Marvel Rivals Scratches an Itch I’ve Long Ignored

Marvel Rivals—a brand-new, Marvel-themed, 6v6 Hero Shooter from NetEase Games—recently went live on December 6th, 2024. The new free-to-play game is entering a subgenre that has been a wasteland for years and Overwatch remains on the throne uncontested. While several games have attempted to challenge Overwatch’s reign in the past, not a single one has ever come close to becoming a true competitor. Whether it be uninspired designs that were too identical to their Overwatch counterparts or a setting and base concept that didn’t catch anyone’s attention, there was always something lacking about those games. However, Rivals seeks to succeed where many of its dead predecessors have failed. The game has gotten a lot of people talking in the lead-up to its release. Opinions from a select few coming out of the closed beta were positive. Many mentioned its obvious similarities to Overwatch but also in how it tried to differentiate. The most important buzz from the closed beta, however, is that Marvel Rivals was fun. The game caught the attention of many Overwatch players such as me who weren’t very jazzed by Overwatch 2 but still yearned for a hero shooter to get into. The Marvel branding, however, is undoubtedly the main factor that became the game’s hook. Personally, I can’t believe it took this long for a superhero-themed hero shooter to pop up.

As more of the game was revealed, I personally became more intrigued. I was honestly ready to write this off as another flop that could never topple the titan that is Overwatch. Well, former titan. But in the hero shooter landscape? Still very much a titan. In fact, it’s the subgenre’s only titan. I should’ve known better than to doubt the Marvel brand though, because even though I’m tired of the MCU, I am not tired of Marvel and the whole superhero thing. The roster on release was massive and featured well-known characters and obscure ones too. We have the obvious ones like Iron Man, Wolverine, and Captain America, to name a few. Then we also have Lin Lie’s Iron Fist instead of Danny Rand, Magik, Moon Knight, Cloak & Dagger, freaking Squirrel Girl(!) and a few more that I doubt most casual Marvel enjoyers would recognize. I commend this decision to involve a wide range of Marvel heroes and villains because that makes this game a treat for Marvel fans. Couple that with the comic-booky and cartoonish art style, and we have a game that so far already succeeds in its presentation. This game is really cool but how does it play? 

Fills a Hole Overwatch Left

Marvel Rivals fills the hole in my heart that Overwatch 1 left. Truly, I have not had this much fun with a hero shooter since the good ol’ days. Overwatch 2’s switch to a 5v5 format and having more fast-paced action heavy gameplay never sat right with me. A lot of the strategic elements in Overwatch 1 were changed in favour of a game that had a wider appeal. Every character was designed around being more active participants in combat and thus everyone was just trying to punch each other. Overwatch 1 had more defined roles and playstyles per character, each fulfilling a unique role within the team. When they made the switch that they did in OW2, I don’t think they successfully adjusted the roster to fit it. At least, not when I played it. Marvel Rivals surprisingly manages to give me the best of both worlds; everyone is still punching each other violently but there is strategic depth to how characters play with and against each other. Although, I will say Rivals does lean more into Overwatch 2’s style of encouraging a more aggressive playstyle.

There are quite a few “Strategists” (which is this game’s support role) who have more offensive kits than I would have expected. More than half of the Vanguard characters (tanks) don’t have shields and in classic Overwatch fashion, more than half the roster is composed of DPS characters. Most of the roster is made up of melee-based characters, so no matter your team composition, you’re almost always going to end up in a dive team on both sides and both teams will duke it out brawler style. But each character has different demands from the player controlling them and the players surrounding them. Take Peni Parker, whose kit is centered around map control and binding enemies for the team to mop up which makes her great for controlling points. There’s Loki who can place down a small AOE healing point and can spawn two clones that stay in place and imitate what the player does, making him a good healer during brawls while dishing out solid damage to help take out squishier enemies. Then There’s Storm who can amplify the speed or damage of allies in an AOE centered on her, and she can also fly but very slowly, making her a great support DPS but a vulnerable target. Yes, the roster across the board is designed to be aggressive but it’s clear that a lot of thought has been put into each character and how they interact with one another. It feels like they’ve tested these characters a lot and they’ve evolved across multiple iterations before landing on what we have on launch day.

There is also something called “Team-Up Abilities” where if a certain set of characters are together in a team, it activates a passive or active bonus for those characters. Even more fun is that the team-ups are themed. For example, if you put Hela in a team with Loki and/or Thor, it activates a passive ability that revives a dead Thor or Loki if Hela gets a kill. Another one is if Rocket is in a team with The Punisher and/or The Winter Soldier, Rocket will get an additional ability that provides an AOE effect that gives the other two unlimited ammo. As of now, there are 15 Team-Ups in total and it is a very fun and effective way to make players put more thought into their character choices, and encourages mastering multiple characters instead of having one or two as your main. 

