Marvel Rivals Review: More than just an Overwatch clone

Marvel Rivals landed successfully on a launch that would make any live service game jealous. Positioning itself in the crowded free-to-play market, Marvel Rivals is a shockingly complete package, with a whopping 33 Heroes to choose from at launch. Narrowly avoiding the danger of spreading itself too gaunt, developer NetEase Games has somehow managed to offer a mostly balanced, high-quality experience that is more than elementary Overwatch maple.

To get this over with, I don’t play Overwatch. I bet I’ve probably spent five hours at this over the years and most of it has been completed Overwatch 2. In my case, when people start telling me what roles to fill and what tactics to focus on in an online game, my eyes start to glaze over. With circumscribed time to participate in a live service game every day, I honestly didn’t care what meta I had to run to win against the opposing team. Before loading Marvel Rivals by then I was almost sure it wouldn’t grab me completely.

The first night of play didn’t dispel that feeling Marvel Rivals The particular visual style is sometimes extremely complex to read. However, something clicked on the second night, and that’s largely due to the wide range of playable characters. Divided into three classes: Vanguard, Specialist and Duel, each of the 33 Heroes is completely different from the other.

Any frustrations I felt with a particular Champion could quickly be remedied by trying someone else. The fresh characters and playstyles didn’t always work out, but after a while I had at least five favorite games that were really fun to play.

From the game page

Visually, Marvel Rivals it looks extremely high-budget and extremely stylish. The game’s design language, which is somewhere between an anime and a comic book, does a great job of distinguishing the individual Heroes in the lineup. Overall, everything from the Most Valuable Player animations to the pre-match loading screens looks solid. In motion, things are less successful, although the characters look great once the action begins.

The problem, at least for me, is how busy the screen can get when you have 10 characters, each with their own abilities and color schemes clashing with each other simultaneously. You get used to it, but for a while I really didn’t know who exactly was attacking me. Kill markers aren’t as clear as they should be, and the way skills are marked on screen can be complex to parse in the heat of battle.

This is probably just a natural consequence of playing the game primarily in third-person and trying to do justice to each character while balancing the way all the disparate elements come together. Performance was impeccable on PS5 Pro, and the high degree of image sharpness certainly helps maintain clarity and readability.

There aren’t many rotating maps currently Marvel Rivals main modes, although each has enough of its own character to stand out and make matches feel different from each other. Destructible objects litter the maps, with statuesque stone columns crumbling when hit by Iron-Man’s stray rocket, and walkways collapsing under the weight of Venom’s incoming air attack.

These objects regenerate during the match, but their placement makes them captivating tactical options, providing plenty of opportunities to remove cover from the enemy team.

Heroic shooter

Marvel Rivals starts on much more favorable terms than other games of this type thanks to the knowledge of the composition. Even the most casual player has some knowledge of Heroes like Spider-Man, Wolverine, and Captain America, and some other options like Jeff the Land Shark are welcome surprises littered throughout the group.

It helps that, for the most part, each Hero plays exactly as you’d expect them to, although there are some frigid subversions, such as Adam Warlock taking on the role of a healer focused on instantly respawning teammates, which is an exception. Of the 33 champions I tried, only a few didn’t start playing at all, as I was able to find fun with the others almost immediately, even if their play style wasn’t entirely to my liking.

Some Champions specialize in managing character-specific metrics and effects, while others are much simpler, such as the Punisher, whose moveset follows a more standard third-person shooter design.

To spice things up and, I guess, set her Heroes apart from being their clones Overwatch writing, Marvel Rivals has a neat team system. Heroes like Rocket can ride on others like Groot, boosting their shields and damage output. Other team connections are less direct, such as Adam Warlock giving Star-Lord and Mantis the ability to resurrect themselves after death via a respawn mechanic.

As of yet, not all Heroes can cooperate with others and not every Hero benefits from having others on the battlefield. Venom is an example of this, although to compensate he gains a huge augment in maximum health thanks to an ongoing seasonal bonus. In the best cases, teams can influence the tide of battle. At worst, these are still captivating passive effects to consider when choosing your character.

So far, it’s encouraged me to try Heroes I wouldn’t otherwise, and I’m curious to see how future Heroes will impact Team Up’s capabilities in the future. This is not to say that team building completely distracts from the very obvious fact that characters like Black Widow are direct copies of Overwatch Heroes like Widowmaker, but it’s a long way Marvel Rivals a little more USP.

Choose me

So why pick up Marvel Rivalsinstead of much more eminent series such as Overwatch? Well, to put it simply, Marvel Rivals it’s newer, more engaging in action, and takes itself much less seriously than its peers. While some of the more niche corners of online gaming have already been calling for rebalancing, nerfing characters like Hela and adding a role queue, it’s tough to drown out what I believe is the attitude of the mainstream audience.

Many signs in Marvel Rivals can be considered overpowered, sometimes you join a team without healers and get your ass kicked, but ultimately it just doesn’t kill the fun. I have no doubt that competitive modes will become more significant as the game progresses, but for now Marvel Rivals it’s a great thing to just pick up and play. Whether you choose a “broken” character like Iron Fist or someone less meta-focused like Wolverine, it’s possible to make some truly invigorating plays.

This can be presented as an argument Marvel Rivals there was no need to launch the game with so many Heroes as 20 would have made for a better balanced product, but it’s tough to say that the snappy yet invigorating state of the game right now isn’t where it needs to be. There are some match balancing issues, however, and some maps seem unfairly matched depending on which side your team starts on.

Similarly, some maps bottleneck from the very first spawn point, leading to a feeling of being thrown into a meat grinder from the very beginning of the match. None of these issues are deal breakers, and it’s Season 0 after all, so hopefully the first balancing patch will facilitate sleek out some of the rugged edges present in the launch version.

Clearly, Marvel Rivals has a powerful reputation among gamers, given its ever-increasing player base and social media dominance it has enjoyed post-launch. For me there is enough space Marvel Rivals will continue to grow, hopefully adding more modes, maps and heroes, but for a free-to-play title coming out at such a complex time for live gaming, it certainly pulled through.

Should I play Marvel Rivals?

Play if…

Don’t play if…

Availability

Marvel Rivals has a fairly standard set of accessibility options, although they are circumscribed compared to other online shooters.

A colorblind mode is available, as well as the ability to assign custom colors to elements such as allies, shield HP bars, and other parts of the in-game UI.

In terms of controls, there are very few accessibility options aside from button mapping and the ability to assign specific control schemes to selected Heroes.

How I reviewed Marvel Rivals

I played Marvel Rivals for 25 hours on PS5 Pro.

During this time, I spent at least three games with each Hero, but my focus was on Captain America, Iron Fist, Mantis, Venom, and Punisher. As for modes, there aren’t many, so I tried them all. I purchased the Season 0 Battle Pass and used it to complete daily, weekly, and seasonal challenges.

I played this game on an LG 4K TV. I used a standard DualSense wireless controller with Razer Blackshark V2 headphones connected through the controller port.

First reviewed December 2024