Its oversized roster also needs more balancing and more differentiation from Blizzard’s stable of heroes.
After several matches in Marvel Rivals, I finally feel comfortable with Captain America’s kit.
I forget for a moment that I’m not playingOverwatch 2, and Captain America isn’t Winston.
It’s just buried under a heap of balance problems, blatant mimicry, and half-finished ideas.
But it is at least an attempt to play with the comic book storytelling Marvel Rivals is drawing on.
It’s currently got a whiff of theMultiVersusabout it, with disparate parts feeling a bit too disconnected.
Small-scale resemblances, such as match types, are understandable.
Custom matches, casual modes, and ranked battles are standard across most competitive multiplayer games.
Combat roles are also recognizably Overwatch.
What’s less easy to overlook is how blatant other similarities are.
There’s no effort to differentiate them even slightly.
Some characters are also close to 1:1 recreations.
Marvel Rivals even replicates Hanzo’s distinctive aiming reticule.
The similarities are tacky, but more than that, they’re confusing.
Mei freezes her foes.
Tracer baffles with speed.
Take Spider-Man, for example.
He has a basic web-slinging attack and a special web that debuffs any foe it hits.
These are annoying, but some issues are legitimately problematic.
It might confuse AI foes, but human opponents can spot the real one in seconds.
Again, even these issues come from a good place.
With some tweaking, they could really make each hero standout.
But it feels like the developers ran out of time to finalize how to make them effective.
Launching with such a large roster probably didn’t make the team’s task any easier, either.
Overwatch has 42 characters after eight years.
Marvel Rivals is launching with 33.
Bigger definitely isn’t better in this instance.
These and a dozen other minor annoyances make matches a frustrating chore.
And I hope NetEase sticks with Marvel Rivals long enough to clean it up.
It’s just not there yet.
Marvel Rivals was reviewed on PC with a code provided by the publisher
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