|
|
|---|
 |
Marvel Heroes PC ReviewMarvel Heroes is billed to be a massively multiplayer online game by Gazillion entertainment. However Marvel Heroes plays much more similarly to a action RPG or dungeon crawler like Diablo, Torchlight, or Vampire the Masquerade Redemption. The game is point and click based. So to move your character you'll click on the map where you want to go, and you must click an enemy to attack them. Efficiently killing enemies without taking much damage will cause them to drop rare items, such as money, weapons, armor, health, or even new costumes for characters to play as. The randomization of what loot enemies drop is the incentive for continuing to play the after you beat the eight different chapters in the game's story, which takes about ten to thirty hours the first time through depending on what character you use and if you play in a group or not. At the start of the game you'll choose from one of five characters to begin the adventure with; Storm, Hawkeye, Daredevil, Scarlet Witch, and Ben Grimm the Thing, The game is free to play and download, but you only get one character at the start, but you'll be awarded a random second character of the initial five after completing the tutorial, and one more after beating Chapter 8. If you want to play any additional characters then you have to either find them as drops randomly, or purchase them with real money, including the other two starting heroes. The game is fairly entertaining, but the gameplay grows stale quickly, so I recommend playing it at least for a few hours first before buying any additional characters or costumes. Likewise if you decide to buy any additional characters, purchase them one at a time, and start with who you're most excited to play as, since there's no telling when you'll lose interest with the game.
The story in the game starts out with many super villains escaping from the Rift prison in the Negative Zone, and Nick Fury director of S.H.I.E.L.D. recruiting a team of superheroes to round up the escapees. It turns out that Dr. Doom is the mastermind behind the plot and is collecting various artifacts from different criminal organizations run by the Kingpin, Mr. Sinister, Hydra, A.I.M., M.R.D., and the Hand, in order to cement his position as the most powerful man in the world. Most of the games story is told through mildly animated motion comics, with full voiceovers. The art style is good, but the technique of zooming in or slowly rotating sill images often looks cheap and hokey. The plot is pretty much just an excuse to have a series of boss fights with famous super villains primarily from Spider-Man or X-Men comics, with the occasional Avengers foe here and there. There aren't really any major plot twists or shocking reveals, except for how left field some of the location changes in the story are. I will say though, that a lot of the random banter characters say when they defeat enemies or pass by one another on the map is very entertaining, and often genuinely funny, to the point where I actually laughed out loud occasionally. It's a shame that the great writing of the dialogue wasn't carried over to the low stakes predictable story.
Levels in the game play out like this. You'll enter a hub area, where you will be given the premise for the level, then proceed to the teleporter and you'll be transported to the starting area where many other players are usually around. Then you'll be given a series of a primary objectives and several optional side quests. Unfortunately there doesn't appear to be a way to tell which objectives advance the main plot, and which ones are optional and extraneous. Generally though if you're traveling to different locations, then you're probably doing the main quest. Primary objectives usually involve finding the entrance to someplace or defeating a boss. Secondary objectives will have you killing a certain number of enemies in the area which is cumulative across all players in the area, entering an optional dungeon to retrieve a item or defeat a event boss which appears every 15 minutes in different locations in the starting section of each Chapter, and the boss's power and health scales to a higher level depending on how many players are fighting it at once.
There are two kinds of levels in the game, open areas where you'll see other many other players run around and enemies spawn infinitely and closed dungeons that have a finite number of enemies that won't respawn unless you leave the dungeon and other players are not present. After the recent patch however the difference between areas is now almost inconsequential, since other players are now able to fight alongside you in dungeons, without being in a official group. Before the patch the main incentive for joining a group with other players was to have a easier time clearing out dungeons and defeating bosses, and potentially progressing through the game a lot faster. Now there doesn't seem to be much of a reason to bother limiting yourself to a single group, and the only difference between a group and a open battlefield is that the group is limited to six players, and at least 200 players can be on the battlefield or hub area at once. You can however turn off automatic groupings for dungeons if you prefer to go at it alone, but it's buried deep within the options menu, and is easy to miss and even if you check the option to play alone you'll still see other players in the hub and event battlefields. Another strike against grouping is that the whole team doesn't travel together and if one player decides to leave the area, or if you get separated, it doesn't say where each party member is, so you'll just have to ask them on team speak. Also even when all players in the same group are in the area together at the same time, it could still be hard to find them due to the fog of war on the map. I also wonder if it's possible to play by yourself throughout most of the dungeons in the game, then why don't they release a disc based offline version, which would probably be a lot more appealing and profitable for Gazillion.
There are two kinds of attack powers in the game, basic powers which consume no energy and can only be mapped to the left mouse button, and normal powers which use spirit energy for each cast and can be mapped to the right mouse button or to the action bar. If you want to play the game one handed which I had to, since I was holding the camera for footage with my left hand, then you essentially only have two powers at your disposal, left and right click. You can assign six other powers to the action bar and then click them once to activate them, and then select a target if necessary. I like clicking on powers from the action bar, since it allows me to casualty play the game while I do other things like watch TV or eat a sandwich. Unfortunately toward the end of the beta there were two weeks where clicking my action bar did nothing, and there was no way to resolve the issue, by reloading areas or restarting the game. Each space on the action bar is also represented by a hotkey, for example by default medkit is H. Strangely though you can't change the key bindings for the action bar, for example I'd love to map powers to Space Bar, Enter, Shift or Control Keys, but I'm not able to. To make matters worse the hot keys aren't even in a nice straight row and appear to be assigned randomly to different letter keys. The controls are currently in no way customizable, and you can't even move your character with the arrow keys or with the typical FPS movement WSAD, although pressing the W key does move the character forward, but you still have to steer them with the mouse.
Each character in the game has four armor slots, [Torso, boots, belt or gloves and mask.] one weapon slot, two artifacts slots, and one medal slot. Armor increases your defense, weapons increase your attack power, artifacts grant you a extra power or new abilities, and medals are pretty much the same as artifacts but are much more common. In addition to increasing your defense or attack power weapons and armor often also have secondary traits like extra health, spirit, XP, defense, credits, or new abilities like increasing chance to dodge, movement speed, health regeneration, access to new powers at lower levels, or increasing the power of a skill by several points. The most useful traits are bonus defense and extra points to current rank of a power, for example a armor might give you 26 defense, but have a trait of plus 45 defense so it's really 61, and plus two to any current rank of a power is always good even when you level up, but it is especially good when it's one of the powers you use all the time like Colossus's stomp or Daredevil's billy club sweep where it can really make a difference. Items have better traits depending on their rarity, white is common, green is uncommon, blue is scarce, and purple is the rarest. The more rare a item is the grater the amount of affixes it will have, and will also be more powerful.
