Marvel’s Avengers: A-Day

[Eighthours]

Should have been a single player story based game, then, a la Spider-Man?

[Harsin]

At least then you might have had a chance of levels and characters designed to give you the rush of playing as these characters, instead of everyone having to be whittled down to the same template beat em' up characters with an occasional special move flourish, so that Hulk isn't significantly OP compared to Black Widow.

[Thor]

1 hour ago, Harsin said:

At least then you might have had a chance of levels and characters designed to give you the rush of playing as these characters, instead of everyone having to be whittled down to the same template beat em' up characters with an occasional special move flourish, so that Hulk isn't significantly OP compared to Black Widow.

This. They've taken the avengers and jammed them into the now mouldy Destiny template. It's a colossal fuck-up. Is Ike Perlmutter still part of Marvel? It would not surprise me one bit if he was the driving force behind all the potential for monetisation that is clearly pervasive in this game.

[Harsin]

I can't overstate just how wrong it feels when you're actually playing to have the Hulk throwing tanks in barely interactive QTE cutscenes, then going to proper gameplay and punching a bog-standard man in kevlar vest and they just stumble a bit, instead of flying off over the horizon. It gets even worse when one of them has a piddling plastic shield that apparently completely nullifies his blows.

[tnman]

Anyone got an Xbox beta code I can beg for?

 

It's, uh... it's for the kids...?

[Hexx]

Anyone at War Table stage where you launch mission, it counts down from 60, and nothing happens?

[Unofficial Who]

4 minutes ago, Hexx said:

Anyone at War Table stage where you launch mission, it counts down from 60, and nothing happens?

 

I'm not even getting missions. I'll try again later.

[Hexx]

You have to do a Story mission and Harm mission after you get to mission table 

 

It looks like it’s an odd combo of people joining or not readying up (despite the minute being the timer for the kit ready)

[Gabe]

Firstly, thanks very much to @Sloth

 

Edit: Oops, posted too soon. Anyway, thanks to @Sloth for the PC beta code. I've just spent a bit of time with it (switched off during the Hulk's mission) and it's...well, it's not good. The actual fighting doesn't feel remotely satisfying, the voice acting just feels wrong (and the actual script is atrocious) and it's all so very boring. I'll put some more time into it to see if anything changes, but I think the problem here is that everybody who is a fan of the Avengers (or superheroes in general) will have an idea in their head how strong they are and what abilities they bring - so having the Hulk struggling to beat down generic enemy #3094 just destroys a lot of the fun of playing it. Both the Marvel MMO and the Ultimate Alliance games all at least tried to differentiate between characters, having some stronger, some faster, some more powerful specials etc. Here though, everybody is the same and, as a consequence, why would you care to invest any time in them?

 

Being generous, I guess different builds could lead to more variety down the line, but I'm not really seeing the appeal of wanting to put that much time into it.

[MardiganX]

This feels like it was made before the MCU really took off, stalled while various companies spent years arguing over the in-game character likenesses, time ran out this gen and so they just tacked on the worst loot grind / monetisation scheme possible and fired it out and hoped for the best.

 

Everything about it feels very badly judged and when you compare it to recent releases like LoU II and Ghost of Itsushima I cant figure out how the fuck they ever expected this to be well received... or perhaps they really don’t care how it is received and simply want to make the monies?

[Gabe]

3 minutes ago, MardiganX said:

This feels like it was made before the MCU really took off, stalled while various companies spent years arguing over the in-game character likenesses, time ran out this gen and so they just tacked on the worst loot grind / monetisation scheme possible and fired it out and hoped for the best.

 

Everything about it feels very badly judged and when you compare it to recent releases like LoU II and Ghost of Itsushima I cant figure out how the fuck they ever expected this to be well received... or perhaps they really don’t care how it is received and simply want to make the monies?

 

It's a game that nobody asked for or wanted and further crippled by having to be a GaaS.

 

Seriously, is it so hard to have another Ultimate Alliance game on PC?

[deerokus]

 

2 minutes ago, Gabe said:

 

 

Seriously, is it so hard to have another Ultimate Alliance game on PC?

Yes, Nintendo own the rights to that at the moment it seems. 

