Tried Square Enix and Crystal Dynamics Marvel's Avengers beta up to War Room.
Opening is good for a movie, but it feels a bit hectic, chaotic and overwhelming for a game with all that switching between the characters for very small periods of time. Personally, I'd keep it as a cinematic.
Once game switched to an actual "mission", it had better pacing, but still a bit "fast" for an introduction, which seems ok, considering it looks to be far from the first actual mission.
You start as Hulk and for me the fighting for him seemed bland. I did not feel his power. Hulk is considered to be one of the strongest beings in Marvel Universe even with assumption, that his strength can grow up endlessly. Yet, he can very rarely one-punch some stupid bots. Which also makes little sense, that AIM sends that small fry after him, not something, you know, "heavier".
But that seems to be result of RPG elements in the game (because you can't make a fighting game without RPG elements this days, apparently). What I did not like way more: target locking. Or rather how it works. There are games, where you enable target lock and then you can switch targets while its enabled or it switches it automatically once a target dies (I think from the latest games it Fallen Order) or where you hold the lock (like Devil May Cry). Here you need to turn the lock for every enemy and once an enemy dies - you need to lock once again. And speaking of dying: Hulk only had one case of actually killing people according to Amadeus Cho, but in the game he seems to be actually killing AIM humans.
What else I did not like is lack of "close the gap" abilities. You know, like "Stinger" in DMC, when you rush to the enemy, dealing damage to him. And you would think that locking an enemy and then jumping towards him could be used like such an ability... But no. You would most likely have to make several jumps like that or sprint. But in the lore Hulk could just jump on the robot and destroy it with that. Why do I not have such an obvious power? Even if it was not destroying bots, since RPG.
And overall it felt too button-mashy to me. I did not expect DMC-like styling system (although you could button-mash it through most of the time), but I did not feel much need to think of combos, aside from guys with shields. Add how slow Hulk is compared to faster robots and it quickly became boring. I'd prefer those traversal episodes more, if they had a bit more obvious aim and distance calculations.
Surprisingly, Kamala's fighting felt more fluid. It still was more of button-mashing, but you did feel like she was weaker, you did need to jump around and the way her attacks were hitting multiple opponents made sense. Considering that her first fight was near lamps you can hang from, it somehow felt a bit like fighting in Spider-Man games, except lacking ability to pull yourself towards the enemies. Come on, stretchy arms allow you to do that. Or pull the enemies towards you.
Kamala's character seemed to be the driving force. I guess it will be a story of her "growing up" in some sense, if not as a person overall, than as a hero and such stories do tend to attract attention and curious onlookers. Her behavior and comments do look as "fish from the water" which is relatable and that is good. At least, I am interested in learning how she will develop.
I did not like Banner, though. In some moments he reminded me of Stark from the intro, who already sounded somewhat aloof and closer to Peter Parker, than a more mature Stark (unless he is still an alcoholic in this timeline). Perhaps there is an explanation for Banner being this way in the "fuller" story, though: his "costume" is called "Broken" after all, probably for a reason.
In the end, the game does not look bad, but it does not seem that polished to me. It looks like a game in the franchise specifically for the franchise fans, rather than gamers, who would enjoy a good fighting game. I mean, they had Cap, they could make his fighting style close to what Batman's Arkham series had. It would make quite a lot of sense there.
But alas, it is more like Marvel's Avengers Alliance or those X-Men games, where you could select one of the dozens characters and play with them, except camera is from the back and your choices of the heroes will be limited for each mission (or so it seems).
I will, probably buy when it gets a good discount, but at the current price... No. Guess I am not that much of a fan.