A usual sidelight in the game is upgrading shopkeepers experience rank. As a shopkeeper levels up they'll offer more items and services for sale, but the process is overly tedious to say the least. In other games to upgrade a shopkeeper you simply need to buy and sell things to them repeatedly. Here however you have to straight up give them items for free as "donations" in order for them to gain any experience at all. At least when you sell unnecessary items crowding up your inventory you'll gain some mildly useful credits, where as donating to a shopkeeper only grants you the possibility of potentially leveling them up and then maybe at some point in the future being able buy some decent armor, or modestly upgrading a costume to grant you say +50 defense. Personally I wouldn't bother with donating items until you reach at least Chapter 6, because the rarer the item, the more experience the shopkeeper will gain, and the XP from low level items at the start of the game is almost entirely negligible. I also don't understand what the differences between the armor and weapons dealer are, since they literally sell exactly the same things. There are also other things you can buy like Fortune Cards from Gambit that costs real money and give you random items, or MoonStone whose strangely only sells one artifact at a time for credits and can't be upgraded.
Unfortunately the most desirable items in the game; new characters and costumes can't be purchased with credits, and can only be found dropped by enemies randomly or bought with real money. I found in my experience with the game that new hero tokens appear to drop at a rate of about one every ten hours, which isn't too slow, but there's no guarantee that you'll get a new character or one you actually want to play as. New costume drops however are absurdly rare however, since I only found one in my nearly 300 hours of playtime. It seems like only bosses are capable of dropping new costumes, and even then I think only for the character you're currently using, which is very frustrating if you don't like a character's default costume, and don't want to grind the same bosses for a better uniform for a crazy amount of time, or fork over the cash to buy the outfit right away. To make matters worse the price of buying new characters or costumes is entirely unreasonable. In most console games new DLC characters cost between $2 to $5, but in Marvel Heroes new characters prices start at $6 for the less desirable heroes, then jump to $12 for most characters, and then shoot up to a whopping $20 for especially popular characters like Spider-Man, Deadpool, or Iron Man. As bad as the character pricing is, the costume pricing is even worse, with the minimum being $5, and most costing $12 or $15. It wouldn't be so bad if you got one extra costume of your choice when you bought a new character, but you don't. So if you wanted to play as Iron Man in a particular armor right away, it could cost you as much as $35 alone, which is madness.
If you'd rather rely on drops for new characters, costumes and items which is understandable given the outrageous pricing. The good news is that loot drops for each player individually, so if two players defeat the same boss, one might unlock Hulk, while the other might only get a rare piece of purple armor. It might sound bad but at least then players won't be fighting over items. The bad news however is that you can't drop or trade unwanted heroes with other players in order to keep the keep the real money prices artificially high. Also you'll often find duplicate characters that you've already unlocked, and there only use is to upgrade that hero's ultimate power, which isn't unlocked until they reach level 30, and after that can only be used once every 20 minutes in real time. It's totally bogus. Despite drops for each player being separate, for some reason other people can still pick up health or spirit orbs that replenish energy, which can be really annoying when you're about to die and someone steals your orb by just walking by. What gets me is that it doesn't happen with experience orbs, so they could fix it if they wanted to, they just don't care.
There are several other desirable items in the game that can be randomly dropped. retcon devices reset all of the assigned skill points for your character, which is really useful if you want to refocus your powers, now that new better ones are available which often happens with Cable, Hulk, or Iron Man. It's also useful if you make a mistake and pump too many points into a bad skill, and by the way it's weird that there's a confirm button on the upgrade screen, but canceling doesn't subtract the points you used, so why confirm it? Artifacts are rare items that have the similar affixes to armor like boosting your defense or movement speed. Usually though it's best to use artifacts that regenerate health or spirit, or use a combination of both since you have two artifacts slots anyway and then become almost unstoppable. Some artifacts grant you entirely new powers to help balance out an otherwise shoehorned character , giving someone like Thing for instance a much needed ranged lighting power. Medals are very similar artifacts but they are far less rare, because specific bosses always drop the same medal every time they are defeated, and because of this they also tend to be less powerful. There are some useful medals late in the game though like for instance Sabertooth's which lets you regenerate 400 HP a minute or Mr. Sinister 's which has a 2% chance of spawning a X-Men clone to fight alongside you for a minute. There are also fortune cards, which are pretty much the gamblers way of potentially getting rare or expensive items quickly for a cheaper price. After collecting or purchasing a fortune card activating it will make it turn into a random rare item, which could be a new character, costume, retcon device, artifact, or temporary hour long boosts that increase one of several things such as finding rare items, experience gained, or your health and spirit. You can buy fortune cards from Gambit in most of the hub areas for $1 apiece, but you can actually find them as random drops from enemies as well. The appeal of fortune cards is that they are the only way without grinding to obtain the rare "chase" costumes which can't normally be purchased from the store. Supposedly each character has at least one particularly cool but usually obscure chase costume, that's even more unlikely to be dropped than a normal costume for that character. Examples include Phoenix 5 Cyclops, armored Thor, gold first appearance Iron Man, Juggernaut Colossus, and first appearance yellow costume Daredevil. Personally I don't see the logic in holding back desirable costumes, when the game is free to play, and its entire moneymaking scheme is based upon selling people frivolous extra costumes at exorbitant prices, yet they hold back some of the best ones. It makes no sense. Maybe they're thinking is that people will want the costumes so bad that they'll spend a ton of money on fortune cards to get them right away, but I doubt anyone is that stupid, and they're probably losing more customers, than gaining any by hiding Juggernaut Colossus or yellow Daredevil.
Once you have at least two characters, usually at the end of the tutorial section, you can switch who you're playing as at any time by using the roster screen. However if you are hit or move it all while changing characters, the action will canceled, which makes it difficult to do when faced with a large mob, or during a boss fight, which ironically is probably when you would most be inclined to switch characters to better face the situation at hand. The lesson is to never venture into difficult areas with bad characters, and to always explore with your highest level hero.
Characters in the game level up independently from one another, so if you make it to Chapter 5 with Spider-Man who is level 16, and then start playing as Captain America, he'll start at level 1, and you'll be asked if you want to restart the game over again, but you can continue playing at Chapter 5, it will just be really hard since you're now a level 1 character. If you choose to restart the game all the items you collected and characters that you leveled up will carry over, you'll just lose your place in the story. You can also replay cutscenes, or refight bosses by waiting for them to respawn which usually takes between 15 to 30 minutes.
