its many forms of in-game currency – more on that soon). The problem is it just fails to ever, really, be particularly . I’ve experienced something while playing Marvel Rivals. Some frustration, some competitive urge, a few fleeting moments of satisfaction, a few more moments of boredom and disappointment. But none, when I really think about it, that ever really landed on fun.
1 of 3 Caption Attribution
Let’s get into it then. Marvel Rivals’ single biggest issue from the long list of little ones is probably the hardest to explain, but also the most important. It’s the lack of strategy, which is really a result of something else: Marvel Rivals is overcomplicated, lacking the clear archetypes, obvious complimentary picks, readable environments, and broad character strokes that all combine to give more successful team battlers their special sauce. Which is this: a sense of ongoing, organic, ever-changing tactical narrative.