Marvel Rivals is an online, free to play hero shooter available on PC, Xbox Series X and S, and PS5 and PS4 developed by NetEase Games. Marvel Rivals released Dec. 6, 2024, and since then it has taken a part of the world by storm. Season after season bringing more and more players in, as the game has gotten better from the beta to what is now season 4, adding tons of characters and new gameplay features. Some additions are good and some things could use work.
Marvel Rivals features an extensive roster of characters, having over 42 different heroes and a few villains to play. From Captain America to Spider-Man or Ultron, gamers can play almost any of their favorite Marvel characters, and more are on the way each month, as NetEase is attempting to drop a new character at the beginning and halfway through a season. Season 4 brought us Angela and season 4.5 will bring Daredevil into the game. Marvel Rivals is really unique in how it makes lesser known characters like Angela, Luna Snow, and Jeff the Landshark more popular to the general MCU -centered fans of Marvel, hopefully it is to continue adding more fringe and lesser known characters to the game.
Marvel Rivals could improve on some of its characters though. For example, a character like Black Panther can feel really unfun to play against, he can either take players out in a few seconds or does absolutely nothing. Spider-Man also feels this way to a lesser extent, and characters like Bucky and Star-Lord also feel overtuned, unhealthy for the game’s balance. It feels as if NetEase also nerfs the wrong characters at times, Bucky has janky hitboxes that could hit you while he’s aiming at the Moon, can kill in three to four headshots, and yet he hasn’t been nerfed. In fact, he got a buff allowing him to knock flying characters out of the sky. Meanwhile Captain America gets nerfed despite doing no damage and having bugs limiting him. A character like the Thing also feels overtuned, he has an ability that disables enemy movement options that also gives him bonus health, an another ability that gives bonus health while dealing damage that he can spam, he can leap to allies and enemies, even being able to knock flying characters out of the air by leaping to them, and has multiple team-ups, one where he can be picked up and flown, one where he gains damage reduction and passive bonus health and healing, and one where he can throw Wolverine. Does that not feel like too much? And originally the Thing was a very simple character with only three abilities and two team-ups.
Marvel Rivals is a team game with multiple game modes and maps. Two teams of six fighting against each other on convoy, dominion, and convergence maps. Convoy maps are the basic maps where one team has to control a cart or moving object and lead it to the end of the map before the enemy stops them, dominion maps are the maps where teams fight for control of a central point, and convergence maps are a mix, one team must first capture a point and then it turns into a convoy map.
In addition to the base casual mode, there are arcade modes like brain blast, where everyone has a giant head, clone rumble, where two teams choose two heroes and are stuck with those heroes the entire match, and free fight, where anyone can pick any character any number of times. Convoy maps and convergence maps are generally well designed, but dominion maps can sometimes feel awkward, having multiple weird angles, obstructions, and just clutter in the way of the main point. A map like Odin’s Archive for example, has multiple changes in elevation, a walkway above the central point, windows where enemies can turn their brains off and AFK heal their team from, and there is also a giant pillar in between the point. It feels cluttered.
Outside of these casual modes, there is also competitive, otherwise known as ranked. Ranked can be the easiest thing ever, balanced, or make you want to rip your hair out, It all depends on the teammates and enemies you get. Players can find people who ragequit seconds into the match, people who purposely throw the game, giving your team a disadvantage, or people who are just toxic overall. In Marvel Rivals, one good player can’t really carry an entire team of players who’ve already given up, which is what most good players get, as Marvel Rivals uses a system that punishes players with worse players if it thinks you’re doing too good, it tries balancing matches by giving players people not as good at the game. This system feels incredibly unfair, it doesn’t reward players for being good at the game, it just makes it harder. Players only really get away from this bad system when getting to high elo.
Taking a divergence towards cheaters, there really aren’t many, as Marvel Rivals has a good anti cheat and bans accounts found hacking for literally a hundred years. The punishments in general are somewhat nice, people who leave games early multiple times are penalized, throwers can get suspensions, it feels like a nice way to keep people from doing these things. It prevents people from wanting to just give up. Though there are suspensions for doing things like throwing in casual modes, I find punishing people from losing a no stakes game makes basically no sense.
Overall, Marvel Rivals is a good game. It has an amazing art-style, some well made characters and some bad characters, a lot of amazing maps and a few annoying maps, and is ultimately a pretty normal game, it is definitely innovating in some areas and causing competition to improve, which is always good for us, the players, but still has a few things to improve on to make it an amazing game. It is a 7.5/10.