Every time you level up in the game you'll be given two skill points to increase your powers. Initially when you only have three powers it isn't that difficult of a decision to make. Later though especially with the better characters there simply won't be enough skill points for a balanced build. For example Ms. Marvel has amazing ranged blaster powers, but can also be played like a brawler due to her good durability and strong melee abilities. But at around level 10, Ms. Marvel's damage output and viability goes way down, unless you focus on one specialty and abandoned the other. If they just gave you three skill points, even periodically like every fifth level, instead of always two it will be much easier to have a nice balanced jack of all trades character. Currently if you play as Thor, Deadpool, Black Widow, Iron Man or Ms. Marvel you'll pretty much have to bank on just one or two powers, and put all your eggs into one basket so to speak. As it stands now you can be really screw yourself over if as a brawler character your fighting boss and you only have crowd control area of effect powers, that they're immune to. To try to compensate for the slow piecemealing of skill points the level cap for characters has been raised from 35 to 60, but you will stop gaining new powers at level 32, so eventually if you play long enough your character will be well rounded. However most of the enemies in the game are scaled to a round no greater than level 20, so you'll have hell of a time getting enough experience no matter how much you grind to reach level 60.
The game is rather easy, particularly because it doesn't appear to be a penalty for death, you just reappear at the start of the current area, level or checkpoint. In fact even if you die during a boss fight after getting them to half of their health, after you respawn and return to the boss they will still be at half health since the damage carries over, as long as you don't leave the level. The system makes every boss fight just a matter time and not skill. Lessening the difficulty further are the existence of medkits, which restore 30% of your overall health when used. You can stack ten medkits into one item slot of your inventory, they are a very common drop, and are cheap to buy from shopkeepers. Medkits are pretty useful for brawler characters without natural healing abilities like Spider-Man or Black Panther, but if you have the option, any form of health regen from armor or items is better than relying on medkits due to the ten second cooldown. In fact the hidden evil of medkits is how quickly you'll acquire too many of them and have them take up half of your inventory or more. Basically I recommend either using them constantly, like Pez or totally ignoring medkits and just respawn instead, otherwise your character will be overflowing with them in no time.
Your characters hold 25 slots in their inventory to carry items, which will quickly fill up. Sometimes even by accident, since clicking an item will cause you to pick it up, which is easy to do by mistake when both movement and attacking also require you to click the ground. What's really frustrating is that characters don't have their own individual inventory, so if you're playing as Wolverine, and your inventory gets full, and then you switch the Black Panther, his inventory will be full with the very same items Wolverine was holding. Each character does have their own separate armor and weapon slots however, so Wolverine's gloves won't get dumped into Panther's inventory when you switch to him for example, so that's a plus.
To better help alleviate inventory problems you also have a secondary place to store items in the hub called the stash. The stash can carry a decent amount of items, but it fills up quickly if you store anything other than a few extra costumes and some good armor that you will soon be able to equip once you level up. Initially I saved everything, and my stash was full after only three runs. Then I decided to ignore armor for characters I didn't have, and then I ignored crafting materials, but my stash would still fill up after ten or so runs. So then I decided that I would only save costumes, medals and rare artifact items. That worked for a while and I was able to go on about 50 runs, before the stash was full again. Then I had the idea of equipping medals and artifacts to characters I wasn't using just to clear up space in the stash. Unfortunately my space saving scheme was foiled since once you equip a character with a medal or a artifact it is then bound to them so it can only be used by that character, and cannot be equipped by anyone else, including any other characters you own, or by different human players. Before the recent patch, the stash was much bigger, and held about 130 items, afterwards though it only holds around 40 items, and you actually have to buy more space with real money if you want more room to hold additional items. Shaking you down for more item space seems ridiculous, and is a transparent cash grab, based on a poor game design choice. You really should be able to store at least 1000 items in your stash, and 200 for every character's individual separate inventory for free.
The camera in the game isn't very dynamic and often makes the action seem less interesting than it should be, since it's simply zoomed too far out. You can zoom in the camera by using the mouse wheel, but it's still positioned overhead, so then you can't see where you're going, or whose attacking you from what side, so you're forced to play from a birds eye view perspective. It would be great if the game had a nice third person chase camera, or even a first person perspective, for variety's sake. As it stands now since you can barely see your character anyway there doesn't seem to be much point in changing costumes, or playing two characters that are similar to each other like Black Panther and Daredevil or Thing and Colossus.
Right now the game doesn't support voice chat, and you can only communicate with other players with text chat that is broadcasted to every player within the current map location. When you join a group or guild however you write messages that only other members can read using chat commands. Most of the chat commands in the game are textbased sort of like if you're maneuvering around MIRC or DOS. It gets confusing sometimes and it seems like the process could be streamlined. For example in order to speak only to other members of your party you have to type /party, which will make everything you say only visible to them, but then to speak to every player again you must type /leaveparty, and then if you want to speak to the party again you'll have to type /party a second time. There really should only be three chat channels; local, party, and guild, represented by buttons that you click on to easily switch to that chat channel , which would be much quicker and a lot less of a hassle.
I didn't have a chance yet to try out player vs player content, but at some point I will and then I'll update the review. One thing that concerns me though is that some of the better characters are being nerfed so that their attacks do less damage and they have less health so that it will be more fair in PVP, but it also carries over to the rest of the game so those character aren't fun to play anymore. Clearly nerfing should only affect PVP, and not the rest of the game especially when people buy individual characters for $20, only to have then ruined by a patch four days later.
The graphics in the game are fairly impressive. It runs on the Unreal Engine 3, and is pretty stable most of the time. Textures are mostly clean and bright, and the environments have some nice details, but low poly counts. Character models look pretty good, but they too often use the same bodies for multiple characters. For example Jean Grey and Ms. Marvel or Cyclops, Daredevil, and Black Panther all have the same bodies, but with different heads and textures. I also have to complain that sometimes the likeness of certain characters is a little off. For instance on most of Hulk's costumes is head is too small in proportion to his body, and Spider-Man and Cyclop's faces just don't look right to me. Black Widow bears a passing resemblance to a baby kewpie doll's face. This is troubling when one of the main marketing points of the game is to play as your favorite character in their classic costume, but if they don't look right, have a weird pinhead or a strange face then why would you buy additional characters or costumes.
