Marvel Heroes: Review In Progress Part 1
If you didn’t know, Marvel Heroes is a Free-to-Play (F2P) Action-MMORPG from Gazilion Entertainment. Lead by the mastermind behind the super smash hits Diablo and Diablo 2, David Brevik, you’d expect Gazillion to have a hit on their hands. I mean, a massively multiplayer Diablo-styled game set in the Marvel Universe is a genius idea, especially if you consider the growing popularity of F2P games. That said, with a less than stellar launch weak and some interesting design choices, the game seems to be suffering a bit!
Marvel Heroes is a good game mind you…just far from the awesome title it should be. Like most MMOs just starting out, it has its high and low points. The magic comes in the balancing of these highs and lows, at least until the inevitable patch. Starting with the highs, Marvel Heroes features a lot of content for comic book fans. You have 20+ playable characters ranging from the more popular heroes (Ironman, The Hulk) to the lesser known characters (Scarlet Witch, The Black Panther) with a promise of more on the way. On top of that, each character has multiple costumes/skins to choose from; the Hulk can don his Planet Hulk gear or reprise his look from the Avengers movie for instance. Of course it’s all fan service…which is a good thing.
The heroes on display aren’t just punching crooks in the face for fun. There is a well thought out story to keep gamers intrigued, regardless of how familiar they are with Marvel’s world. Doom is on a hunt for rare artifacts that will grant him an immense amount of power. By using the chaos surrounding a S.H.E.I.L.D prison break, he’s been able to collect a few items of interest. It’s up to the Avengers, X-men, and other heroes to stop him before it’s too late. You know – the basic comic book plot.
The itemization in the game is quite decent. For the most part, every item I found seemed to be useful in some way. This is great as it keeps players interested in the loot found in between rare item drops; you aren’t going through the motions just to find something unique. I can’t remember finding something and saying “Great, I’ll never be able to use this”. Even if you find something that you can’t use (like an item for a specific character you don’t own) you can donate the items to the shops and crafting stations, leveling them up in order to produce better items.
Now since we went over some of the good stuff let’s talk about some of the not-so-good things. Being a F2P game it runs off of micro-transactions, which isn’t necessarily bad. That being said, this is one of the most expensive F2P games there is. Heroes that are more popular like Ironman or Spiderman are going to cost you upwards of twenty bucks! And some of the costumes actually match that price. You don’t have to purchase the character if you don’t want to as they do have a chance of dropping from defeated enemies. Be prepared to spend a lot of time farming though as the drop rates for heroes and costumes are very, very low. Also, there is no in-game currency that allows you to buy them if you don’t want to spend real money. With those things combined, playing as your favorite hero may not be possible for majority of the game. The game does allow you to choose from five starting characters: Scarlet Witch, Daredevil, Thing, Storm, and Hawkeye. For some this is fine (Hawkeye is a very good character for instance) but for others that want to play as someone else, you may feel a little cheated.
Most MMO launches are rocky; there are a lot of issues that can come up once the servers are flooded with players. That’s the norm when it comes to this genre. Marvel Heroes, however, experienced some rather discouraging problems right off the bat. For instance, there were bugs that made some of the missions impossible to complete. And some of the missions that were doable failed to give you the mission rewards. Worse than bugs was an issue with the Founders Program. Gazilion promised the gamers who bought the Ultimate Founders pack (a bundle of goodies that cost $200) early access to the game. Well, unfortunately for them, they couldn’t log into the game and lost some of the things that came with their purchase. The servers had to be taken down to to fix the issue. To be fair they did offer extra in-game currency and other things to pacify those who were inconvenienced.
Being an F2P MMO there was bound to be issues and bugs that needed to be patched out. After a few good patches I truly believe this can be the next big F2P game. What got me excited, outside of the normal gameplay, are the Endgame elements. Starting at level 25, the Endgame features a lot of cool mission types, some of which are really challenging. There is enough content to keep you playing for some time as you constantly improve your heroes!
So far, Marvel Heroes is defiantly worth your time. Hopefully some of the lingering issues will be patched and the drop rate for heroes will improve. Maybe some characters will go on sale…though I doubt it. I’ll keep playing before following up with the second half of my review. Until then, keep it locked here as we continue to cover all things gaming!
Update: There was a patch that slightly raised the drop rate for heroes. Though I haven’t seen the improvement personally (it comes down to percentages) this is good news.