A few weeks ago, we played the Avengers beta — a worrying experience. Earth’s mightiest heroes’ first big game looked like it was going to be so flat, it should have been named Average-rs. Thankfully, the final game, which just released on September 4, successfully dispelled that with a campaign that is powerful enough to be its own Avengers movie.

The story of Marvel’s Avengers follows the young and charismatic Kamala Khan, better known as Ms Marvel, a Pakistani-American Muslim human, and an Avengers superfan who gets a chance to meet her heroes in the flesh. Disaster strikes and she is imbued with superpowers when the helicarrier, Chimera, is destroyed in a terrorist attack. The event splits the Avengers, sending them all into hiding. Five years later, it is up to a grown-up Kamala to find and reunite them to help her take on a new evil.

Made by Crystal Dynamics, the studio responsible for Tomb Raider, Avengers plays out like an Uncharted game initially with Kamala tracking down each Avenger. While this is her story, you also get to play as the Avengers. The campaign hits all the right notes, too, lasting for a little more than 10 hours. You can explore a new world ruled by a dystopian corporation called AIM (Advanced Idea Mechanics).

Style and power

Gameplay-wise, Avengers veers from platforming to all out beat-em-up action, deftly handling with style. Where the game falters is the way it handles powered characters such as Thor and Hulk, particularly in one scene when they are destroying trucks and tanks. In another, they seem to have trouble with normal low-level enemies. Sure, the game has a rational explanation for that in the form of robots designed to take on the Avengers. It would be great if it would let us feel like we are playing as a superhero.

Kamala Khan aka Ms Marvel in costume, in video game Marvel’s Avengers   | Photo Credit: Square Enix

On the upside, fighting as Kamala features both grace and power in her stretchy moves as she pummels enemies. Of course, Iron Man is a lot of fun to fight as, as you can chain combos with funky aerial moves. Each character has many equitable special moves and a lot of loot, costumes and more to collect.

To give you more Avengers, there is a multi-player component, which is in the form of replayable missions after the main story is complete. These are largely rehashed and designed to let you grind along with three other friends, or AI companions, in very generic locations where you are so under-powered that you have to constantly keep playing a repetition of missions to get upgrades and level ups for your characters.

Kamala Khan aka Ms Marvel in battle, in video game Marvel’s Avengers   | Photo Credit: Square Enix

There are many characters on the way as downloadable content, too: Spider-Man for PlayStation 4 gamers in 2021, the upcoming Hawkeye, and Kate Bishop, as well as a rumoured Black Panther and She-Hulk. Suggestion from our end: they should make the post-game multi-player content even more exciting, with more balances and tweaks to make it less of a time drain. Getting the live game portions are always tricky, so let us hope Crystal Dynamics gets it right.

No matter which system you play it on, Avengers is ready for the next generation with amazing details in the environments and on the characters. Yes, the game does suffer from a few occasional glitches and long load times when you die... but at least the loading screens look pretty.

Marvel’s Avengers lives up to the hype. It has got heart and is a blast to play. If you are feeling the void of a year without a Marvel movie, this is just what you need.

The writer is a tech and gaming enthusiast who hopes to one day finish his sci-fi novel