An Omega Level MMOARPG

INNOVATION – 7

Marvel Heroes doesn’t break the mold when it comes to the ARPG, but what it does do differently is fully embrace its MMO elements. You won’t only encounter players in hubs; you’ll see them almost everywhere. Depending on your ability to suspend your disbelief, it can be a bit jarring seeing 10 Wolverines running around, but this has become less and less of an issue as the game’s roster grows.  There are just so many characters that you aren’t always seeing the same ones running around anymore. Unlike most ARPGs, there’s also content in Marvel Heroes that is designed explicitly for groups, such as the aforementioned X-Defense and Raids.

POLISH – 7

Polish has been an issue with Marvel Heroes since launch and unfortunately that is still true today. Things have improved for sure, but the game is still buggier than it should be at this point and game performance runs the gamut from inconsistent to abysmal depending on the activity you’re participating in and the patch version you’re playing on. I’m running a beast of a rig and the game’s frame rate can fly all over the place, especially in the Midtown patrol zone.

I would say the UI is adequate, but just barely. What frustrates me most is the presentation of information. It’s still hard to make sense of a lot of the game’s numbers without having to resort to going to the game’s forums and other out of game resources. Why not take a page out of Diablo III’s book and give us an easier way to compare the effects of a new item at a glance? Or how about being able to find out the max roll of an item simply by looking at it? There’s a lot of information available in the UI, but it’s simply frustrating to digest at times.  

LONGEVITY – 9

As we’ve discussed, there’s a pretty significant amount of content available to play through in Marvel Heroes and there’s new stuff coming to the game all the time, including both new characters and systems. With tons of characters to level, even more items to hunt, and the massive Omega alternate advancement system, you have a game that you can buckle down and play for the long haul.  The only catch is that actual fresh new content to consume is slower to come to the game, so you’ll be running a lot of the same stuff over and over. To be fair, variety has continued to grow with time and running things over and over sort of comes with the territory for ARPGs anyway.

SOCIAL – 8

Marvel Heroes is both a group and solo friendly game. If you want to jump into the game and just solo through the vast majority of the game’s content, nothing will stand in your way. That said, the game is also rewarding in groups. Modes like X-Defense and Raids are exclusive to groups, but even running content that be played solo is often beneficial as a group. For example, repeatable Legendary (semi randomized repeatable quests) Quests in Midtown are far easier to complete in a group since other players’ kills count towards your quest even if they are in an entirely different area of the zone.  Gazillion also recently introduced a Shared Quest system that directly encourages players to group up for a variety of content each day; though the rewards could be a bit better.

It’s simply easy to group up and play with others in Marvel Heroes and even if you aren’t into grouping you’ll often find non-committal opportunities to team up with other players in the form of zone events that you can dart in and out of as you please.

The one area that I feel Marvel Heroes could stand to improve on when it comes to its social experience is with guilds. The game features an incredibly barebones guild system at the moment and with how often characters team up in the comics I think this is an area of unmined potential that sticks out like a sore thumb.

VALUE – 10

How free is “Free-to-Play”? We have to ask this question with every F2P game we review and as for Marvel Heroes, it’s pretty damn free. Gazillion has adopted the League of Legends model where they primarily make their money off of cosmetics and boosts, while giving players the option to earn just about everything else, including characters, for free. When you start up the game and play for the first time you’ll be given a number of heroes to select from and whichever hero you select is yours to play forever. If that hero happens to also be your favorite Marvel character ever, well, you’re basically set.

Now, if you want to buy costumes for said hero, you’ll have to fork over some cash (costumes do drop, but don’t expect to see it happen), but other than that you don’t really need to spend a dime. You could plop a few bucks down for some increased bank space and maybe a Team Up (follower character) if you like, but you won’t find any barriers blocking you from playing through any of the game’s content.

CONCLUSION

Like Steve Rogers, Marvel Heroes initially had its heart in the right place, but was lacking everywhere else. Fortunately, the game has improved enough over the past year that the results are about as dramatic as Steve’s eventual transformation into Captain America via the Super Soldier Serum. It’s basically a whole new game at this point. If you’re looking for a game that effectively meshes elements of both the MMO and ARPG genres and you love (or don’t mind) the Marvel IP, you can’t really go wrong with Marvel Heroes.