Marvel Rivals Review

Marvel Rivals is Overwatch with better toys and no illusions about originality. The roster is the pitch, a broad sweep of Marvel characters who play distinctly enough that picking Jeff or Groot or Iron Fist changes what the round asks of you, and the team up abilities linking specific heroes give a lineup reasons to care about itself. Destructible cover keeps maps from settling into the same three standoffs every match.

It is free, it launched stable, and the seasonal cadence has been quick enough to pull lapsed hero shooter players back. The criticisms are structural. Nothing here is new, since the roles, the ultimates and the objective modes are borrowed wholesale, the third person camera makes ranged readability worse than in the game it copies, and the absence of a role queue means a solo queue can hand you five duelists and no healer. Story is a loose seasonal frame nobody plays for. As a live service launch, though, it is one of the few done properly.