Sound effects in the game are often too loud, and muffle all of the other sounds, so I had to turn them down in the option menu. I like the sound of Hawkeye's bow or Storm's lightning, but basic punching, slashing, or laser sounds don't seem accurate to the action on screen, and don't sound as powerful or as satisfying as they should. The music in the game is largely forgettable. I think they actually might be using some public domain music since I would have sworn I heard some of it in other games and possibly TV shows, but nothing famous of course. If you were to play the game for any extended period of time you'd probably better off listening to your own music, or watching TV or listening to the radio while you play considering how long the average session would be, and how quickly the mundane music loops. The highlight of the sound department though is the terrific voice acting found in the game. In fact I would go as far to say that the voice acting, and clever reference filled dialogue is probably the best reason to play the game, with is why I crank up the voice acting, and turn down the rest of the sound. Spider-Man and Deadpool have a lot really funny lines. Like when Spider-Man's inventory is full "I only have two arms here......most of the time." [Six Arm Spider-Man reference.] or when Deadpool is about to die "Deadpool needs food baddly." [Midway's Gauntlet reference.] Lines like those are a treat to hear and make me burst out laughing. I really love listening to practically every character including Wolverine, Captain America, Thor, Black Panther, Cable, Spider-Man, Thing, Deadpool, Hawkeye, and Rocket Raccoon. Some voices do seem a little forced and therefore unnatural, but most of the performances are very well done and top quality.
I love super heroes, and I wanted to love this game. I was skeptical in buying the $200 ultimate pack, since I felt that I needed to at least play the game first and make sure that I like it before dropping that kind of money sight unseen, and I'm glad I did. Instead I bought one of the founders packs for $20 and got into the beta where I was able to try out 21 of the game's characters for no additional cost. I was thorough in my time with the game, I played practically every day, got every character to level 20, beat the game, and I even fought the same boss Mr. Sinister solo with each character at level 20 as a controlled test to accumulate data in order to create a tier list. I did all of that in order to write this review. So I think that I can safely say with good authority that the game in its current state just isn't that fun. From the bad bird's eye view camera angles, to the point and click brawling combat, they're just is never an incentive to keep playing besides the novelty of it being Marvel superheroes on the screen. One of the main problems is the lack of a penalty for dying, it makes it so that when you're outnumbered there's no sense of tension, and when you overcome a difficult challenge like a overpowered boss there's no sense of accomplishment, it just sucks all the fun right out of the game. The other huge problem is of course all the nickel and diming going on trying to convince you to buy more heroes, costumes or even inventory space at outrageous prices. Ironically one of the only ways to keep things interesting is to constantly switch heroes whenever you get bored, which usually happens every half hour, but since characters cost so much, and rarely ever drop, most people will get tired of their first two characters within a few hours, and then never play the game again, and therefore not buy any items. They need to do one of two things, either make all heroes cheap or free like $1 apiece, and then they can charge whatever they want for costumes, or cut their losses and rework the game as a boxed offline single player experience that includes all of the characters and costumes content already unlocked, at a reasonable price like say $40. Even though I love most of the cast, there's no point in going through the game multiple times, once with each character, when I'm already got tired of it not even a fourth of the way through on the first go. I of course pressed on and beat the game for the sake of the review, but I really don't see the point in buying multiple characters when many of them play the same, and you can't even have other heroes you've unlocked fallow you around to look cool. Marvel Heroes certainly has the potential someday to be a truly great experience, be like for example if they added controller support, made it easier to find rare characters or costumes, lowered the prices, or overhauled the entire combat system. As it stands now though excellent dialogue and voice acting, and pretty good graphics cannot save the game from being a overall dissatisfying and lackluster experience that should only be checked out by the most hardcore and forgiving of Marvel fans, and everyone else should avoid. I'm of at two minds on the final score, on one hand it's technically free, and it's pretty long and there's a lot of content. On the other hand the combat is bland, the gameplay is boring, and the pricing system is crazy. I also can't get over the fact that the game is almost identical to the X-Men Legends and Marvel Ultimate Alliance games, the first of which came out nearly nine years ago, and yet they are all vastly superior, and offered much greater value considering each game had at least 25 characters, and most of which also having four different costumes a piece. To me my personal bias makes the game feels like a 6/10, and it probably would to most other Marvel comics fans as well. However my final score must reflect the quality of the game and not quality of the license, so I give it a 5/10, which I feel accurately reflects the amount of enjoyment most people will have with the game.
In this bonus feature I will examine each playable character in the game that I've played as and got to at least level 20. Then at the end I will reveal my personal tier list for who I think is the most powerful and most fun characters are play in the game.
Colossus is pretty much a straight melee character. At first I thought Colossus was a horrible tank character, since he has no defense and does very little damage at an awfully slow speed. It turns out however that the key to making Colossus good is upgrading his osmosis skin power, which pretty much acts as a second health bar that rapidly regenerates when you're not taking damage and it makes you almost invincible as long as you're not getting pummeled from multiple targets for over five minutes. His other passive ability dramatically increases his base defense stat 20 to 200 points depending on the level, is also very useful but you should prioritize osmosis skin, and the two attack powers to level up first. I still have several issues with Colossus though, like his lack of skill variety that makes him rather boring to play as. Colossus only has about four attack powers, a punch, a kick, a stomp, a charge attack. In his limited pool of abilities the stomp is probably the most useful since it does the most damage, hits multiple targets, and knockbacks enemies swarming him. The kick power also has knockback, but it doesn't hit as many enemies as the stomp and does less damage. Most of the time you'll run into a mob of enemies, perform the stomp attack until you're out of energy, and then mindlessly punch away at the group, until its refilled and you can use stomp again. Since none of Colossus's powers do that much damage it's really important that you invest in upgrading his power mastery which increases the damage of all his attacks. It doesn't make a dramatic difference, but it does help Colossus stay competitive with other characters late in the game. Colossus also features several boosts that either increases his attack power or defense, as well as that of other players fighting around him. I would say that most of these boosts are useful, and would be one of the few incentives of having Colossus be part of the team when grouping up, other than being the designated reviver. Dispatching gangs of thugs by punching each one six times gets tedious very quickly, and Colossus lacks any real flashy powers, or overpowered attacks, that would make things more interesting or at least speed up the process. This means soloing the whole game as Colossus a bit of a slog, especially when compared to other characters, but at least it's not too challenging and you'll be a hot commodity for players that are looking for teams.