Something I think is worthy of a compliment is the balanced roster and when I say balanced, I mean everyone is OP. It’s kind of ridiculous. But when everyone is OP, nobody is. So, no matter who you pick, no matter what role you’re trying to fill, you’re always going to be capable of duking it out with your team. In that sense, this game for now clearly isn’t focusing on trying to be a competitive e-sport. I’m a bit surprised that we already have a ranked mode. This game feels like it was meant to be played casually and when you do play it like that, it’s very fun. Games like Overwatch or Valorant that have a very active competitive scene would understandably balance the game around the pros because they’d want to ensure that it’s always an even playing field. Rivals doesn’t even care. 

Being an aggressively tuned 6v6 game, however, does make the game feel very chaotic and becomes quite hard to comprehend when shit’s going down. It’s an absolute mess of all sorts of effects happening on screen all at once from corner to corner. Also, because this game has characters who float perpetually instead of hovering around for a bit, there’s a sense of verticality that you constantly have to keep up with. It can get difficult to get a sense of what’s going on when you’re in the thick of it and once you do, you might already be dead. It’s a bit of a sensory overload so keep that in mind. 

I apologize if I keep making comparisons to Overwatch, but it honestly can’t be helped. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that Marvel Rivals is aping/imitating Overwatch, and rightfully so. It’s what every hero shooter in the past has been trying to beat. To not follow in Overwatch’s footsteps would be a daring move if you’re trying to make a mark in the hero shooter landscape. You should be using the successful blueprint as a jumping off point if you want to compete. With that said, the best thing about Marvel Rivals is that you can clearly tell which characters, and which kits or abilities are directly lifted from Overwatch, but you can also tell where they tried to put their own spin on it. If you ask me, I think they succeeded quite well. Take Storm for example. She’s a Duelist (DPS) who is a flying Lucio but swaps out his healing passive with a damage boost passive instead. Or take Cloak & Dagger, who’s kind of like Kiriko when you’re playing Dagger, but it becomes a damage-focused Moira when you switch over to Cloak, who can blind enemies. You also have Rocket who shoots healing orbs like Baptiste but the orbs function more like Moira’s orb that slows down and heal nearby allies. Then you have Thor who honestly just feels like an original design idea, and I personally can’t think of who from Overwatch he’s supposed to emulate. It’s these design choices with the roster that make it so interesting to get into, especially as an ex-Overwatch player. This doesn’t just feel like a clone, it feels like an honest-to-goodness attempt at a hero shooter. 

The game also has an interesting approach to level design. Yes, there are quite a few maps here that are pretty obviously lifted straight from Overwatch, and some of them are more obvious because they even look like Overwatch maps. But then you realize there are parts of the map that are destructible which adds a nice layer of strategy to how you play and position yourself. I’ve seen people get trapped under rubble and thus couldn’t contest a point. Frustrating? Sure, if you’re the one stuck, but you should do it too! Aside from destructible environments, several levels have unique elements that change the battlefield and forces you to think on your feet and adapt to the changes. From levels with shifting walls and rising floors, to levels where paths to the objective can be blocked off by an environmental obstruction that players can trigger, these unique map elements add yet another layer of strategy to the game. I think that’s a cool aspect of the game that further sets itself apart from Overwatch (sorry).  

So all-in-all, I think the game is a damn good time. Is this just a honeymoon phase? Probably. The game is seeing an absurd level of numbers at launch. At the time of writing this, SteamDB reveals that the game is sitting at an impressive 446,145 concurrent players with an all-time peak of 480,990 players, making it the 2nd most played game on Steam. While the number fluctuates from day to day, so far it has maintained a comfortable spot in Steam’s top 5. Time will tell where the game will be in a month or two. Time will also tell if I even still enjoy the game in a few months like I do now. It’s a lot of fun but a role queue would be nice, at least in ranked mode. I also am not a fan of the default character designs, because almost everyone is wearing thick metal armor and that annoys me. Give me fabrics and spandex, this isn’t the 2000s anymore. 

Will I ever go back to Overwatch? Probably not. I didn’t even play it before Rivals. I might try Overwatch 2 again since I just found out that new characters aren’t locked behind a paywall anymore. For now, though, I’m thoroughly enjoying my time with Marvel Rivals, especially now that my friends have hopped on too.