What am I playing? (Jan. 6)
Overwatch is back (and dead), baby.
Marvel Rivals
HONEY! HONEY! NEW OVERWATCH CLONE JUST DROPPED!
Marvel Rivals, for the uninitiated, is a 6-on-6 objective and team based shooter released back in December 2024. It had been teased since 2023 and had beta tests in 2024, but now the full game is officially out and receiving glowing impressions and recommendations. This is one of those.
If you read, “6-on-6 team based shooter” and thought about Overwatch, then you may not be shocked to read that this is basically the same game but with Marvel characters and a third-person perspective.
The aesthetic is as Chinese as Overwatch’s, the objective-based missions are pulled straight from Overwatch and some character designs were even redone to be more Overwatchy. Even the sound effects for headshots, selecting options and losing health are very similar. The lobby has you choose which hero you want up front, like Overwatch. The character proportions are exaggerated even more than Overwatch, with every dude bulging with muscles and every woman carrying a wagon behind her. The biggest difference is that this game is full of Marvel heroes and villains instead of new (at the time) faces like Overwatch.
(Above: footage of a game of Rivals I played with my wife’s little brother.)
Is the game well-balanced? No. Almost every hero has something ridiculous they can do, like Jeff the Land Shark’s abysmally strong ultimate skill, where he can swallow an entire team and then throw himself off of a cliff like the world’s cutest kamikaze. Games don’t necessarily need to be balanced to be fun - that’s why so many people like season 1 of Overwatch much more than any season after. It’s chaotic, there isn’t much downtime and communication is still key, especially if you don’t want a busted hero skill wasting your entire team. It’s still a tight team-based shooter with nail biting moments almost every match. But, it also has moments where your team can get blown out completely if the other team is using well-known, overpowered tactics.
What does set Rivals apart, though, is its melee mechanics, flight and team-up bonuses. Some characters, like Magik and Iron Fist, are strictly melee-based while others have melee attacks that are more useful, and damaging, than they seem. It makes the game feel more like a brawler, like Anarchy Reigns, with more up close battles. It’s more than just a couple of characters like Reinhardt or Doomfist - it’s also more fleshed out. Other characters, like Iron Man, Storm and Dr. Strange, can fly with almost no cooldown, which seems overpowered but is countered by all of the other ridiculous things in this game. Team-up bonuses give characters new skills when paired up with other heroes from their universe or that they are known for working with in the past. For example, Squirrel Girl gets a web lasso if she teams up with Spider-Man and Hela can revive her fellow Asgardians Thor or Loki after she KOs an enemy.
The game also has more characters to choose from than Overwatch, even Overwatch 2, with more on the way since Marvel has an almost infinite pool of heroes and villains to choose from. Deadpool and others have leaked and the Fantastic 4 are dropping a couple of days from now. It provides more playstyles for more players, which is fantastic.
Overall, Marvel Rivals is fun. It scratches that “one more game” itch that every multiplayer shooter should. It hasn’t been poisoned by loot boxes, bad balance changes, changes to the core formula or bad community support like Overwatch. It’s also at the beginning of its life cycle, so it’s still fresh and has room to grow. My only gripe is that the paid costumes cost way, way too much at $20 a pop off sale. Still, those are optional and the game also has free skins to grab as well.
At the end of the day, it’s nice to play a game like Overwatch that isn’t tainted by Blizzard’s bad decisions in-game, like balance changes, and in their offices, like abused workers and toxic crunch culture. Hopefully NetEase, a former affiliate of Blizzard, can keep their noses clean too.
Here are some more similarities to Overwatch:
Peni Parker, the alternate universe Spider-Person most known from Into the Spiderverse, is just a clone of D-VA from Overwatch. Luckily, it already fit with her mech-based powers anyway.
Hulk’s “hulking out mechanic” is ripped from D-VA’s mech mechanic. He is weaker out of Hulk mode and starts with the ability to go straight into Hulk mode, his version of a mech.
Squirrel Girl (a favorite of mine) is Junkrat from Overwatch, with her slingshot grenades and wheel-like acorn that she can throw.
Luna Snow’s ultimate skill is just Lucio’s ultimate skill from Overwatch - power up the team or give them healing within a radius while going really fast. Her version is just more overpowered to the point where she is banned from competition as of this blog entry.
Punisher and Star Lord share bits of pieces of Agent 76 - Punisher’s entire gameplan is the same, while Star Lord takes Agent 76’s ultimate skill where he auto-locks onto enemies. Otherwise, he plays very similarly to Tracer.
Black Widow is Widowmaker with melee skills. That’s it.
Hawkeye is Hanzo, but with more arrow options.
Portal 2
My wife and I hadn’t played a co-operative game together in a couple of months due to our recent preference for speedrunning as many TV shows as we can in between new episodes of Real Housewives. I remembered that I bought a copy of Portal 1 and 2 for the Switch. The sequel has a co-op mode that casts the players as two robots in GLaDOS’s sick tests done in the name of “science.”
I hadn’t touched this game since I was 16, so I remembered none of the puzzles but all of the mechanics and how the physics system works. My wife, Haylee, hadn’t played any of the games, but always wanted to. We hit our stride pretty well in the first few levels, using the portals in tandem while I somewhat explained to Haylee what surfaces could use portals and what buttons do in each room. Sadly, the game doesn’t have a basic tutorial to show any new players how to use the portal gun - it assumes you have played the previous game. Luckily, Haylee games pretty often so she picked up on most of the unexplained rules as we made our way through the campaign.
Portal 1 and 2 have aged gracefully, mostly because of they are simple games at least on a basic level. You shoot a portal, then shoot another portal that connects to that one. The game adds layers to each situation - first there are cubes and buttons for opening doors and maneuvering to the exit followed by lasers and enemies that can kill you. Each level, or test chamber, seems simple at first until you have to think: “How do I get that cube over here if I can’t shoot a portal over there?” “How do I launch myself that way without dying or overshooting it?” It’s a puzzle game like no other, challenging the player to break the rules of physics and space to accomplish their goal.
We finished the main campaign, which was tough enough on its own. Several puzzles require players to time slamming into each other mid-air, others had us shooting goo that makes the ground slippery for faster momentum and the last few tests were challenges in planning and communication. We had a few frustrating moments due to misunderstandings or being way too tired after playing for several hours in the middle of the night. We also kind of switched roles toward the end, with Haylee finding solutions so we could plan to execute them.
Then, we reached the bonus levels, which are included in the Portal collection on Switch but were originally downloadable back in 2011. I had not played these levels, so we officially had no clue what we were getting into. Although we have finished these levels now, it took us several sessions of solving one room, getting frustrated, then coming back the next day to finish said room quickly since we were usually only one move away from solving the puzzle. It was exhilarating, funny and angering. We cursed the developers a few times and questioned whether or not the rooms were solvable because they were screwing with us. These bonus levels are tough to crack, with some requiring you to redefine how you play the game with portals and others pushing the mechanics of the game to their limit. One puzzle was so simple that it took us longer than any other chamber because we assumed the answer was way more complicated.
Portal 2 is great and possibly one of the best puzzle games of all time, rewarding the player with plenty of “hell yes!” moments for when they finally solve a room. The robots even receive emotes at milestones in their campaign, which is really cute. But the co-op section can be a challenge, which is great if that is your thing.
System: Nintendo Switch