Wolverine is perhaps a bit too simple of a character, while playing as him all you'll be doing is different varieties of claw slashes, nearly all of which look identical to each other. Wolverine literally has seven different kinds of stationery slash attacks, and since they all pretty much look the same you might as well use whichever power does the most damage, which happens to be in his initial starting basic attack. What's frustrating when playing as Wolverine is that you don't have any range attacks nor do you have any real viable crowd control attacks to cut the number of your attackers down quickly. Because of this you are going to be taking a ton of damage. To make up for it, Wolverine's signature healing factor works amazingly well, refilling his health by hundreds of points every second and is a vital upgrade in order to make him even playable. Wolverine's dash move can hit multiple targets, but it is very hard to aim and is better used to travel cross the map faster. While his spinning slash attack does hit multiple enemies at once the range is so small, and the damage so negligible that it's hardly worth using. Despite the simplicity to his play style Wolverine is actually pretty fun to play as, when compared to other similar tank characters like the Thing or Colossus. Perhaps because of his satisfying slashing sound effects, amazing voice acting by Steve Blum or the feeling of invincibility when you take out a group of 35 hostels with only your basic attack that were 10 levels above you, with almost no armor. That makes him one of the best characters play through the game as by yourself, or a group for that matter, but his lack of range will cause other characters to very often steal your kills.
I'll be honest admit that I hate Rocket Raccoon, and didn't want to play as him, but he's actually one of the best characters in the game. It doesn't seem that way at first, since he has terrible defense, and does puny damage, but after you get his shield and turret abilities unlocked he becomes an almost untouchable killing machine, that is similar to Iron Man. The first key to playing as Raccoon effectively is to always use your pistol whip power to kill any foe at point-blank range, since it does three times the damage when compared to actually shooting your guns, and it's especially important before you unlock his shield. After you get the shield you should only attack enemies with it activated since it blocks 70% of damage, and most of the time you'll be instantly killed without it. Activating his turret, doesn't actually do that much damage, however practically every enemy onscreen will focus all their attacks on the turret instead of you, which gives you a good two minutes to pick them off one by one with your pistols. Admittedly this basic combination of powers does eventually get a little stale if you use it all the time, but Rocket Raccoon also has a nice assortment of additional powers as well, such as boosts, rocket launchers, grenades, and even a jet pack. Because of his great powers I would say that Rocket Raccoon is better suited for playing by yourself, as in a team setting he might kill too large of a share of the enemies, although he would be a good choice to help out struggling new player through the game.
I think that the Punisher is interesting character to play as. As you would imagine Punisher is primarily a weapons based ranged character. Since he's just a normal human the Punisher has pretty awful defense, so if he's swarmed by a group of attackers you'll be killed right away, luckily all of his attacks do tremendous damage, so the strategy is to constantly switch to the appropriate weapon for the current situation and never let anyone get too close or they'll overwhelm. If there's only one or two enemies that you're facing then the Punisher's basic rifle attack is probably be fast enough to kill them without them touching you. If there's a group of enemies that haven't spotted yet than a grenade throw might be in order. If a bunch of the enemies are rushing you from the same direction then perhaps you should pullout your double uzis and mow them down. What's most important to remember though, is that if anyone ever gets up in your grill at point blank range, whip out your rocket launcher and fire it right into their face, since there's no friendly fire, but generous splash damage, so it should take out, or at least knockback anyone surrounding you. The rocket launcher is also great at chipping away at the health of bosses from a distance. He has other powers as well such as a shotgun that is not as good as the rifle, a kick move to knock back enemies, which isn't as effective as the rocket launcher, or a knife combo that I haven't tried out yet. Punisher is a rare character that I would say is good being played solo or in a group, although if I had to choose it's probably safer to be in the group given his low defense, and tendency to die given his high margin of error, but he's much more fun when going at it alone.
Daredevil is one of five characters that you could potentially start the game as, and is possibly the hardest one for playing through the entire game. The fundamental problem with Daredevil is that he's essentially a brawling tank character, with no defense, so he can dish it out, but he can't take it. His basic punch combo isn't really know noteworthy, but it's not terrible. His billy clubs throw is very similar to Captain America's shield or Thor's hammer throw move but it does a lot less damage and takes too long to kill enemies. The key to success is to level up his billy club swing, and spam the hell out of that power. Billy club swing is Daredevil's only crowd control power, and since he's practically made of feathers you will have to rely on it to survive. Later upgraded versions have greater range, and are therefore much safer to use, and seems to uses a lot of energy so you might want to equip him with artifacts or armor, that boosts or helps him regain his energy quicker. It seems like if Daredevil had good defense he might actually pretty fun to use, right now though it's very frustrating when you are frequently killed by basic thugs all just trying to level up so that you can find better armor to increase your poor defense stat. Due to his frailty Daredevil is better suited for playing with a group, however since he's a tank that dies easily most teams won't find him very appealing, and you'll have trouble finding one to accept you.
The Thing is perhaps the easiest play as of the five starting characters. The Thing and Colossus are very similar to each other, to the point where you could say that they are practically clones. The main difference is that the Thing has much better base defense since he doesn't have the extra osmosis shield that Colossus does, nor does he have as many damage reduction passive powers. What that means is early on Thing seems a lot more sturdy and therefore better than Colossus, but after around level 10 it becomes clear that the Thing is actually much more vulnerable to attacks due to its less effective hard as a rock damage reduction passive. Thing's punch combo is much faster and therefore does more damage, most of the rest of his powers, including his boosts are identical to Colossus's. The Thing is a great character to play by yourself with, but he's also the perfect foundation to any team with his high defense, and terrific close range damage output.
Deadpool is a great character because there's so much variety in his powers, and but it's also his downfall however, since you can spread his skill points too thin since he has so many different abilities, and not excel in any particular power. You're going to have to pick out three or four powers to focus on, until they start to max out, then you can move on and upgrade one or two more. Deadpool has three different builds swords and guns, traps and explosives, and healing. As boring as it sounds, focusing on his most basic move set swords and guns is probably the best idea. Both attacks don't use any energy, the sword does decent damage, and although his guns aren't very powerful, use them to wear down targets at long range. A trap build is interesting, due to a lack of options initially you'll be forced to rely on foot gougers, and grenades. Grenades are really useful since they do a lot of damage and have great knockback Foot gougers on the other hand are a bit of a dummy stat, since difficult to lure enemies into stepping on them before they disappear, and they never really do much damage even when you have ten points put into the power, and when they do connect, targets aren't really noticeably slowed down, and I have never seen bleed damage take effect. Later on at level10, you can use the lil' Deadpool power, which has you throwing a decoy Deadpool doll away from your current position that enemies will gather around like moths to a flame, before it explodes often taking out the entire pack of with it. I would say that lil' Deadpool probably his best move and to therefore use it all the time. Deadpool's healing factor for some reason isn't nearly as powerful as Wolverines, it still refills your health, but at the rate of 30 or 40 points a second, instead of 200 or 300 like Wolverines. Because your health refills so slowly, you're going to have to play much more cautiously than you would then say you were Thing, Colossus, Black widow, or Wolverine. In fact I would say the key to Deadpool's playstyle despite being a tank to always keep enemies at a distance, and frequently switching powers which is similar to how the Punisher plays.
