Marvel Heroes

For me, it's all about Wolverine. He's a favourite character of mine, and has been for many years. The chance to play the opening chapters of Gazillion Entertainment's Marvel Heroes was, for me, simply an opportunity to brandish Logan's adamantium claws and get stuck into some ne'er-do-wells.

Wolverine is the perfect tank. He likes to get up close and personal, dealing incredible amounts of damage with his razor-sharp claws. After going up a few levels his healing power kicks in and his health bar constantly replenishes itself. As you can imagine, that's very helpful. Different attacks are bound to A,S,D,F and G (with health packs accessed via H), and compliment the basic moves that act as your primary method of attack, initiated via both the Left and Right mouse buttons.

It's a simple formula, something that many of you will be familiar with. Marvel Heroes has a very distinctive Diablo-esque feel to it, and that's due to the influence of one man, David Brevik. The lead designer behind MH was one of the key people responsible for the first two Diablo games, and this action-RPG has clearly been designed to appeal to a very similar crowd.

As in Diablo, holding Shift fixes your character into position, allowing for targeted damage and destruction, and perfect for rooting ranged characters to the ground whilst they dish out mayhem from afar. Another common trait is loot. There's plenty that spills from the pockets of downed foes, as well as orbs that fill up the various meters on your screen. This loot can be recycled into cash, to be spent on more gear for your collection of characters.

Even after just a few hours, it's easy to see that Marvel Heroes has something else in common with Diablo: it's compulsive, moreish stuff. Clicking the shit out of bad guys is great fun, and MH doesn't disappoint in this respect.

Access to the closed beta was sporadic. This frustrated only because I wanted to get back in and try out new characters to see how different powers affected the experience. The huge variety of Heroes already available at this point indicates there could well be extraordinary longevity for those wishing to have a large roster of characters available at the their disposal.

I advanced through the early levels of several characters, and tried out even more. Hulk thwacks guards into submission, Storm zaps them with lightening, and blows them away with blistering winds. Deadpool, as you would expect, uses his pistols to take down advancing enemies, and his sword and sharp wit in equal measure when the action gets a little closer to home (head this way for complete breakdown of the cast of characters currently announced).

Marvel Heroes retains the familiar isometric perch of Brevik's early work, and this allows for a good amount of detail in the environments, and for floods of enemies to crowd the screen during hectic and chaotic battles. Characters, both ranged and melee, plough through waves of enemies, balancing offensive might with defensive necessity. Red orbs replenish stolen health, and shifting position to hoover up these boosts quickly becomes second nature.

Careful and considered movement also becomes habitual early on. Each of the heroes handles very differently. Wolverine slashes with his claws with a Left click, and darts forward with a Right. More attacks, including debilitating lunges and 360 swipes, are assigned to hot keys, waiting to be employed at the perfect time. MH is a dance of different moves, between attack and retreat, between risk and reward, and in all these elements timing is required.

Lag was a concern for some of those playing, and that could be an issue given the importance of nuanced timing, but it didn't really impact me too adversely. These teething issues are par for the course when it comes to beta builds, and we shouldn't judge too harshly. Forgivable for now, but it's something we've got our eye on.

Enemies were plentiful and there was a fair amount of variety considering we only saw the opening few chapters - a small section of what will be available in the final game. A glow around a foe highlights that a particularly challenging encounter awaits. As each character levels up, the challenge presented by rank and file opponents diminishes somewhat, but the boss battles more than make up for it.

When experienced alone these boss battles are a war of attrition. They're tricky fights, designed to be taken on by groups of players working together. Played individually they're rock solid, and even determination, a growing understanding of your characters skills, and elaborate movement in combat might not be enough to wear your opponents down (if you die you can wait for cool down timer to expire, or head to the nearest check point and head back out to resume the battle). Electro and Venom were just two of the villains I had the pleasure of taking down during the beta. Playing alone was fun, and I even had some success against a boss (though admittedly with a couple of restarts and a whole heap of health packs), but playing with others magnified the experience. Marvel Heroes looks like it's going to deliver great co-op, and so making sure any connectivity issues are ironed out pre-launch is going to be important if the game is to go on and succeed.

We've mentioned heroes and villains, and as you would expect, there is some context behind the struggle between good and bad. At the start of the game several familiar super-villains have escaped from a prison facility, and it's up to the Avengers and an assortment of other popular Marvel characters to bring these crims to justice. The story has been penned by Marvel's own Brian Michael Bendis, and the main plot will hinge around Dr. Doom and the Cosmic Cube, and the heroes attempts to stop the arch villain and his allies from bringing destruction to the world. The Avengers Tower acts as the main hub for the game, with players able to meet up, deposit useful loot, pick up health packs and organise themselves before heading out into the wilds.

For comic book fans it promises to be an exciting mix of super powers and special moves. That's not to say casual gamers won't have reason to check it out: the core game appears accessible, and importantly, it's playable. Our first impressions of the beta are positive, and if Gazillion can make sure that technical issues are kept to a minimum when the game is eventually unleashed on the public, they may well be onto a winner.

Boosting their chance of success is the fact that Marvel Heroes is going to be a free-to-play release. It looks like players will be able to access the whole game without investment, earning credit through graft in-game, as well as supplementing their wallet with real-world cash converted into Gold Coins. Characters will be purchasable using the in-game currency, and different costumes can be either purchased, or assembled using materials looted from the fallen. Dispensing loot to eager gamers is very much an art form, and with so many characters, with so many options, obsessive collectors will likely have plenty to search out in the game's sprawling environments as there appears to be a lot of loot to unearth.

So far there are 26 different characters confirmed, and we can only expect this number to rise in the coming weeks, and again post-release. The low-risk free-to-play option will likely attract a large number of inquisitive gamers to the game's servers. If first impressions are anything to go, we'd expect a lot of them to stick around and keep clicking. We've only tasted a little bit of what Marvel Heroes has to offer, and we can't wait to test out the finished game when it's finally released.