[Harsin]

I honestly have no idea how this will do commercially. If it was a new IP we’d be looking at Anthem v2.0 and it would be DOA. But with the Avengers license I can see a lot of grannies buying it for grandkids at Xmas.

[Broker]

Jesus Christ this is awful. Just everything. I can’t even work out what I like least about it.

 

These “good” video game voice actors really aren’t funny are they? Maybe it’s just that I can directly compare them to performances by actual actors, but Jesus, they’re like humour vacuums.

[Uncle Mike]

I haven't played or watched any of the Beta, but I think it'll be a mistake to pin any deficiencies of the acting on the actors. From reading the thread, there's a lot of people there who have repeatedly shown to be good voice actors in other games. I would suggest that problems are in the scripting and direction than the actors. Dinklage in Destiny syndrome.

[deerokus]

I do think it's a mistake to have ALL of the well known video game voice actors in it. It's distracting, kind of like when a film has loads of celebrity cameos. 

[Broker]

Oh yeah, I know that the ones from the last of us are talented actors, and I don’t think they’re doing a bad job with the dramatic lines they’ve been given. The script is terrible. But the delivery of the jokes is substantially worse than the rest of the acting. I feel like it’s partly that I’ve seen Robert Downey Jr doing this role and working magic with some jokes that I don’t think would leap of the page if you read them purely through the force of his charisma. But I also think that the complete lack of humour in most games means that you don’t necessarily need to be a talented comedic performer to be a prolific and popular game voice actor. It’s far from the only bad thing in there, but it stood out as so many of the other issues have already been covered.

[Uncle Mike]

@deerokus That might certainly be true. Like when every game had Nolan North in it for those two years or whatever it was. (I guess it's still true now.)

[deerokus]

2 minutes ago, Uncle Mike said:

@deerokus That might certainly be true. Like when every game had Nolan North in it for those two years or whatever it was. (I guess it's still true now.)

To the extent Giant Bomb gave out awards for best Nolan North performance.

 

Wasn't there a game where Nolan North has a conversation with Nolan North? 

[SweatyTravolta]

55 minutes ago, deerokus said:

To the extent Giant Bomb gave out awards for best Nolan North performance.

 

Wasn't there a game where Nolan North has a conversation with Nolan North? 

 

Deadpool or Mafia (2)? Or maybe both. I'm sure in Deadpool the character played by North or Baker calls up the VA to have a chat mid game.

 

So it was an overplayed joke all the way back then and it still continues.

[Broker]

Troy Baker is Joel right? And Nolan North is, uh, Billy Unchartedman? 

[NecroMorrius]

This is a disaster. Huge Anthem vibes. 

[teddymeow]

10 minutes ago, Broker said:

Troy Baker is Joel right? And Nolan North is, uh, Billy Unchartedman? 

 

That's right. And Laura Bailey (Black Widow) is Abby in TLOU2

[Uncle Mike]

Yeah, North is Nathan Drake and both Cayde 6 in Destiny 2 and your Ghost companion and loads of others. I think also the previous modern day man in Assassin's Creed.

[Broker]

I thought Cayde was Nathan Fillion? 

[Harsin]

Originally, then Bungie split from Activision and didn’t want to pay Castle money anymore, so made an expansion based around his death and didn’t even bother to get him back for the character’s swan song.

[Broker]

Holy shit, Nolan North does an amazing Nathan Fillion then. I vaguely remember hearing they were replacing Cayde, but I didn’t realise that wasn’t him in Forsaken. 

[Uncle Mike]

Yes he does. But then, he's essentially playing Fillion in Uncharted, so he's got practice.

[teddymeow]

 

All we need is Nolan North in an episode of Firefly.

[CheekyLee]

Utterly soul free. It says a lot when a massive Marvel fan like me switches it off halfway through. The best part in the intro was Capt. America, everything else was so underwhelming. I get that Hulk is ridiculously overpowered and so it's tricky to make meaningful challenge, but WHAT MORON thought the best way to utilise him is in a run across a bridge?

 

I was actually really disappointed to be Bruce Banner instead of Kamala Khan in the next bit, and just got fed up of the uninspired waves of enemies, and enforced "Now use this power" tutorial pop-ups. I may try again, but I'm in no hurry to buy this at full-price based on what I just played.