The Four Color Media Monitor

A reviewer at AV Club is disappointed with the new Marvel Rivals computer game, which he says doesn't feel like Marvel, yet more like Overwatch:

There’s a fun game you can play while playing the (frequently unfun) new online shooter Marvel Rivals. I call it “Hey, Which Overwatch Character Is This Weird Version Of A Marvel Person Semi-Actionably Ripping Off?” [...]

Weirdly, the one itch the game doesn’t scratch is my love of Marvel. Sure, it’s fun to hear Yuri Lowenthal (Spider-Man), Josh Keaton (Iron Man), and Steve Blum (Wolverine) reprise roles from earlier Marvel games (including my beloved Midnight Sons). But Rivals is so interested in recreating the Overwatch dynamics that it rarely, if ever, feels like the superhero throwdown it should be, either in its fluff—with weird lore, costumes, and a time-tossed array of levels pulled from alternate universes that just happen to look a lot like OW maps—or its play. These don’t look, or feel, like any Marvel fights you might be familiar with from comics, TV shows, or films, and that’s because they’re not trying to be. They’re re-skinned Overwatch, and that’s a real bummer in a universe where a genuine Marvel hero shooter game still doesn’t really exist.

It's really no surprise these newer computer games don't feel like Marvel. That's because of all the wokeness they increasingly adhered to as the years went by, relying on newer stories and how characters were portrayed, and if they rely on how the movies approached the characters, rather than say, how Stan Lee and Roy Thomas did, that's another huge mistake. Why, even the increased focus on heroes fighting each other got way out of hand long ago, and that too makes this whole affair discouraging.

And come to think of it, when one takes into consideration that not many Marvel superheroes use guns, save for Nick Fury and the Punisher, maybe that's why the whole notion of modeling this game after a first-person shooter is another mistake? But the worst mistake of all is assigning only so many "reviwers" who couldn't care less about the classic material to comment on these topics, when they don't really have a proper grip on what originally made Marvel's comics work so well decades before, and no chance they'll ever complain how Marvel lost direction as a publisher under phonies like Joe Quesada and Bill Jemas. As a result, articles like these don't have much impact even to argue why these new computer games aren't worth the bytes they're published on, and don't make a good substitute for the comics.

Labels: Doctor Strange, history, Iron Man, licensed products, marvel comics, msm propaganda, Nick Fury, Punisher, Spider-Man, technology, X-Men