Avengers video game beta impressions: Destiny, this ain't - Ars Technica

After over a year of rumors, teases, and reveals, we have finally played the upcoming Avengers video game, slated to launch on PS4, Xbox One, and Windows PC on September 4.

It's arguably the biggest Avengers-themed game ever made, in part thanks to a massive effort by developers Crystal Dynamics (makers of the modern Tomb Raider trilogy).

Many of you will soon get to play the same content when the game's beta test opens Friday, August 7, exclusively for PS4 players who preordered the game.

Each comes with a mix of melee, ranged, counter, and special attacks, and each can put the serious smackdown on large crowds of generic robo-soldier foes.

Hulk's ranged attack is a great example of how badly Crystal Dynamics handles this aspect of combat.

Some of those issues could be tradeoffs in the right mix, like slow-but-powerful or quick-and-wimpy, but as of press time, the beta's ranged attacks all feel unwieldy, weak, and ho-hum.

This applies even once you've played enough of the beta to amass new loot for a given hero, as each character has four equipment slots: one for melee attacks, one for ranged attacks, one for special attacks, and one for defense.

If Crystal Dynamics expects us to get hooked onto this game for months, that customization system better turn out more substantial than it currently looks.

Though this game tries to combine a brawler with an ARPG formula, Marvel's Avengers bails on a core principle of both of those genres: careful camera consideration.

Keeping track of every surrounding foe in a Marvel's Avengers brawl, while fighting alongside three allies, is an exercise in exhaustion and frustration.

One of Hulk's special attacks, a straightforward rush, sometimes triggers special animations when it connects with a boss character, and the resulting WHAM WHAM WHAM WHAM WHAM is the exact comic-combat nonsense I crave in a polished action game like this.

But the Marvel's Avengers beta only has so many of these moments, and otherwise, the beta suffers from two larger-scale issues: an over-serious plot and some terribly thin side missions.

Either way, the regularity of this "trudge through barren lands to find hidden chests" stuff is a momentum-slamming bummer, as if Crystal Dynamics was told to pad its hum-drum missions out with something, anything.

Should you hold out hope for improved performance by the time the game launches next month, I suggest sticking to a series of "training" battles, which all take place in a "wireframe" warehouse and run at a locked 30fps refresh no matter how many waves of enemies appear.

In these zones, you can see the Marvel's Avengers promise play out: screen-filling combat for up to four friends, with everybody having access to classic superheroes and their bombastic special attacks.

I've described some nitpicks with speed and control precision, and I'm hopeful those are ironed out by the time the game launches, as well as generic AI and severely lacking enemy variety.

Crystal Dynamics' salvo clearly has polish and ambition, and it invites friends to the party, but this beta's most worrying issue is that it's playing catch-up to games that are already great (and discounted) (and not reliant on the tiresome games-as-a-service model).