Marvel Now Will Relaunch The Marvel Universe
Okay, all you diehard Marvel fans who looked at the New 52 and said Marvel would never do anything like that, you may shut up now.
Logo of Marvel Comics (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Just a few quick questions for those people who play Marvel: Avengers Alliance on Facebook.
How do you deal with your team? Do you focus on training one character? Or, do you spread out the missions so that all the characters you have grow to roughly the same level?
So, we learn the real reason why the Marvel universe has been invaded by just about every major alien race and entity in existence.
“Um, sir, I know Galactus has been monitored just outside of Pluto, but our systems need to reboot for another update.”
“Again”
“Well, they are Windows based computers, sir.”
“Well, okay. What are the chances Galactus will come here, right?”
Image via CrunchBase
Marvel’s entry into the online/Facebook gaming app world is an interesting choice. I say interesting not in the sense that it does not make much sense. In fact, with the Avengers movie coming to theaters soon, it makes perfect sense. When I say interesting, I mean that some of the decisions about how the game is played and structured are… interesting.
The game itself is pretty standard for a Facebook app game. The game centers around story lines where you build your Avengers team. You actually do not play a super hero, but a member of SHIELD, working with the Avengers on their various missions. The missions are the standard app combat missions pitting three heroes against a series of villains. There are also player versus player battles, where you face your group against another. Again, this is pretty typical of a lot of these types of games. Through these missions, you acquire SHIELD points, Command points, silver, and various items for use in missions.
The first thing that you notice is that the SHIELD points are extremely rare, which is unfortunate since you need them to level up your Avengers through training (you do not have this limitation), as well as for training and purchasing items. You can purchase these points by paying for them, or you can have friends send you points. At the moment, I’m running into a glitch in the game that is actually preventing me from receiving gifts from friends, which basically means I am up the creek in the game.
You also notice that the Command points, needed to add characters to your roster, are almost as rare as the SHIELD points. Unfortunately, you cannot gift them (even when the gifts are working, which they were up until today).
The missions are, as I said, pretty straight forward. It is a turn based system, with each character getting a chance to attack. Like most of these games, there are multiple character types, each does better against another type. This turn system can get a bit confusing when you are in PvP battles, since it is quite likely you will be bringing the same team to the mission as your adversary.
At the moment, there really is not much that sets this game apart from others like it, other than it is an official Marvel game. It is interesting to check it out. But, I have found other games more exciting, especially the ones where you actually play a super hero instead of another nameless agent of SHIELD. The rarity of the two primary means of advancing in the game (the SHIELD and Command points) is a bit of a turn off, especially when faced with a bug that does not register friend gifts. It is also, like so many games on Facebook, heavily weighed towards the social side, with the game play working better the more friends you have playing the game as well.
If you are curious, or if you are a diehard Marvel fan, then you should check this game out. But, if you are the casual gamer looking to just kill a little time, then there are better online games to play than this one.
Way back in the day, I remember checking out the old Marvel Super Heroes role-playing game. I never really got a chance to play it, since I never really had many friends who were into role-playing games of any kind, let alone the Marvel game. But I liked it, and definitely prefer it over the other super hero role-playing games that were out at that time, or have come out since.
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