The Hulk is certainly a good character with a myriad of ways to play him, which is why I like to call him a "Jack of all Tanks" if you will. Hulk has a plethora of ways to kill things quickly, and gives you the opportunity to decide what will be your right click bread and butter power, and what will be your go to boss killing or crowd control abilities, which could often all be the same power. Which is why it's important to force yourself to branch out and try different powers when playing as the Hulk because it's too easy to fall into the rut of using the same power to kill everything. The simplest strategy is to just use keep upgrading Hulk's basic punch move throughout the whole game, but that would get boring pretty quickly. A lot of people like to use his smashing leap power to travel round the map quicker and take out large amounts of enemies in a single bound. Although it's fun to jump around the map all the time and not have to worry about targeting enemies or taking damage, it often feels a little too easy and therefore cheap and in open areas you might steal other people's kills. Hulk's ground pound power does good damage, and has great knockback. It's similar in appearance to the Thing's ground pound, and Colossus's stomp move, so you might want to avoid using it, if you played as one of those characters before. My favorite special power of the Hulk though is his Sonic Clap move, since it has a huge range and area of attack, has tremendous knockback and I'm a big fan of the power from the comics. As good as some of Hulk's powers are, he does have a few stickers like his headbutt which does less damage than a basic punch and only a single target, or his yell attack that neither draws enemies toward him or shoos them away, and does minimal damage. The powerup Hulk tough is pretty useful since it significantly reduces the amount of damage you take by increasing your defense, unfortunately it also surrounds the Hulk in a unsightly black mist the entire time it's active. Although Hulk is a great asset for any team, he is pretty much a one man army, and so there's not much incentive for a Hulk player to join a group in the first place.
Jean Gray is a unique character since she actually has two different forms, normal and her Phoenix form. The problem Jean has she won't have enough skill points to properly level up both forms, so you’ll have to choose. Early on is a much better idea to focus on normal Jean Gray since you’ll be spending the majority of your playtime as her. Later on after about level 15 or so you'll probably want to refocus on Phoenix, or perhaps even reallocate your skill points with a retcon device in order to do a lot more damage. The problem with the Phoenix form, is that although it's capable of doing tremendous damage, she can only be in the form for a limited amount of time,[Usually five minutes.] and it has to be charged up by killing 30 or so normal enemies as Jean before you can even activate it. So basically as good as your Phoenix form may be, if you can't kill things quickly or consistently as Jean, you're going to hardly ever play as Phoenix and screw yourself over. One of Jean's best abilities is that when you die there is a chance that the Phoenix Force might revive you to full health instantly, and the odds are pretty good since it happens about two out of three times. Jean‘s kinetic bolt starts outputting pitiful damage and at around level 10 you can actually kill most enemies in two or three hits. I find that her Fear move is almost useless, so I'll usually map right click to her devastating telekinetic shock wave area attack, which I use constantly. Slapping enemies around with the Phoenix's wings doesn't do all that much damage, but you still want to get in close, due to the fire aura that surrounds the Phoenix which does crazy high damage. Also remember that although the Phoenix form is more durable than regular Jean Grey, she's still pretty fragile, so make sure you don't get too surrounded and overwhelmed by a mob.
Spider-Man is probably the worst character in the game primarily because he's really poorly designed, with terrible powers, no defense, and mostly close range attacks. Seriously playing through the game as Spider-Man is like artificial hard mode, he's that bad. There are two ways to play Spider-Man, punch everything to death, while spaming medkits to avoid being killed or after level 20, web up a group of foes, and then activate acidic webbing to slowly wear down your attackers health, keeping in mind that we'll probably have to activate both powers two or three times to defeat the mob. After many patches now Spider-Man does have a few other viable powers like the angle attack a backflip that does adequate and is identical to one of Black Panther's starting powers. There’s also the Web’em All power, which barely involves webbing and is actually a very powerful ground pound move. Spider-Man's basic power is a simple punch combo, which seems pretty good early on, then around level 12, it stops being effective. At level 10 you can replace it a new punch combo where Spider-Man has web gloves on, which is effective until about level 16, and there is no other upgraded version after that. Once you get acidic webbing the damage will increase a little bit, but not much. You could also fire off impact webbing with right click by default. The initial version of impact webbing does pitiful damage, but the later upgraded version is somewhat useful for taking out two or three normal villains at a time. Impact webbing is also useful for stunning a opponent, or slowly wearing down a bosses health since Spider-Man doesn't have many long-range attacks. Pretty much Spider-Man's only good power is his heighten reflexes ability, that lets you dodge up to 70% of melee attacks, but not any long range gun fire or blaster damage. Black Widow has a very similar power, but her works on all forms of damage. Spider-Man also has a useful web swing ability, that works very similar to flying with other characters, it lets you traverse the map quickly while avoiding enemies, as long as you don’t run out of energy. Spider-Man has an awful lot of pointless Web powers that slow enemies down, or incapacitate them for short period of time. It seems like almost all web powers do exactly the same thing, show little improvement, regardless of how much you upgrade them, so I say just pick one, put one point into it and then move on and ignore the rest. Web Shield is particularly bad, since it protects you from a certain amount of damage by increasing your defense, but leaves you as a sitting duck for enemies to swarm around you, and kill you even when the shield still active, but especially when it turns off. If the shield incorporated some sort of stun, or even mildly damaged anything that hit it touches then it would be infinitely more useful, as it stands now it’s just a waste of skill points. Spider-Man also have lots of useless passives, like every time you dodge an attack, your movement speed increases, which would be great if enemies weren’t blocking me from moving in the first place, or another passive that reveals where all the enemies are on the map, which is utterly pointless, unless I wanted to avoid them, in which case I should probably just web swing past. The worst passive is the one that will supposedly decrease enemy’s defenses after Spider-Man ridicules them, which doesn't seem to work. Due to his incredibly poor health and survivability Spider-Man is much better suited to join a group, then working alone. However he wouldn't contribute much to a team with other melee or brawler characters, and would work best when being on the front lines, with a small team of fragile ranged characters baking him up like Cyclops, Scarlet Witch, Punisher, Jean Grey or perhaps Storm.
