Knights of the Cardboard Castle

Hey, I finally get to write about a game that was actually released this year! Okay, this is just a free to play game and I didn’t really feel compelled to spend any money on this. Like all free to play games, it’s an online game that sells extra features for real money.

• This game naturally invites comparisons with DC Universe Online. The comparison isn’t quite fair of course, since DCUO plays more like a standard MMORPG while Marvel Heroes is explicitly an action RPG Diablo 2 clone. But of the two, despite the fact that I like the Marvel universe characters way more than I like DC characters, I find DCUO to be superior by far.
• The reason for this is that Marvel Heroes is a thoroughly mediocre game. It’s not actually bad, just mediocre. For example, it uses lots of familiar locales, but they all feel thoroughly generic. The theming is all over the place. In Manhattan, you may get attacked by mobsters, aliens, morlocks, AIM troopers, anything really. The story itself is pretty humdrum stuff. Being able to actually play as established superheroes is fun at first, but it’s just a gameplay mechanic with no attached story. I very much preferred the DCUO method of being a new superhero taking part in adventures side by side with established heroes. Graphics are mediocre

• I especially annoyed that heroes have no real travel powers, unlike DCUO. Playing as the Human Torch for example, you can get a power that lets you float above most of the level but it constantly drains power so you won’t use it much. So most of the time the Human Torch visually floats above the ground but actually still needs to use staircases and ramps like everyone else.

• As you might expect from a Diablo combat is a clickfest that turns to complete chaos when there are multiple heroes on the scene. Half of the time, I literally just chuck fireballs blindly because I can no longer tell where the enemy boss is. The main campaign at normal difficulty is stupidly easy. I died a grand total of three times. Once when Bullseye appears with his bullshit one-hit-kill special attack, again when Bullseye once again pops up together with Elektra when you fight the Kingpin and once when I forgot to turn on my defensive buff when leaving a hub area. Yes, this is a game in which Bullseye is strangely the strongest enemy.
• Then again it might have been because I was playing the Human Torch and balance is way off in this game. I found that my best tactic is to aggro enemies until I have a big train, maneuver to stand in the middle of all of them and then repeatedly nuke the area around me until everything is dead. I’ve noticed that some characters don’t seem to fare so well. For example, players who play Black Widow or Captain America seem bemused when I just walk up, kill everything and move away while they are slowly plinking away at enemies.
• That said, a recent update added a new chapter that allows you to travel to Asgard. This is great timing what with the release of the new Thor movie since you also fight Dark Elves here. I notice that the quests here seem more interesting and the enemies are a fair step up in challenge level. A pity however that it’s a very short chapter and feels incomplete.
• Endgame content seems poor. It looks to me like you only get harder and harder versions of the same instances you get in the main campaign, plus maybe a couple of shared maps in which enemies spawn continuously. Also you’re supposed to be able to earn Eternity Splinters to buy more characters with. By the end of the main campaign I had about 370 of them, though a lot of them were one-time gifts from the campaign. Since heroes are priced 200 (only a few of them), 400 and 600 splinters, you can see why players would just pony up the cash to just buy them.

To be fair, the game isn’t that bad. There’s something to be said about the inherent fun of mindlessly killing tons of enemies with no effort and it does feature Marvel universe characters. Also plenty of players seem to really like buying new characters as they appear so this is a reliable money maker for Gazillion. But it’s too shallow and too empty of theme and story to really interest me.