I picked Peni Parker for my first game of Marvel Rivals, partly as an homage to her appearance in Into the Spider-Verse, and partly because I assumed she'd be recognisable. A teenage girl in a futuristic mech seems appropriately familiar for the MCU's answer to Overwatch, and I had at least a passing idea of how D.Va worked. Unfortunately, I guessed wrong. Peni Parker is a crowd-controlling tank in Marvel's Rivals; it is, in fact, Bruce Banner/Hulk who's the form-changing e-boy.
That's one of my biggest takeaways from Marvel Rivals. The similarities to Overwatch are immediate, and come as no surprise - Rivals lifts several modes almost directly from Blizzard's hero shooter. There are also plenty of recognisable character archetypes, but they tend to stem from unexpected places: When the Hulk runs out of health, Bruce Banner is forced to fight for survival until he can get angry enough to go green again; Reinhardt's shield belongs to Doctor Strange; Bastion's turret form is now The Punisher's turret form.
That repeated bait-and-switch is a fun gimmick, but it ages pretty fast. I didn't see Rivals' full roster across my small handful of games, but any surprise I felt in discovering the Bruce/Peni switcheroo had long since abated by the time I watched Dr Strange advance towards the point with a shield held in front of his team. It was the characters who were trying to be their own thing that were much more successful. As a tank, Peni's crowd-control abilities were genuinely effective at webbing enemies in place or covering a point in mines. By contrast, Spider-Man himself was a faster, more aggressive character, able to jump into a fight, before swinging away if things got tough. Magik, a relatively little-known X-Man who I'm fond of thanks to her time in Marvel's Midnight Suns, wields her portal powers and hefty soulsword with equal prowess.
With great power
Marvel Rivals' roster is large, and I only saw, let alone played, as a small selection of it. What I did see, however, was a broad range of well-known favorites and significantly more niche outliers, and surprisingly few gun-toting characters. The likes of The Punisher and Star Lord rely on firearms, but Rivals is prepared to be more imaginative with many of its characters' primary abilities.
That approach begins to stumble, however, with Rivals' attempt to wield characters' secondary skills in varying ways. Some of the characters I played felt very one-note - I had the most fun with The Punisher during my demo, but three of his abilities were different kinds of guns. That's true to the character, perhaps, but not the kind of thing that suggests he'll be entertaining to master in the long-term. There are also comparatively few Marvel heroes dedicated to traditional support skills, to the extent that Luna Snow - a character only established in 2018 as part of a mobile game - was almost ever-present in my demo. Controlling and zoning skills were pretty present, but I feel like Rivals' roster could suffer in the longer term without some serious reworking of a few better-known characters.
Comes great resposibility
More worrying than that, however, is my concern that Rivals has little to set it apart other than that roster. This is an attempt at Overwatch's crown that has none of the speed, clarity, or gunplay that Blizzard brought to bear. Characters are slow, mobility skills both few in number and difficult to use. Combat abilities are either far too light or way too heavy; Spider-Man's melee swipes feel like they might just about tickle, but Peni's were extremely slow, and trying to connect a single swipe as Magik felt like a question more of luck than judgement.
And in the midst of the biggest fights, it was genuinely difficult to parse the information on screen, let alone play effectively around it. In one match, I faced off against a combination of Groot and Loki that meant that even if I could see a foe through the Guardian's wall of vines, I was more likely than not to be shooting at a fake version of the God of Mischief. As The Punisher that was fine - I could post up and blast through in the hope that a couple of shots might hit - but as Magik, Peter, or Peni, it would have been a nightmare.
Marvel Rivals could find something of a niche in its obvious popular appeal, but it won't do so by virtue of its quality. Blizzard's historic Overwatch 2 bag-fumble might have allowed space for one new hero shooter to enter the market, but this is, at my last count, one of four to have been revealed in the past couple of months. With time and tweaking, its entertainingly diverse roster might make this a game that Marvel fans could rally around, but as a direct answer to Blizzard, for now it falls remarkably short.
