Marvel’s Avengers Beta Deep Dive

Crystal Dynamics have shared details of what will be included in the beta for Marvel’s Avengers, which will be running throughout August. Offering a blend of single-player and multi-player missions, the beta is intended to give a taste of everything the full game has to offer. Hopefully for Square Enix and Marvel, this will help stem the tide of disinterest this game has been facing since the first footage was released, and turn some of the widespread apathy or concern into excitement.

Included in the beta are:

• The Golden Gate Bridge sequence: As seen in the earliest footage of the game released. Here you’ll control Thor, Iron Man, Captain America, Hulk, and Black Widow, and engage in a boss fight with Taskmaster. To us, this looks like a flashy tutorial mission that makes sense for the player’s first introduction to the game.
• To Find Olympia: A story mission following Kamala and Hulk, with lots of exploration and dialogue, as they search to find the answers surrounding a mystery related to Shield. Then there’s a boss fight against Abomination.
• Missing Links: Kamala and Hulk then fly to Russia to investigate further into the mystery surrounding Shield. Then they punch some robots.
• HARM Challenge Rooms: Fights against bots in a challenge room style scenario. Here you either team up with three friends or partner with AI-controlled allies, to defeat incoming waves of enemies.
• War Zones: These are big flashy event style scenarios, with less emphasis on delivering a narrative, and more emphasis on bringing a bunch of heroes together to smash enemies in a wide-open environment. There will be five distinct war zones included with the beta, each in different environments, and with different enemy types to fight.

If you’re so inclined, there is also going to be a crossover with Fornite in the Avengers beta. If you complete the beta and link your Epic and Square Enix accounts, you’ll be able to unlock these delightful Hulk items for use in Fortnite.

They’re certainly not holding back from the gear-focused loot box progression loop, with an emphasis on various virtual trinkets that can be unlocked. I dunno, I’m not sure how I’m supposed to react to this grid of different gear for Iron Man to use when they’ve not really explained the monetization system yet.

This beta is a great chance for this game to prove itself. There’s obviously a lot of demand for a good Avengers game, but I think for a lot of people the jury is still out on this title. For me, the most pressing issue will be how the combat and movement feels. There are lots I can forgive if a game feels and plays right, and however the game’s broader structure ends up playing out, if the moment to moment combat and movement is fun, and feels accurate to each character, then there’s a lot of other minor problems that I could overlook.

If you want to participate in the beta, here’s a reminder of the dates it’s going to be running:

• August 7th: Beta becomes available to players on PS4 who have preordered the game
• August 14th: Xbox and PC beta becomes available to players who have preordered the game, and opens up to all players on PS4
• August 21st: Open beta for all players on all platforms

We also just got news of another character being added to the roster, with Hawkeye confirmed to be showing up post-launch as an unlockable character. His introduction trailer is above.

This version of Hawkeye is said to be primarily based on Matt Fraction’s run, from 2012 to 2015. It’s not sure exactly what players will have to do to unlock him, or if paying up for the game’s microtransactions will speed up the process, but you won’t be required to spend money to unlock Hawkeye or any of the other heroes that will be added post-launch.

Marvel’s Avengers is currently planned for a September 4th release. It has been delayed a couple of times already, but right now all signs indicate that they’re on target to hit that date. We’re really not yet sold on this game, even if we’re hoping for the best. It’s not really convinced us that it’s nailing everything we’d want out of an Avengers game, but we’ll remain open-minded. Maybe this beta is what will finally win us over.

We still don’t have full system requirements for the game, with the beta releasing soon, we can only imagine the system requirements will be released sometime soon too.

Will you be jumping into the beta? Were you waiting for the Hawkeye confirmation before getting excited? Are there any Avengers that are so far missing in action that you want to hear about? Let us know in the comments below.