Well, colour me surprised. I didn’t play much of Overwatch – I found it way too hard with waaaay to many tryhards and I just kept dying randomly for things that I seemingly had no control over. The frustration of that pushed me away from OW despite several attempts and hours of getting into it (my son liked it at the time).
Enter Marvel Rivals. So many fun characters. So much chaos. But… I feel in control of my destiny more in the game. I already feel super comfortable with less than 7 hours of game play despite there being 33 heroes to start (all free). The game does a good job of cues for ultimates, etc. It’s just a really fun game even not taking it seriously. And its free.
And oh, you can be a cute baby shark that swallows the entire team and spits them out off the map. See my highlight below. (The game captures highlights for you, which is also very cool).
I also jumped off the map myself, but ignore that part, please.
Here is another highlight. The super fun part about Jeff, as a strategist (healing class), is that all strategists can still do decent damage. Also with Jeff you can swallow Teammates and spit them out safely (and swallowing them also heals them while you swim around with them in your mouth. Ok, maybe a little bit of ick there, but still such a cool, fun gameplay moment.
It’s all not baby sharks. Every class has such a unique playstyle and unique skills and abilities that there really is a lot for everyone. I have 2.2 hours on my “main”, a strategist called Cloak & Dagger which allows you to swap between the two characters depending on if you want to heal or DPS. I find it a great way to heal my team, and if a dps character pops to the backline to take out the support crew, change to DPS and make them pay. Then swap back to healing.
I love how the game encourages you to learn and play the other characters with daily and monthly quests that reward you for doing X amount of damage as one of four characters, or take X amount of damage as one of four characters. You get a couple of these per day and that explains my long list of characters played.
Here is some gameplay as Scarlet Witch, probably my favorite DPS class to play.
Mostly she’s my favorite because I don’t have to aim my main attack. Just hold down left click near an enemy. Helps us over 50s with our aiming 😛 Plus she has a phase shift ability that takes you out of danger with 2 uses on a short cooldown. You aren’t fully invisible (enemies can see a big red glowing dot) but it gives you a chance to get in, do some damage, get out.
So far it seems like many games, most people don’t want to be a strategist, but there is usually always one. Two is preferred but if you are doing enough damage one can carry fine. So I tend to default to Strategists when need be.
The monetization seems fair (all non-expiring battlepass) and the skins are soooo amazing. Check out this Hela, which I don’t even play. But I may just buy the battlepass to get this skin alone.
And if you like Guardians of the Galaxy, here is a neat Mantis Skin
I think that is also part of the fun of the game – is that they have a lot of lesser popular characters and every character kicks ass in their own way. Read much of Peni Parker? Luna Snow? Jeff the Land Shark? And there are so many heroes left to add.
Downsides? Not much so far. Yes, there are a ton of heroes so there is a lot to learn, but the curve hasn’t been nearly as bad (I find) as it was with Overwatch, or other super “serious” team shooters such as Valorant (Which I have 100s of hours in).
Marvel Rivals is just incredibly fun. And it’s great to see a new, free to play game, that is just a joy to play.