Square Enix's Avengers

[metaphysician]

The thing is, it shouldn't be an "Iron Man Simulator" or a "Captain America Simulator". An Avengers game needs to be an "Avengers Simulator".

I kind of think that if you are focusing on trying to do the characters as individuals "equally well", you are taking the wrong approach, because its not possible to do them all equally well as individuals when you have an entire team of heroes who could carry their own solo game.

So maybe the focus should be on teamwork and character interactions. Try to capture what people love about the Avengers movies and the Avengers comics, instead of "we have to make both an Iron Man Simulator AND a Captain America Simulator and AND a Thor Simulator and X Character Simulator" etc, at the same time.

Well, yes. But the only way to do that, would require abandoning a "literal" enactment, and switching to a more abstracted type of gameplay. Like, you could do a turn based RPG just fine with the Avengers, or a turn based strategy game. What you couldn't do is an action-adventure game or an action-RPG. . . and at that point, if you aren't doing that? You aren't in Insomniac's wheelhouse anymore.

 

[The Caped Knight]

 

[The Caped Knight]

 

[Ninjablade]

So, I gave Spider-Man a try since I've got a PS4 and might as well. Plays exactly as I expected and how it looks. Awkward and clunky. It feels as if this was the alpha version of the character before any refinements happened. Easily the worst character to play in game, but Spider-Man just isn't built for the the game they made, so that was kinda expected.

 

[Iceman]

Black Panther seemed to suit the game mechanics more naturally.

 

[Drizzle]

I tried Spider-Man out last night and he really isn't anything special, especially after playing Insomniac's Spider-Man. Nothing new to report here. It kind of felt like playing a next-gen remaster of the Playstation 1 Spider-Man game but with different attacks.

So now that Spider-Man is in the game, have they given any hints as to the next DLC heroes they're adding to the game or is this the end of the line for now? It'd be pretty pathetic to have Hank Pym as a character in the game lurking in the background looking like a Star Lord cosplayer and never give us the opportunity to play as Ant-Man, although those mechanics would probably end up breaking the game anyway.

 

[DarthSkywalker]

Black Panther seemed to suit the game mechanics more naturally.

Thing is, BP plays a bit like PS4 Spidey in terms of combat. So all you really had to do was getting the swinging down. Clearly they didn't do that.

 

[Ninjablade]

Thing is, BP plays a bit like PS4 Spidey in terms of combat. So all you really had to do was getting the swinging down. Clearly they didn't do that.

Between Panther, Widow, and Cap they already had a pretty decent base of things to work with in terms of maybe making Spider-Man work, but somehow they still fumbled the bag. Yet, the only thing that feels refined is his 4 melee moves. The transversal aspects are all janky as hell. The wall crawling in specific looks hilarious, if you can even get it to work.

 

[DarthSkywalker]

Between Panther, Widow, and Cap they already had a pretty decent base of things to work with in terms of maybe making Spider-Man work, but somehow they still fumbled the bag. Yet, the only thing that feels refined is his 4 melee moves. The transversal aspects are all janky as hell. The wall crawling in specific looks hilarious, if you can even get it to work.

I don't think they fumbled it. I think they made the decision to not put too much work into a one system character. So they did the bare minimum to complete their contract, and moved on.

 

[Sithborg]

I don't think they fumbled it. I think they made the decision to not put too much work into a one system character. So they did the bare minimum to complete their contract, and moved on.

Also, if the Black Panther major expansion didn't save your game, you need to start conserving resources.

 

[Wolvieboy17]

Honestly though it was never going to work. I mean, Spidey is a character who's entire movement system is based on rapid, omnidirectional movement. He's on the ground, he's in the air, he's fighting on a wall. That's a character that really needs a custom skillset and environments and gameplay built AROUND him.

Crowbarring that character into a game that is mostly about springing and button mashing was always going to feel like an inferior version.

I was recently making this case in another thread about what happens in Marvel games when they focus on an "expansive roster". To make them all make sense and work within the same core gameplay loop, it means stripping them back and making them uniform in some ways. So taking a character like Spidey, with two recent games that NAIL his gameplay, was always going to feel like a letdown.

I feel bad for Crystal Dynamics because this was likely a deal made at a higher level and they got saddled with this content that was always going to be impossible to please people with.

 

[Sithborg]

If Team Ninja can do it for Ultimate Alliance 3, I would expect Crystal Dynamics to be able to do it here.

 

[Wolvieboy17]

Did Team Ninja do it, really though? I'd so most of those characters are way more cookie cutter than Crystal Dynamics has done. For the most part, the Avengers core gameplay/combat is pretty good. Marvel Ultimate Alliance is a very basic combo system where most character feels pretty similar.

 

[Iceman]

I tried Spider-Man out last night and he really isn't anything special, especially after playing Insomniac's Spider-Man. Nothing new to report here. It kind of felt like playing a next-gen remaster of the Playstation 1 Spider-Man game but with different attacks.

So now that Spider-Man is in the game, have they given any hints as to the next DLC heroes they're adding to the game or is this the end of the line for now? It'd be pretty pathetic to have Hank Pym as a character in the game lurking in the background looking like a Star Lord cosplayer and never give us the opportunity to play as Ant-Man, although those mechanics would probably end up breaking the game anyway.

