With the release of Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy this week, the world of Marvel games received a shake-up.
While the franchise has seen many small games along the way, the mainstays for Marvel in the video game world have been the Sony exclusive Marvel’s Spider-Man, and a spin-off, Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales. That’s until this week, with Eidos-Montréal’s take on the Guardians drawing favorable reviews across outlets for its heart. Metacritic currently scores the game at an 83.
At the center of the conversation, however, is the game at the bottom of everyone’s list: 2020’s Marvel’s Avengers.
Developed by Crystal Dynamics, Avengers and Guardians share a publisher in Square Enix. The third-person action received much praise for its single-player story centered around Kamala Khan as a young Ms. Marvel but soured on critics and fans alike for its focus on the repetitive grind of a bad live-service game (that retailed for $60). The third-person action RPG didn’t hold enough variety for most players, and lacked substantial upgrades post-release. While filling out the roster with Black Panther and the still forthcoming Spider-Man, the grind never really went away.
When Square Enix announced a net loss of over $60 million USD in the game’s release quarter, many side-eyed the game for the loss.
Since then, Crystal Dynamics and Square Enix have done little to court new players. Just last month, the game was brought into the spotlight for monetizing progression with purchasable XP boosts after both promising to keep microtransactions to cosmetics and changing the progression system to something more time-consuming.
So, salty fans have taken the occasion to tweet about their disappointment.
The Guardian’s official Twitter account was, however, more appreciative.
More big Marvel titles are on their way, with Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 and Marvel’s Wolverine now in development for PS5. Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy is available on PC, Switch, PS4 and PS5, and the Xbox family of systems.