| Marvel Rivals | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Release Date | Gameplay & Story | DLC & Pre-Order | Review |
Fight as superhero against superhero and villain against villain in Marvel Rivals! A 6v6 game featuring your favorite Marvel heroes! Read on to learn how it plays, what it’s about, and everything else we know so far.
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Marvel Rivals Gameplay
Marvel Rivals is a competitive 6v6 third-person hero-based (literally!) shooter game, where you play as a wide variety of Marvel Superheroes and Supervillains to take down the other team comprised of the same! Teams must work together and fight in the game’s different maps with different objectives to win the match.
Roles
The game splits up the massive roster between three different roles similar to how Overwatch classifies their heroes. Marvel Rivals labels heroes as: Vanguards, Duelists, and Strategists, which are the rough equivalents of Tanks, DPS, and Healers.
Vanguard
Vanguards are meant to soak damage, control the battlefield, and shield their team from the opposition. Characters like Magneto, Venom, Doctor Strange, and Groot use their skills to lock down areas, mitigate damage, and sometimes, even deal big area damage to dissuade the enemy team from fighting them in certain choke points.
Duelist
Duelists are the damage dealers of the game. They are centered on picking off the enemy team with high burst damage abilities and sustained fire to turn matches into their favor. Duelists are not built the same, however, as some characters like Spider-Man, Psylocke, and Black Panther excel at getting behind enemy lines and eliminating squishy targets while having the mobility to retreat when the situation calls for it. Other characters like Iron Man, The Punisher, and Storm are more of sustained firing damage dealers that position themselves behind their Vanguards to put out consistent damage.
Strategist
Strategists are the game’s support characters that primarily heal and buff their team while debuffing the enemy. However, they’re not just heal-bots, as they can actually put out pretty good damage when left alone and when they’re focused on firing back. Characters like Jeff the Land Shark, Adam Warlock, and Luna Snow can use their abilities to help their team and sometimes disrupt enemy lines with specific abilities.
Team-Up Skills
With how extensive the lore of Marvel superheroes and supervillains is, doubtless there have been countless team-ups between characters that have made for the most iconic moments. To incorporate that, unique combinations of characters can commence ‘Team-Up Skills’ that provide seamless synergy between two players that can easily turn the tides of battle!
Environmental Destruction
One of the key differences of Marvel Rivals from its competitors is the existence of destructible environments, and how it affects the map. You would be wise to be cautious of fragile doorways and other areas, as strategic applications of the game’s environment could end up boxing you in or locking you out of crucial team fights and exit points.
Maps and Game Modes
During the game’s Closed Beta Test, the game also had 3 playable game modes, which function similar to game modes we’ve seen from other team-based shooters, namely: Convoy, Convergence, and Domination.
Convoy is similar to Escort and Payload in Overwatch 2 and Team Fortress 2, respectively. While Convergence is similar to the Hybrid objective in Overwatch 2 where it’s a mix of both escort and capture. Lastly, Domination is similar to King of the Hill and Control, where teams have to hold single points until their score reaches a 100%.
Furthermore, Marvel Rivals’ maps will pull from well-known locations from the Marvel mythos, and we got a sneak peek of the game’s maps and they’re playable game modes during the Closed Beta Test. Here are the following maps and the game modes that are available for each:
⚫︎ Tokyo 2099: Shin-Shibuya – Convergence
⚫︎ Tokyo 2099: Spider-Islands – Convoy
⚫︎ Yggsgard: Royal Palace – Domination
⚫︎ Yggsgard: Yggdrasill Path – Convoy
⚫︎ HYDRA CHARTERIS BASE: HELL'S HEAVEN
⚫︎ Intergalactic Empire of Wakanda: Star Rising
Marvel Rivals Story
Marvel Rivals will feature a wide range of Marvel Heroes, and thus will have its own narrative canon parallel to the official publications and blockbuster cinematic universe! It will tell a tale where Doctor Doom manages to join forces with his 2099 counterpart and create chaos throughout the multiverse! Different versions of our heroes across different uniservers are forcibly converse in the Timestream Entanglement, causing the creation of new worlds and crises that follow.
The extreme circumstances have then allowed unlikely alliances between heroes and villains to join forces and defeat both Dooms before their realities are conquered!
Season 1 Story - Dracula Takes Over Central Park as Eternal Night Falls!
Season 1 of Marvel Rivals takes the player to New York City, which has been plunged into an eternal darkness by the Timestream Entanglement event, made worse by Dracula and Doom unleashing an army of vampires across the city!
The Fantastic Four springs into action, alongside Moon Knight, Squirrel Girl, Scarlet Witch, and Doctor Strange as they piece together the scattered pages of the Darkhold and take out Dracula, who is hiding out in Central Park with Ratatoskr in tow to shield his domain.
Season 2 Story - Ultron Attacks Krakoa and Arakko During the Hellfire Gala!
Season 2 of Marvel Rivals takes the player to the living island and sovereign Mutant nation of Krakoa as Emma Frost hosts the annual celebration of its denizens, the Hellfire Gala! Some things are different this year, however, as Krakoa's been stranded by the Timestream Entanglement event in the year 2099.
Stakes escalate as Ultron attacks the festivities in an attempt to seize Cerebro and evolve his body to take out Doom 2099, one of the Gala's attendees, who, himself was making deals with Emma Frost for control over the island's new Chronovium deposits. The fight expands to Krakoa's sister island, Arrako, which has since been taken over by Ultron's machines.
Season 3 Story - Knull Returns to Klyntar as the Abyss Awakens!
Season 3 of Marvel Rivals sees the god of symiotes, Knull, return to the species' homeworld of Klyntar, claiming Hela as his pawn in the process, with both Jean Grey as Phoenix and Blade set to release in the same season. More will be shown about this season's story as new information is revealed. Stay tuned!
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