I’m having a blast in the Marvel Rivals beta, but it will take more than a cheeked-up Venom to escape Overwatch’s shadow
Within an hour of playing the Marvel Rivals beta, I have shot, punched, blown up, and eaten several of the world’s greatest heroes. Star Lord? Meet Scarlet Witch. The Hulk? The Punisher’s big green target practice, more like. My killer of choice is Venom, a tanky frontline fighter who can tear through squishier supes like paper. I’ve spent hours power-slamming into objectives from the sky, bursting from the ground to bite people like a symbiote shark, and charging in head-on to use Venom’s short-range tentacle attack.
But with Marvel Rivals being a third-person hero shooter – emphasis on third-person – I’ve watched every one of these brawls with the camera locked firmly behind Venom’s not-insubstantial backside. Yes, dear reader, Eddie Brock has a slimy symbiote rear that just won’t quit. There’s a lot going on back there, but that also holds true for Marvel Rivals – which is surprisingly fun, despite its rather unabashed aping of Overwatch 2.
Origin story
Marvel Rivals kicks off with an impressive roster of 21 characters, ranging from icons like Iron-Man and Doctor Strange, to characters like Magneto and Luna Snow who are yet to reach the MCU. However, it’s something of a blessing and a curse: there’s already enough personality to go toe-to-toe with Overwatch’s own heroes, but the game struggles with information overload.
Menus are cluttered and difficult to navigate on PS5, while the hero select wheel at the beginning of each match is a nightmare to use. You need to select a character from this wheel and open another screen to read about what they do, which makes getting into matches as a newcomer particularly rough as you’re forced to learn on the fly.
By picking Venom first, I got quite lucky. He’s beefy enough to survive running into fights head-on, and his kit – which revolves around swinging above the map, diving into the frontline and staying there with health boosts, and slowing tentacles – is fairly easy to understand. Although I picked up a few wins by sticking with Marvel’s slimiest symbiote, my success unraveled when I started branching out and playing other heroes. The game’s control scheme isn’t universal, which means characters’ skills aren’t always assigned to the same buttons. It’s deeply unintuitive, and especially awkward for newcomers who will likely bounce around several heroes and their varying controls before landing on their favorite.
When you do get to grips with a hero, Marvel Rivals picks up significantly. It’s 6v6, and all of its game modes besides Conquest (which is essentially Team Deathmatch) are all objective-focused. Heroes fall into three categories – frontline Vanguards, damage-dealing Duelists, and support-oriented Strategists – which means battles usually feel like real team efforts, with Vanguards causing as much chaos as possible so that Duelists and Strategists can dish out damage and healing from relative safety.
Within these groups, no two characters feel alike. Star Lord, for example, is a bloodthirsty Duelist who thrives while spraying bullets and dodge-rolling up close, but fellow Duelist Iron Man is a little more vulnerable and best-used to rain down fire from slightly further back. There are even passive synergies, which grant certain characters unique abilities if they’re on the same team: Rocket can ride on Groot’s shoulders to become more durable, while Venom can share explosive symbiotes with Spider-Man and Peni Parker.
Although Marvel Rivals is all-in on teamwork, there’s plenty of room for hero moments of your own. Playing as Scarlet Witch, I cast an area-of-effect stun that locked down the enemy’s zippy Spider-Man and allowed us to get a foothold on the objective, which led to a hard-fought win. I’m also particularly proud of using The Punisher’s mounted turret – which is reminiscent of Bastion’s reign of terror in the first Overwatch – to mow down supes who were trying to push their payload forward.
Alternate futures
Running counter to that, a long time-to-kill means one-on-one combat can be a little weightless, and destructible environments don’t really have the impact I was hoping for. Instead of maps being destroyed in an Earth-shaking battle between heroes and villains, they instead feel like cardboard wilting in the rain, with pre-designated destroyable walls and structures that neatly crumble at the slightest touch.
This is extra frustrating because it’s one of the few mechanics that could help distinguish Marvel Rivals from Overwatch – something it desperately needs to do, because right now it feels like an uncanny reflection of Blizzard’s dominant hero shooter. Though heroes feel unique within the context of Marvel Rivals, there are too many similarities to Overwatch’s characters: Star Lord feels like an amalgamation of Soldier 76 and Tracer, while using Doctor Strange’s damage-absorbing barrier just makes me want to leave and play Reinhardt. Even the game’s fonts, UI, and game modes are a little too on-the-nose with their familiarity.
It’s a real shame, because the heavy-handed copying makes it much harder to gauge how well Marvel Rivals will be able to stand on its own two feet at launch. Despite all of the criticism Overwatch has weathered over the years, it’s remained the go-to hero shooter for a reason. It’s a slick, cohesive whole, and games that have borrowed its ideas over the years have never been able to piece them back together as well. If any game is capable of stealing the crown, it’s Marvel Rivals. The potential for its roster is frankly unfathomable, while the synergy system lays the foundation for some incredibly creative compositions.
If Marvel Rivals can polish up the newcomer experience and take a few steps out from beneath Overwatch’s shadow, you can bet I’ll be back at launch – and if that means gazing once more at Venom’s gelatinous gluteus maximus, I’ll be happy to pay that price.
If you haven’t made it into the Marvel Rivals closed beta, here are our favorite games like Overwatch to scratch that hero shooter itch.