Marvel Heroes One Week In

Ok it's been a week and I'm still playing. There's something that keeps me coming back. Probably because it feels like there is always something new to do. Even though the story is long finished I can still jump on and feel like I'm doing something. They've put some thought into the end game and it goes beyond "play the same story but with harder baddies".

They've got daily quests which don't seem to have any requirements around being done daily, nor do they bear any resemblance to quests. They're essentially a short dungeon with a boss at the end. They are quick fun and good way to grind levels. These dailies are accessed through "terminals" in the main quest hubs. It looks like once you finish the first set in avengers tower you can do them all again in the next hub (Xavier's school) then again at the S.H.I.E.L.D Helicarrier. So there's content to be ground for sure. The difficulty seems to jump pretty quickly as you rank up through these dailies so you may have to level up a bit before you can complete some of them. OR you can group with higher leveled friends, which I cannot recommend enough, because as I've said before this game is at its best when you are in a big group!

So then there are group challenges where you need to meet certain requirements with limited respawns. This was great fun and quite tense. Making death more perilous and introducing a chance of failure bonds the team more and makes you concentrate on the task at hand. The boss at the end of our first run was dead in fifteen seconds though so that was a little anti climatic. Maybe we were just such badasses, or maybe some bosses need some tuning. Anyway it's good see some different thinking in the Action RPG genre in relation to what end game content should look like. If we get more of these group challenges on a steady basis I can see a community growing around them. They could really benefit from some "bragging rights" features around though. Leader boards or Titles or Vanity Items could help drive player interest.

PVP current is Beta, it says so when you enter the PVP zone. It does feel unfinished but is quite good fun. Well it's fun once you get past the level 50 Deadpool camping your teams spawn. Most characters have sufficient mobility to simply disengage from high level opponents and go find someone easier to kill. I enjoyed putting bleeds on my foes and watching their health drop as they tried to flee! That's probably how it should work for Wolverine. The set up has three teams each with a base defended by a giant NPC robot. The territory between bases is crawling with goons who will fire on anyone. It seems like the objective will be get into the bases and kill this Robot. Currently downing the defender robots gives nothing but XP. They have heaps of health but seem to do no damage at the moment. Hence the "unfinished" vibe of the PVP area. But it is fun to spawn into a persistent rolling battle, create a bit of carnage and then zone out again. It feels interesting and reminds me of the Alterac valley battle ground in the old days of world of warcraft.

Deadpool seems pretty OP in this version of the game. It took half a dozen heroes on my team to take down this level 50 Deadpool that was camping our spawn, dressed as a pirate, screaming "I needs me spinach!" So it wasn't an altogether humorless experience. Did make me want to buy Deadpool though.

I'm still leveling up so anything I'm doing feels like its building towards something and is not wasted effort. Guess we'll have to wait and see what happens once all the dailies and group challenges are done. Then see what the view is like from max level. But for now I feel like there's enough to keep my interest for the remaining 29 levels till level cap. That's a good chunk of gameplay I might add, pretty good for a free title (well in my case $20).

If you like your marvel or like your action RPGs I can say with relative confidence that Marvel Heroes would be worth the download.