Marvel's Avengers

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A Glove Full of Nothin’

Somewhere between Iron Man launching into a half-baked sky punch and Hulk clipping through a wall like he’s late for a Zoom meeting, I had the distinct sensation of déjà screw, like I was watching a birthday magician forget the card trick mid-sentence and just awkwardly shout “TA-DA!” anyway. Marvel’s Avengers for PS5 is that magician. Big cape, zero magic. Developed by Crystal Dynamics and published by Square Enix in 2021, this was supposed to be the superhero game. All your favorites in one place! Big-budget shine! An emotional story! Punchy combat! Online play! Live service loot! Somehow, they tossed all those ingredients into the pot and cooked a microwave lasagna that’s half frozen in the middle and weirdly scalding on the corners. You’ll eat it, because you’re hungry. But you’ll resent every bite.

High Stakes, Low Feels

The story kicks off with promise. Kamala Khan, aka Ms. Marvel, is a charming, starstruck fangirl who feels like an actual person in a world of branded action figures. She’s our hopeful lens into this post-A-Day disaster zone, a world where superheroes are outlaws, the Avengers have disbanded, and everyone mopes like they just binge-watched The Leftovers. But here’s the thing: the world never feels lived in. It's all too... sterile. You’re told things are bad. You see news reports. There’s a brooding tone. But there’s no real grit under your boots. No dirt under the fingernails. It’s like walking through a high school play set that says "Post-Apocalyptic Dystopia" on the backdrop, but the janitor forgot to turn off the hallway lights. Worse, the actual Avengers feel like B-list stand-ins doing mall appearances. This isn’t your MCU. It's not even your favorite comic run. This is the uncanny valley of superhero impersonations, Tony quips like someone who heard what quipping sounds like, Thor has the emotional range of a microwave burrito, and Black Widow delivers every line like she’s already clocked out. Kamala does carry the emotional weight better than the rest. She’s fresh, fun, and isn’t crushed under the PR weight of a billion-dollar IP. But the game doesn’t trust her enough. Before long, she’s just another voice yelling in the mission comms while Captain America jogs through a war zone like it’s his morning 5K.

Punch, Loot, Repeat, Regret

Combat tries to be everything at once. You get a little Arkham melee, some Destiny loot grind, a dash of God of War heaviness, and then glue it all together with Avengers-brand spectacle. Sometimes it clicks. Hulk smashing through tanks? Still fun. Iron Man zipping through the air and lasering robots? Visually satisfying, for like five minutes. But it doesn’t evolve. Ever. Each hero has their own move sets, sure, but it’s all shallow flash with no depth. There’s no real synergy, no sense of tactical play. Just hold square, dodge roll, and hit your super when the cooldown timer says so. Rinse. Rinse harder. Rinse again. Then comes the loot system, which feels like a dare. Every mission rewards you with a pile of numbers, gear, stats, fragments, upgrade modules, and none of it means anything. There’s no cosmetic impact, no tactical decision-making. Just raw digits. It’s like being handed 47 flavors of cardboard and told to build a sandwich. The live service element haunts the entire experience like an unwanted ghost in your group chat. Missions are recycled into lifeless multiplayer zones with bot-level AI enemies, all of them clearly stitched together by a committee of marketing interns who haven’t played a game since Angry Birds. And good luck playing co-op without a Reddit guide and a blood pact. The UI feels like a drunk GPS system yelling “Proceed to the route!” while you crash through another generic AIM facility.

Hollywood Skin, Walmart Bones

On a technical level, the PS5 version looks better than its last-gen cousin. The textures are crisper, load times shorter, and frame rate smoother. But you can only polish so much before you hit plastic. Character models hover uncomfortably in the uncanny valley, like wax figures with Bluetooth. The environments, labs, bunkers, war zones, are built from the IKEA “sci-fi game” starter kit. Functional, soulless, and weirdly beige. And the animations? Yikes. Hulk sometimes floats while smashing. Enemies T-pose during takedowns. Iron Man’s landing animation can trigger midair, leading to one of the funniest accidental comedy bits I’ve seen in a triple-A game. It's not game-breaking, but it’s immersion-breaking. Repeatedly. The voice cast does what it can, these are industry pros like Nolan North and Troy Baker, but even their vocal talents can’t elevate a script that reads like it was written by a committee in between Starbucks orders. The music, too, is generic “epic” orchestral mush that disappears behind the sound of endless metallic clanging and NPCs repeating “Let’s take them down!” until your brain starts leaking through your nose.

Live Service, Dead Soul

Let’s be honest. This was never supposed to be a revolutionary game. It was supposed to be a safe bet. A bankable IP. A loot treadmill in Avengers cosplay. But the bet didn’t pay off, not because the core idea is bad, but because the execution feels like it was assembled by focus groups and quarterly earnings reports. Instead of breaking new ground, Marvel’s Avengers lands with the desperate energy of a theme park ride no one lines up for anymore. It borrows liberally from better games, Destiny’s grind, Anthem’s verticality, Spider-Man’s brand proximity, but forgets to bring anything new to the table. There's no creative identity here. Just licensed noise wearing the skin of something greater. And that’s the tragedy. Because deep down, hidden under all the bloat and broken matchmaking and daily quests, is a single-player game that could’ve worked. Kamala’s journey deserved a tighter, more personal action-adventure, something with a beating heart instead of a monetized pulse.

The Heroic Burden of Mediocrity

Playing Marvel’s Avengers feels like watching your friend get cast in a Marvel movie only for it to go straight to VHS in a language you don’t speak. It’s frustrating because there are pieces here that work. Kamala is great. The initial few missions show promise. There are moments, brief, scattered, glitchy moments, where it almost feels like the real Avengers. But then the servers hiccup. The mission objectives repeat. You get the 17th copy of a level 11 reactor core that boosts your plasma resistance by 0.3%. And you remember: oh right. This isn’t a game. This is a product. It’s a product that wants to be everything, and ends up being little. A branded buffet of tired systems, promising spectacle with one hand while shoving you into a loot cave with the other. It’s not unplayable. It’s not even truly bad. But it is tired. Bland. And weirdly joyless. Like wearing a Halloween costume of your childhood hero, then tripping over the cape and landing face-first into a pile of expired Funko Pops.

Pros:

• Kamala Khan is a rare spark of personality and charm

• Combat is briefly satisfying before the repetition sets in

• Next-gen enhancements make it technically smoother

• Big explosions, if you're into that kind of thing

Cons:

• Lifeless story beats and uncanny character portrayals

• Combat and loot systems lack depth or payoff

• Environments and enemies feel copied, pasted, and copied again

• Multiplayer is a hot mess of confusion and dead lobbies

• Feels like it was designed by a licensing board, not game developers

Marvel’s Avengers might wear the costume, but it forgets what made the heroes beloved in the first place. Heart. Purpose. Identity. Without those, all the superpowers in the world can’t save it from mediocrity.