Looks who's still breathing!
I don't know if it's me being mean or if this circumstance is just sad, actually I think it's a little bit of both. Because to this day, years after launch, Marvel's Avengers is still holding on to it's lukewarm success through thick and thin. Which doesn't sound like a terrible way for a small indie company to live, but the live service of a Square Enix backed mega franchise should probably be at least making enough bank to thrive. Yet every indication we get of Marvel's Avengers success seems to indicate we're at the level of 'keeping the lights on and that's going to do it for now'. Which is galling in a year that has seen the death of two failed Square Enix Live Service start-ups already. (We've still got most of December ahead of us afterall; plenty of time for another.) Through it all the Marvel lights have stayed open for business, fuelled, seemingly, by the cocksure bravado of a franchise that never learnt how to say 'now, just give up this has dragged on for too long'.
As Marvel has grown decidedly longtoothed, so has Marvel's Avengers truly run us all aground with a spiralling race to get nowhere. The game that launched managed to 'whelm' across the board and it's becoming increasingly apparent that the development team has no substantial 'plan' to rework or fiddle with that base experience to coax anything new out of it. The 'Live Service' aspect of Marvel's Avengers appears to simply just be keeping the game slightly dynamic with the odd switch-up event here and there, and rush to try and implement all the assets they've already started collecting for unreleased characters. We already know they've got the voice lines for She-Hulk in the early months of this year, that there's still somehow no hide nor hair of the green machine means that the team are either stretching out their planned content obscenely, or they got an early preview of the She-Hulk show and wisely decided they didn't want to bring out anything related to that brand which might accidentally make their game seem even partially related to that burning dumpster fire of a show.
But there's nothing wrong with being clever about content; that's what all the big ongoing games like to do, only to completely change their plans and pretend they never made the long-term promise to begin with. (Looking at you, Bungie) There have been some content drops that have been worth the extended wait for Avengers players. The Black Panther content was supposed to be pretty fun and then there was the... I think there was a good reception to the... no, I guess the Black Panther release really was the only content drop that was unanimously praised in the past 2 years of the Avenger's life, wasn't it? I guess that might be because everything else just felt a little piddling and 'not worth the wait.' Kate Bishop was criticized for playing too much like Hawkeye, Mighty Thor had the same reactions with Thor. Time and time again the public seem to be coming back with the feedback that they want characters who play differently, not just look different. Which might be why everyone was so excited for the Winter Soldier!
I mean, who wouldn't be? A character buried in the pages of comics until his superstar rise to fame in the MCU partially ridden on the strength of Sebastian Stan and his very photogenic appearance. The Winter Soldier rose from obscurity to culthood through the efforts of the movie franchise, and whatsmore he's so conceptually distinct from the other Avengers there's literally no reason he'd ever be a copy-paste job. He's a gun-toting mercenary assassin, afterall; who's only link to the Avengers is a close friendship with the good Captain; what possible character could he feasibly play like? I'm being facetious for a point, you know it, so I might as well come out with it. They made him a clone of Captain America. I hear there's a bit of Black Widow in there as well, alongside some of his own flair; but the base animations are a one-to-one for the Cap and it makes literally no sense. There's even one move where you can see Bucky clasp his hands together to drive forward a shield into his enemies that isn't there. My man is fighting with an invisible shield; he's gone crazy!
Which isto say nothing about the visual design of the Solider. Bucky looks like a 'Teaser Play' render for one of their soulless 'Unreal Engine 5' render trailers. Paul Tassi was the first to say it, but his aghast has good company. The character model looks, once again, just atrocious. Like literal 'we have Sebastian Stan at home' energy; it makes you legitimately wonder if the team even bothered to actually keep any visual character designers on board when the game moved to it's skeleton crew model. He joins an entire cast of off-brand avenger characters who look just eerie enough to draw an eye and just off-putting enough to make you go "Oh god! Nevermind..." No amount of movie accurate character outfits can distract from that; which is just another reason why the designers shouldn't have gone for a realistic visual style!
The Winter Soldier is the big content drop of the past few months, and for their time fans are also given an increased gear level cap; always a moment of squinted eyes and resigned sighs amidst the people who were just resting at the last cap, and a new high level raid-type event which is going to feature the endgame boss of... MODOK. Again. Apparently the man has somewhat different abilities than he had in the main campaign, but it's still another example of a game with too few villains recycling more of it's content to prolong an already anorexic offering. If there was a more plentiful base game and if there was any sign of a sensible content road map ahead of Avengers, small content reshuffles like this would be fine; but as it stands you can't help but see these are death throes from one persistent cadaver.
Marvel's Avengers was quite honestly doomed before it was ever made. From the moment they slapped on a game model that seems so inherently opposed to Super Hero games, they kneecapped this concept's potential and now are shackled to an ongoing 'sigh' fest which is constantly the butt of the public. Gotham Knights fell for the same trap too, only they seemed to have pulled the monetisation parts of the live service elements leaving only the ill-fitting gameplay ideas. (Which is better? Maybe?) That Square has stuck with it for so long, despite their proven record of scrapping ideas that don't bear fruit, proves that this has either grossed enough to warrant keeping around, (which seems unlikely) Square has a plan to reshape this game into something spectacular (seems even more unlikely) or Marvel is pressuring them not to shut down through some contracting deal because they know it would reflect badly on the brand. (I'm inclined to believe that last one, personally.)
I know there are people who still play Marvel's Avengers, and the fact that they can find enjoyment in an experience like that is a wonder worth celebrating, but for the rest of us the sheer missed potential makes these updates a ghoulish horror show of parading some ugly dead body for all the world to gawk at. Like Google Stadia, only with slightly better prospects. At this point I can see nothing sort of a full rework from the ground up achieving anything substantial with the game, and considering it feels like development has long reached 'skeleton crew' mode, that seems like a utter wild pipe dream. But on the plus side, if you want to feel like the only Avengers team in the world, you and your friends can enjoy a pretty uncrowded ecosystem from today until Marvel launch a better game and don't need to keep this one alive for appearances anymore. (allegedly!)
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