Cyclops was a character that I was very excited to play as, before becoming massively disappointed in his utter lack of defense, and lackluster crowd control powers. Cyclops's basic power is his standard optic blast, which does decent damage, and I would say is comparable to a shot with Hawkeyes arrows, meaning that it will probably take three or four hits to kill most enemies. This isn’t a problem in a small skirmish with only three or four attackers, but most the time enemies spawn in groups of 15 to 30, so you won't be able to kill them fast enough, and will be completely overwhelmed and die almost instantly. By default his right click attack is a modest kick move that does very little damage but gives decent knockback to the enemies directly in front of you. At level 5 you'll unlock his optic overload power which I recommend replacing the kick, as your right click power. Optic overload has the potential to do a lot more damage than his standard optic blast, and you can keep firing it as long as you hold down the button. Initially though optic overload isn't that much better then optic blast, it just fires faster, and therefore kills a single enemy quicker. Usually when I see a group of thugs I use optic overload until I run out of energy and then switch to optic blast until it refills, and then use overload again. This strategy works okay, if you don't mind dying in one out of every five encounters. After level 10 you can replace the standard optic blast, with a ricochet one that does less damage, but can potentially hit multiple targets. At first it seems like trash, but by level 20 is actually pretty good crowd control. Eventually Optic overload stopped being effective and I had to swap it out for Wide beam which attacks slower, but has decent damage and can hit multiple targets at close range. Cyclops actually has some very interesting boots, like one that increases the amount of experience points you get for defeating enemies. The existence of this boots leads me to believe that they are aware that Cyclops is pretty much terrible until you hit level 20, and they gave him this boots, as a way to sort of throw a bone to the players, instead of actually fixing him. Cyclops is particularly difficult to solo the game with, so he's much better suited to joining a team with other players. In fact I would recommend only using Cyclops as a support role on a team, otherwise you lose count of how many times you die.
A lot of people say that Scarlet Witch is a great character, but so far in the game I don't see it. She has an awful lot of fear powers, which I don't think are useful. Her basic spike attack does adequate damage, and is fast, but it’s bad when facing a mob. Her chaotic orb has a nice amount of splash damage and is pretty good at taking out two or three enemies at a time, but it burns through energy pretty fast and then you're stuck with the spike attack until it refills, which often leads to her death. Scarlet Witch has a ton of status effect, group buff or debuff powers, like literally ten of them. Although those powers might make you a valuable asset to a team, but they won’t help you to kill a cluster of enemies that surround you. Although I suppose a well placed fear spell could cause the group to flee from you in terror, which might actually be pretty useful, but unless it’s leveled pretty high, they’ll all come running back at you again in five seconds. Eventually I discovered a passive that increases the damage of all of her attacks and then I could finally survive mobs and kill things semi consistently. Clearly I need a play Scarlet Witch a lot more and test out more of her powers using retcon devises, but for right now. I only recommend using her if you're planning on playing a support role in a larger group, since she’s definitely at a disadvantage by herself.
I would say that Captain America is pretty average character, that I had hoped would be a lot better. Basically he has a standard punch combo, and as you would expect a ton of Shield throwing abilities. His punch combo is fairly fast and does decent damage, but is rather dull and boring to use all of the time. By default his right click power is a standard shield throw, which does pretty good damage, and is piercing so it can hit several enemies in a straight line, but it has a rather long recovery time before he can throw the shield again, which makes the power tough to rely on. I would say that Captain America's best power is probably his shield bounce which is really great if you map it to right click, since every time its fired the shield will hit up to six targets, and it will increase damage every time it ricochets, off of an enemy or a wall. Captain America has a lot of team oriented boots that increase the stats of players around him. You can solo the game with Captain America decently if you don't mind the shield bounce glitch, but I would say he's better suited for team play especially given all of this teen oriented boosts.
Storm is probably the most powerful of the initial five heroes to choose from when you first start the game. Storm's basic power is a simple lightning strike that does a respectable amount of damage at high levels. What's weird about storm is that she has four or five different versions of two basic attacks; lightning and tornadoes. Some are very useful while others just seem redundant. For example another lightning strike power called lightning storm is capable of hitting multiple targets for a smidgen more damage. Storm also has a gust wind power, that can hit targets in a straight line, but it is completely outclassed by her whirlwind attack which hits any enemy even remotely close to Storm multiple times and pushes them back away from her. In fact spaming her whirlwind attack is probably the best strategy for staying alive as Storm since she has pretty bad defense, and doesn't offer too many other useful crowd control moves. After level 10 Storm can also fly, and I really like the animation on her cape. I have to point out that Storm's dialogue in the game mentions the Bright Lady, presumably a Sun Goddess all the time, and outside of this game I've never seen Storm mention it before. If there was a drinking game where you took a shot every time Storm mentioned the Bright Lady you'd be on the floor in two minutes. Seriously it's like she has a Bright Lady endorsement deal or something. Storm is great for soloing but you might die occasionally due to her low defense. On a team she's pretty useful due to the great crowd control of whirlwind, and her high damage output.
Hawkeye is probably the simplest of the initial five heroes to choose from when you first start the game, since all you do most of the time is fire arrows, and you don't even have to use trick arrows if you don't want to. At first playing as Hawkeye requires a little strategy since you have to dodge projectiles and move away from attackers when they get too close. At level 10 however you'll unlock the double arrow and then you should be able to kill most enemies in one or two hits, unlike the five or six it took before the upgrade. Then at level 20 you’ll unlock triple arrow which kills almost everything in one hit and is great crowd control. Even though Hawkeye has adequate defense, if a group swarms around you it could get serious fast, so there's the question of how do you deal with close range attackers? You could use his kick attack which is the default right click power, it does poor damage, but has decent knockback and is similar to Cyclops and Punisher's kick move. You could also use a specialty arrow like the tazer or exploding arrow. Personally through I like to stick with the lackluster kick at level 1 and save all my skill points for passives. Hawkeye has some pretty nice passives that increase the chance of critical hits, add piercing and ignore defense. Even though it gets monotonous constantly firing arrows, Hawkeye is unusual in that he's great in a group or by himself.
Thor is probably the best character in the game due to the shear variety of deadly moves he has. Seriously Thor is crazy good. His basic attack of a simple hammer swing is pretty good. Lighting strike does incredible damage and it's tempting to use it all the time as it its multiple targets, and kills most foes instantly. He also has a ground pound move that is similar to one Thing, Hulk, and Colossus have, but Thor's seems to have much greater knockback which makes it perfect crowd control. Thor's hammer throw does a lot of damage but it takes a bit too long to return to his hand to make it spamabe, and the attack is also similar to Captain America’s Daredevil’s shield and billy club throw powers. As if Thor wasn't already good enough, he also has a particularly nice damage reduction passive called asgardian heritage which makes you practically untouchable. Thor is probably best suited for playing the game by yourself, but he would also be a valuable member of any team, he just might take the lion's share of the kills.
