Marvel Cosmic Invasion

• Genre: Beat 'em up
• Spoiler Free Review: Yeah.
• Time Played: 4-5 Hours
• Partners: Alice, Taylor, Brandon
• Too Short/Long: Pretty standard for a beat 'em up.
• Soundtrack: I honestly do not remember. Maybe because of all the sound effects of playing a 4 player beat 'em up. There were definitely some of the Marvel queues but overall I think it was just generic video game soundtrack.
• Why I played: I play beat 'em ups and this one was pretty noteworthy, harkening back to the olden days of Marvel beat 'em ups.
• Did I cry: No.
• Jank: At launch there was an issue where the player who paused the game couldn't navigate their own move list menu, only player one could. They fixed that. There were a couple times the game didn't recognize we needed to progress and were worried we were going to have to restart, thankfully falling into a pit helped that through. A couple other minor things like that.
• Difficulty: Pretty normal, and plenty of ways to adjust it. As far as playing in the standard modes it was mostly easy enough, we only failed a level once and there were only a couple player deaths beyond that.
• Recommend to others: Honestly, not really. It was fine, but there are so many other beat 'em ups worth your time more than this one. If you're absolutely starved for beat 'em ups or just too much of a sucker for Marvel stuff, sure, it's fine, but that's all it is.
  

Marvel Cosmic Invasion looks like a pretty cool game and that's the most impressive part about it. It looks cool, it looks new and fresh while also looking nostalgic, but it's a little too nostalgic as it's pretty much a standard fare beat-em up of the 90s, albeit with better hit detection.

There are two attack buttons, guard/dodge, jump/fly, and special. Not too bad, nothing super special, but there is so variety in that some characters are guard characters and some are dash, and some are capable of flying.

The big gimmick of this game is you play as two characters, so with 4 players, 8 selected character are playing through any given stage, so thankfully it has a decent enough roster. Because you play as two characters, it has some gimmicks borrowed from fighting games where it comes to assists and tagging in/out, etc. I think this is okay to mix up the game play, but the assist bar is the special bar and rarely did I find double comboing an enemy was more worth it then just using a special on a group of enemies - or even that one enemy. Not with three other people out on the field. I think this aspect might better serve single or two player, but... still why not just use the actual special? I would have definitely utilized it more if "assist" was it's own meter and I think it would have made the game a little more fun.

Most stages had several section and some sections had a little bit of a gimmick - but all the gimmicks were in how you got damaged. There are pits. There are lava spouts. There are enemies shooting you you can't hurt. There are defense systems, etc. etc. With the very occasional turret you can smack to hurt enemies.

No stage gimmicks to really mix up the game play. No motorcycle/hoverboard/etc. autoscrolling level. No platforming challenge, no climbing up anything. No target shooting level. Upside down or loose gravity etc. I guess it's hard to do gimmicks when how many of these would affect the vastly different marvel characters in vastly different ways. It's not like you're playing four of the same guy with a different colored headband.

But because of these limitations - not really needing/it not being optimal to use team attacks, few gimmicks, mostly just walk and attack, I thought it was overall kind of boring. I was literally falling asleep whiling playing, while playing with three other people. On an evening I didn't even end up falling asleep until almost 3 am because the goddamn near 40mph winds. What's more is it's kinda funny because JUST the night before I was telling a friend how I needed absolute perfect conditions to fall asleep in... or be playing a video game. To point out how annoying it is that half the time I go to play a game I start falling asleep while playing, yet have trouble getting to sleep in bed.

Anyway, Marvel Cosmic Invasion isn't the best defense of that because in the end, I found it really cool and neat at first, but it wears itself out pretty early and gets kinda boring and the only thing that keeps it fresh is trying out new character and seeing their move sets. It's serviceable, but there are a lot better beat 'em ups that are better in the game play/level design departments.