A bunch of the Crystal Dynamics staff have been moved on to work on Perfect Dark now so I'm not sure what the plan is. Given the way Square execs talk in public about their Western studios, continuously throwing them under the bus, I wouldn't be surprised if they are now trying to minimise any further costs on the game (even though I'd bet much of its failings are down to the execs in the first place).

 

[metaphysician]

Honestly though it was never going to work. I mean, Spidey is a character who's entire movement system is based on rapid, omnidirectional movement. He's on the ground, he's in the air, he's fighting on a wall. That's a character that really needs a custom skillset and environments and gameplay built AROUND him.

Crowbarring that character into a game that is mostly about springing and button mashing was always going to feel like an inferior version.

I was recently making this case in another thread about what happens in Marvel games when they focus on an "expansive roster". To make them all make sense and work within the same core gameplay loop, it means stripping them back and making them uniform in some ways. So taking a character like Spidey, with two recent games that NAIL his gameplay, was always going to feel like a letdown.

I feel bad for Crystal Dynamics because this was likely a deal made at a higher level and they got saddled with this content that was always going to be impossible to please people with.

This is pretty much my issue with most super team video games, though Guardians of the Galaxy apparently managed to mostly thread the needle. Superheroes are just too divergent in power scale and power type, particularly when it comes to mobility.

 

[Wolvieboy17]

This is pretty much my issue with most super team video games, though Guardians of the Galaxy apparently managed to mostly thread the needle. Superheroes are just too divergent in power scale and power type, particularly when it comes to mobility.

Yeah, what works so well in the Guardians game is you only directly control one character, and simply give commands for certain character specific attacks. Each attack feels very authentic to the character but you never directly control them running around or punching, so you never have to compare them to each other in that way.

Instead, they just focus on every character always feeling present at all times. Their dialogue carries weight, choices you make affect the team differently. You feel more more like you're playing as an entire team than I think you ever do in the Marvel Ultimate Alliance games because they really invest in the character development.

 

[AVEITWITHJAMON]

They should have done it like the movies really, give the characters individual games which build up to an Avengers one, would give them more time to refine everything but I don't know if that's entirely possible in the gaming world.

 

[B]

The character's movement looks so slow, awkward, clunky & that's just walking/running about. The wall climbing looks atrocious, the web swinging carries little to no momentum & that's overlooking the fact that he's swinging from the clouds again.. what is this 2002?

I don't think they fumbled it. I think they made the decision to not put too much work into a one system character. So they did the bare minimum to complete their contract, and moved on.

This sums up this entire Avengers game & project pretty perfectly. Everything is half assed & seems more like a money grab to get the character into the game so they can sell more useless skins.

 

[psylockolussus]

They should have done it like the movies really, give the characters individual games which build up to an Avengers one, would give them more time to refine everything but I don't know if that's entirely possible in the gaming world.

A single AAA game takes 3 years minimum.... and making them different from one another would take time. It would take like something like Ubisoft or ActiVision who have plenty of divisions for a yearly release to happen.

They could also do it like the movies if the game is like 2 to 3hours long. But I don't think many would want a runtime like that for an AAA game.

 

[Wolvieboy17]

I think this game had a lot going for it. A lot of time, a lot of resources and a lot of backing... But it also had a lot of stakeholders. I've had freelance game writing gigs for companies connected to Disney, and every single thing you do needs to get approval from like 3 different companies. And quite often those 3 different companies will give different and conflicting rounds of feedback.

So I can only imagine making a game like this was a "Horse by Committee" nightmare that made it very difficult to stick to any one clearly defined vision for the game.

I think there were enough good pieces in this game that it's clear it could have BEEN a better game with a better focus. E.g. the dedication to the main story, in animation, narrative, performance etc. The core gameplay of the characters (Which are all still fun to control... It's just there's not much to do with them).

If those pieces were given a much, much clearer framework (instead of a linear campaign slapped together with a hollow live service game) then I suspect we would have been left with a much more solid game.

 

[TheVileOne]

A lot of writers were smart about not adding Spider-Man to the Avengers team for so many years for a reason. Spider-Man is better as a solo character and not the Avengers team dynamic. he works better that way. I know he's Spider-Man and all, but he works better on his own than a team setting.

And putting Spider-Man in this type of Avengers game doesn't work either. A one hour arcade side-scrolling beat 'em up is a different story.

 

[Snow Queen]

I got the Insomniac game for my birthday recently and the gameplay is as fun as everyone made me think it would be... so uh Avengers looks...




Interesting. Looks interesting.

 

[KillerMcQueen]

I got the Insomniac game for my birthday recently and the gameplay is as fun as everyone made me think it would be... so uh Avengers looks...




Interesting. Looks interesting.

Avengers Spidey looks stiff, the opposite of how Spidey should feel.

 

[AndrewGilkison]

Honestly, why did they even bother with the webslinging given the nature of the game and most of the environments in it?

 

[TheVileOne]

this is probably a big reason why only Star-lord was playable in Guardians of the Galaxy. Making all the Guardians playable would've been too difficult for what the devs wanted to do.

In the Avengers game they struggled making a workable single player campaign where you play as a bunch of different heroes.