Black Widow is actually a shockingly good character, much better than I imagined she would be. Initially she just seems pretty good, then around level 10 she gets amazing. Black Widow's basic attack is a simple kick combo that does pretty good damage, and I like use it as a finishing move after I stun an enemy. Her best attack is the default right click power Widow's bite, which shoots a laser that stuns anything it hits accept bosses for a solid minute. What I usually like to do is rapidly fire Widow's bite once at every enemy in a group, then casually stroll over, and kick them to death one at a time, it’s a super easy bread and butter combo that always works. Plus once you get Widows bite leveled past 10 you can out right kill enemies with only a couple of shots, making it even more useful. Her grenade power can only be thrown directly in front of her, which makes the timing of it tricky when enemies are running toward you, but it deals a lot of damage, and has a very nice kick to it blasting enemies away from you. You can also have an alternate basic power to pullout dual pistols and blast away at enemies, however which seems similar to Deapool’s shooting ability. Black Widow also has the best dodge passive in the game, called red room reflexes [training] which makes it so that you automatically dodge 80% of attacks and is incredibly useful. You can literally walk right into the middle of 30 enemies and just stand there, and not die for a solid two minutes, that's how effective it is. Black Widow is a great character for soloing, but the stun of her Widow’s bite is also very useful when playing with a team.
Black Panther is a really good brawler character, possibly the most fun to play, since it's easy to effectively mix up his combos. His basic vibranium claw slash is pretty good, especially when you upgrade it to the more powerful versions at level 10 and 20. I really enjoy using his back flip attack since it does significant damage, and acts as a dodge. It's really fun to pinball between targets by back flipping, slashing once or twice, and then back flipping to the next opponent, without taking any damage, it gives a great sense of accomplishment. He also has a dual claw swipe attack that's similar to Daredevils billy club swing, Black Panther's unique electricity attack completely outclasses it though, since it does a lot more damage, and has a greater area of effect, and even stuns enemies caught up in it. Probably the best reason to play as Black Panther is that you don’t have to worry about running out of sprit energy like other characters because of his amazing passive that lets him gain energy every time he gets hit, which is exactly when you need it the most. He also has a passive that's similar to Spider-Man's or Black Widows’, that lets him dodge most melee damage, Panther's version seems less effective than widows, but a little better than Spider-mans. Black Panther is a great character to play through the game as solo, but he doesn't offer too much to a group, besides his greater than normal survivability, although he could help balance out a team of fragile range characters like Cyclops or Scarlet witch.
Ms. Marvel is truly a powerhouse in the game and this is the first time I've ever seen the character portrayed accurately to how tough she is in the comics. What's great about Ms. Marvel is that there's two ways to play as her, a brawling tank, or a ranged blaster, and you can easily alternate between styles when you get tired of one. Her basic punch combo hits pretty hard, but as you would expect has little range. After level 10 you can upgrade it to a version that charges her fists with photon energy for extra damage. She also has a great kick power with terrific knockback. Her photon blast power does it a lot of damage and can kill most enemies in two or three hits. There are later upgraded versions that must be charged or split into three separate beams on impact. She also has some great passives that decrease the amount of damage you take or can refill your health, but they’re unlocked late at level 16 and 20. I 'd go as far to say that Ms. Marvel is probably the best character to play through the game by yourself as since she is so powerful, tough and fun to play as. Due to her versatility is also a really good team player, but she doesn't exactly need to be in a group in the first place.
Iron man is a pretty powerful character with a lot of options. He starts out a bit underwhelming, and he has surprisingly low defense and attacks slowly, but later on when you get his shield, and better powers he's almost unstoppable. Ironman's basic repulsor blast fires slowly, and doesn't do a lot of damage. His repulsor barrage kills a single enemy quicker, but is also underwhelming. At level 5 you'll unlock his shield, which you’ll want to keep active all of the time, as you’re almost defenseless without it. The shield blocks 70% of damage so it's very effective at keeping you alive. Ironman's homing rockets do amazing damage, and since they lock onto targets, you don't even have to aim. Successive repulsor attacks are great too, especially when mapped to right click since you can then just hold down the attack button, and your target will die in 3 seconds. His unibeam does significant damage, but the charge time makes it impractical to use when facing more than one or two enemies that aren’t in a straight line. Managing your energy is very important when playing as Ironman, since you're a bit of a sitting duck when you run out of it. He has a skill to increase his total spirit energy by ten points for every rank, but you’d probably be better off equipping armor, medals, or artifacts that let you regain a certain amount of energy every minute, if you could find some. Ironman has a ton of great area effect crowd control powers, and because of this he's easily capable of killing everything on screen all by himself, so it could be frustrating to be on the same team as Ironman, but great to play as him solo.
Cable is a good character right from the start. He has a really interesting and varied power set that grants him many different play styles, although he's essentially a range character, and a bit similar to Hawkeye. There are two disint playstyles for Cable. You can play Cable defensively and focus on his shield, teleporting, or crowd control abilities, with added to his decent buffs it makes him a pretty good asset to any team. The more straightforward approach however is to simply focus on the blasting power of his long-range gun attacks which cut through enemies pretty quickly. My setup is to simply rely using his basic gun, and the concussion blast which I set to right click for crowd control, knockback, and boss killing. Cable is actually fun to play and has great survivability whether you're by yourself or with a large group. Unfortunately after level 10 Cable's powers starts to plateau and he becomes inefficient at killing most enemies beyond Chapter 5. While searching for new powers to rely on I tried out devastating beam , which is similar in its charge time to Iron Man's unibeam. The devastating beam is great for small groups of villains, but that charge time, and narrow hit box make it impractical for large mobs or boss fights. Eventually I settled on psychic wall, which Cable can manifest two of at once, and it will supposedly do 500 burn damage a second to any enemy that it hits or passes through it. It's works great on bosses were you just have to conjure the wall on top of them to do constant damage from a safe distance. Cable has other useful powers at his disposal, such as a healing ability, a teleport move, both of which are unlocked late after level 16, and various shields that decrease damage or increase attack power even for other players around him. Cable is great for soloing the game until around level 10 when his powers begin to become outclassed. Then you’ll either have to grind to level 20 or 30 to effectively play by yourself again, or reallocate your skills to defensive powers and buffs and then try to team up with other players until you’re leveled up enough to get past the difficulty hump.
Without further ado here is my tier list based on power level.
Now here is my tier list based on fun factor. 1. Punisher
|
||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
|||||||
 |
|||||||
 |
|||||||
 |
|||||||
 |
|||||||
 |
