Even Paul Tassi has forsaken Square's Avengers

 Et tu, Brute?

I, like many out there in the world today, don't sit down and play Marvel's Avengers. Or maybe that should be 'Square Enix's Avengers' in order to appropriately differentiate itself from the movie franchise because apparently some people need that for their context deficient brains to properly process information. This is a game that has one of the biggest brands in entertainment riding on it's shoulders and even together they couldn't manage to clear the bar to ride with the big leagues. From the year of our lord 2022, Marvel's Avengers has broken more than 1,000 players only once in the past 6 months, and tends to keep a holding average of around 500 or less. That is... shocking. This is an avengers game! A title that takes advantage of the most cycled movie franchise in the world! And sure, the Superhero movies are getting a little long toothed around about now, but there's an undeniable market! It feels like 'Marvel Ultimate Alliance' had more staying power than Square's Avengers, and that game still isn't even purchasable thanks to an annoying licence dispute that no one can be bothered to clear up. And no, when it's bleeding and beaten, it's last prominent spokesperson just can't be bothered to cover the game for it's next significant update. What has the world come too?

I have actually played the game in the past too, and it was actually kind of fun! At least it was until the entire thing crashed on me. That was the Xbox version of the game too, so god forbid what the computer port is like. But before that unceremonious booting I did see a game that has some mindless potential as a beat em' up with the world's fanciest cosplayers; and some people who actually stuck with the game seem adamant that there's a real end-game to explore in Marvel's Avengers with actual challenge and everything! Now I don't exactly believe those people, but they insist really hard so I can only assume they think there's a endgame worth the average joe's time at this title's twilight! (I think there's a mass hallucination in the video gaming community that has convinced the majority of the gaming world that the mere existence of stuff to do at max level means the game has fleshed-out and meaningful activities to devote oneself to, even if the majority of those events and rewards are perfunctory.)

Perhaps what I've waiting for is that single clarion bell of 'Everything is awesome, now is the time to play' before I take the Avenger's plunge for real, because despite every waring siren indicating the exact opposite; some part of me thinks that potential is within this game. Some argue that this game should have been single player and the very multiplayer nature is what cost it it's integrity, and whilst I believe there might be some water there I've recently come around on the multiplayer structure. I think there was real potential here for a multiplayer co-operative title with a real challenging edge to it, something that really pushed players to work in a team in order to survive and threw interesting and varied missions at them. Of course, that is my dream of what this game could have been. The reality is, typically, disappointing and boorish.

Which isn't to say that the team have just given up on the game! Or at least... not all of them. Some vague skeleton crew have been stuck to the Avengers project and dropping updates here and there to keep the faithful fed. They've mostly been character drops that don't quite offer enough new content to justify the extended hiatus of static service they are meant to fill up, but there was one big event wrapped up in there for the Wakanda event. Oh, and I guess the Future Imperfect event was supposed to be similarly big but I don't hear people talking about that one for some reason, so I guess it must have been underwhelming. Or there's not enough people left in the community to talk about it anymore. There has also been the much belayed drop of the Playstation exclusive character Spider Man, who has the worst web slinging of any Spiderman video game to late, (And I'm counting Ultimate Alliance in that summation) and we are soon to get the first piece of content that lines up with the films.

To be clear, I think this was not only the big pitch behind launching the game to begin with, but the potential heart and soul behind an Avengers game had it worked. The potential to synch up movie releases with video game content so that fans could dive into the movies, come back wanting more and fulfil that longing bashing heads in Square's Universe. Perhaps it was the thirst for this symbiotic relationship which overtook the project director and utterly blinded him to the anaemic state of the launch product. Without that basic body of a game to keep a healthy number of returning players, there was no way they could justify a dedicated and prepared development team to create stuff like a Moon Knight DLC character to coincide with the show, or a Doctor Strange Multiverse Crossover event. There was the Red Room event which I think might of happened around about the time of the Black Widow movie, but small scale events don't hit as hard as character content drops! Still, after the years of struggling, now we're finally going to see Mighty Thor release alongside the drop of 'Thor 4: Love and Thunder'; and Paul Tassi isn't going to cover it.

Paul? Really? During my extended and pointed ignoring of this game, Paul has been the canary in the mines for me and many other prospective players to dive in update after update to tell us if the Avenger's content cave is safe to pillage. Only this time, for the first time since the game released as far as I can remember, our hero is stepping away. This is the same Paul Tassi, by the way, who is an actual game's journalist with sources and great articles behind him, so I can understand him perhaps being preoccupied with other stories for the moment of launch, but from what the man himself has said, he just doesn't believe the coming hero is worth a look over even by him. Although to be fair to the man, this isn't some Nostradamus-style fortune telling on his part peering into the theoretical state of this game, he did about as much research as any one of us can expect to do; he watched the Avengers roundtable. Which is where we can see exactly why an intelligent fellow like him might be turned off of Mighty Thor.

You see, the Avenger's development Team aren't exactly at full force, which means any substantive content is going to take months of forethought and development to be realised and I guess someone on the planning team forgot to schedule those months into what might be their biggest opportunity for cross promotion in the game's entire history. (oops) Yep, Mighty Thor is basically a shadow fighter for regular Thor, in that she shares some of the moves and special attacks of her male counterpart and isn't going to be heralded into the team with any dedicated content. There'll be no Asgard-themed tile-set to the mission rotation, no 'Gorr the God Butcher' boss, (despite how badly this game needs new boss fights) and no real justification for Jane Foster's appearance beyond a meagre introductory cutscene akin to what Spiderman got. So as heartbroken as I am, I can't really blame Paul Tassi, there's no real content to even cover there.

So I guess we have to ask ourselves a vaguely philosophical question here. If a Marvel's Avengers character is released, and Paul Tassi doesn't cover it, was there ever a new character drop at all? In my world, and that of many others who have their Avengers content distilled and regurgitated into their mouths by Paul, that answer is no. Which pretty much means the only outside means of marketing this game ever had just decided he has better things to do with his time, leaving that community to fade ever further into obscurity. So how much longer before the game is left to fry? I'd say give it at least one more year for these 400 players to properly move on with their lives, and then for the She Hulk update to come out alongside that simply atrocious looking TV show. I think it would be truly fitting for that crossover to kill The Avengers.