Marvel Rivals hands-on preview – Heroes rise to the occasion!

When Marvel Rivals was announced, I think everyone knew this game would be a big deal. With an IP as large as Marvel, there’s a world of possibilities. Considering that, since the first announcement, multiple characters have been added to the lineup including Venom and Adam Warlock, it seems that the team at Netease also understands that.

I got to sit down for a preview of Marvel Rivals and played four total matches. During these, I tried to see how playing the same character for the entire match felt. I’ve played games in this genre before so the learning curve was very small, just learning the specific abilities for each character.

I played as Spider-Man, Iron-Man, Storm, and Hulk in the playtest. Of these four, my favorite was Storm by far. Each of their abilities felt very on brand for the characters, but let’s go into a bit more detail in how each plays.

The thing that most impressed me with Spider-Man was his web swinginging. While it’s not overly helpful so far in close quarters, it’s extremely useful in open areas where you can get out of trouble quickly and find health. Controlling his swing will take time, but once people get the hang of it, he’ll be a nuisance for sure with his decently high damage and quick movement.

Iron-Man was the first time I worked with flying in the game. It’s slow, for sure, but very useful for staying around the battlefield without taking the brunt of the damage from enemies. His hand blasters, chest lasers, and more of the typical Iron Man arsenal will be VERY helpful for controlling the battlefield as they do massive damage and it’s a tad difficult for some heroes to do longer range/aim in the air to do damage. During this match, I went 12-2 as nobody was really able to aim at me well enough to take me down, and I was able to find health easily being in the sky.

With Hulk, you’ll start as Bruce Banner and can automatically change into our favorite green giant. His movement is based around his jumping abilities.Starting as Banner slows you down a bit, with intelligent design that helps you to not fly ahead of the other players on your team. He has some different slam abilities and then a shield bubble ability that helps your team. I found that jumping into a fight, activating the bubble, and just punching was the best way to play him in close combat – smaller rooms equals great success. If people can snipe you though, you’re in a rough position. He wasn’t my favorite to use, but I’m sure people will learn quickly how he’s best used in combat.

My favorite, as I said, was Storm. Her flying abilities mixed with her team buffs (switching between boosting speed or attack) allowed for some great team play and will be a mainstay in the early team compositions without a doubt. Her ranged attacks do a decently high amount of damage, while her AOE electric field will do damage to anyone within the cone. This is great for matches where you need to collect points. I was able to fly halfway up, activate my buff to make my team more powerful. Anytime I came into contact with an enemy, I would use the AOE field and my regular attacks to clear them out.

Marvel Rivals looks and plays beautifully overall. The maps and character models are all on point and full of details that make them stand out from their Marvel Cinematic Universe counterparts. This is a game on its own and the characters, while similar, are their own take on the characters.

I didn’t see too many of these in the preview, but I did get to see the duo of Rocket Raccoon and Groot work well together, as Rocket will climb on Groots back to shoot. I’m sure more of these will become clear over time and add to the competitive aspects of the game.

Marvel Rivals takes the best aspects of its genre predecessors and takes it up a notch. That, plus the extremely recognizable characters will make this game have a lot of hype from the get-go. It’s up to the team at Netease to keep the hype going by adding fresh new content consistently and at the same level of detail as they have for their current lineup of maps and characters. Marvel Rivals will arrive on PC and consoles soon, with closed beta signups open now.

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