Netease announce Marvel Rivals, a free-to-play 6v6 shooter that desperately wants to be superhero Team Fortress
My superhero fatigue sense is tingling
In case Amy Hennig's Captain America and Black Panther game 1943: Rise Of Hydra wasn't going to be quite enough to satisfy your Marvel hunger, Netease have just announced they've got another comic book bun in the oven for you. Marvel Rivals is a free-to-play, third-person team shooter where two teams of six heroes and villains go head to head with each other in destructible arenas. I can't say its reveal trailer has me particularly pumped - the game looks and feels a bit like it's ten years too late. Still, why not come and have a gander at it below.
As you can see from the trailer, one of the game's stand-out strategies appears to be the 'Team-Up' ability, which sees two characters band together for super-charged attacks. The trailer shows some classic, obvious combos such as Iron Man and Hulk, where Iron Man can use Hulk's Gamma energy to unleash a powerful energy beam, as well as Rocket The Raccoon riding around on Groot's back. There are also two other characters who do a big 'Team-Up' that I'm not sure I recognise at first glance, though at a guess I'd say one of them appears to be Aqua Man, while the other is some kind of ice lady.
It's unclear at the moment whether these Team-Up abilities will be limited to certain character pairings, or if you'll be able to pull them off with whoever happens to be in your team that match. If it's the former, I can see team compositions becoming quite repetitive and stale after a while, though with an alpha test due to arrive in May, it hopefully won't be long before we find out.
Netease have announced that characters from all across the Avengers, Guardians Of The Galaxy, X-Men and wider Marvelverse will be available to play in Rivals, and the alpha test will have just over a dozen of them to choose from, including Black Panther, Spider-Man, Magneto and Magik.
Each map will also have destructible elements that Netease say will create "ever-changing battlefields", but I'm not sure the footage in the trailer really looks all that transformative. Netease do add that you'll be able to take cover to dodge attacks and use makeshift weapons, though, so perhaps the terrain changes will feel more impactful when you're right in the thick of things. If I can blow up a bridge and then use a piece of it to clobber Hulk round the head with, for example, that might just raise the pulse enough to distract from the quite ineffectual-looking magic blaster powers a lot of these folks seem to have.
Netease also state that Marvel Rivals will have a "robust" post-launch plan, with new seasons bringing new characters and maps. What they haven't stated just yet, however, is how they're planning to monetise this free-to-play game.
Still, if the thought of another Marvel game fills you with excitement, then you can sign up for that aforementioned alpha test on Marvel Rivals' website right now. It's coming to both Steam and the Epic Game Store at some point in the future, but there don't look to be any store pages up at time of writing.