“It all feels weirdly beneath him”
Feeling like a cosplayer in MARVEL’S AVENGERS
THIS MONTH
Watched an unhealthy amount of Marvel movies.
ALSO PLAYED
Assassin’ s Creed Valhalla, Legends of Ru ne terra
Superheroes are a particularly difficult thing to get right in a videogame. They shouldn’t be, in theory—power fantasy is gaming’s bread and butter, and loads of game protagonists have supernatural abilities anyway. But in practice it requires a delicate balance.
Marvel’s Avengers perfectly illustrates the potential pitfalls, sadly by falling afoul of most of them.
The game begins with an attack on the Golden Gate Bridge—the Avengers swoop in to try and stop it. I first get to charge into battle as the mighty Thor, whirling Mjolnir.
The thing is, the enemies aren’t aliens, super-soldiers, or robots, they’re just… guys. Dudes in body armor with guns. Understandably for a tutorial level, they go down easy. The result is I don’t feel like a superhero overcoming great evil, I feel like a bully. The wider context of the Marvel universe is unavoidable baggage—I’m acutely aware of not only how powerful Thor is, but of his moral compass. It all feels weirdly beneath him.
And the funny thing is, when things swing the other way, that’s no good either. As combat difficulty escalates, and paramilitary thugs are replaced with high-tech robots, you frequently feel pillow-fisted. When a nameless android can take a right hook from the Hulk without even flinching, the illusion is immediately shattered. This isn’t the Hulk, it’s just an everyday action game protagonist wearing a big, green costume.
HERO TO ZERO
A delicate balance, you see? And the more videogame-y layers Avengers slathers on—like gating basic abilities behind level ups, or constantly forcing you into menus to fiddle with loot, or sending Ms Marvel hurtling down into the abyss every time you fluff an awkward platforming sequence—the more any feeling of superheroics is lost.
Marvel’s Avengers isn’t bad, really—the story’s solid enough, it looks nice, and you have to applaud its grand ambition. But none of its eight heroes (and counting) really feel like the ones we know from comics, films, or TV in play, and that’s a problem you can’t punch your way past. ■