GamerEscape

Today we were lucky enough to get to check out Square Enix’s Marvel’s Avengers.

While we didn’t get hands-on with the title, we were able to witness about 20 minutes or so of gameplay for the upcoming superhero title from Crystal Dynamics.

Everything we saw in our presentation isn’t a final product, so it’s quite possible that things will change in the final version. Until then though, here’s everything we saw!

The video begin with A-Day- the Avenger’s celebration in San Francisco. After an explosion on the Golden Gate Bridge, Iron Man and Thor fly out to investigate before a series of additional explosions occur.

We move the third person camera of Thor as he flys to a group of enemies on the street. The game gives us a QTE here as Thor lands allowing him to smash down. It’s here we get the first look at some HUD elements.

At the top of the screen is what appears to be the health bar for yourself- during the gameplay, we also noticed that health seemed to replenish over time when not taking damage. There’s three circles in the bottom left corner of the screen. Two of these are tied to L1 and R1 buttons, which appear to be special abilities that go on a cooldown after using them. Later on, we noticed the third spot used when Hulk executed a giant clap which affected the enemies in front of him. So at a glance it looks like two more basic cool down abilities, and one stronger ability.

• 

• 

As Thor progresses through the groups of enemies, he throws his hammer around, pushing enemies back. In some cases, the hammer stayed and pinned an enemy so they were unable to move.

Next up, Iron Man came flying in and the camera moved over as he began to fly after enemies going towards the bridge, shooting them down. After this kind of guided transition between characters, Iron Man arrives on an area of the bridge and goes into standard gameplay. Throughout the demo, the Avengers are all on comms together.

During this particular point, Thor is grilling Tony Stark about the stolen S.H.I.E.L.D. weapons that are currently being used against them. Iron Man is able to fly around the battlefield, shooting his repulsors at enemies. At one point, he appeared to target multiple enemies at once with one of his attacks before launching a beam attack from his chest.

From here, we switch to Black Widow and Bruce Banner as they survey the scene from their quinjet. Bruce drops down onto the bridge and transforms as he falls as we transition into Hulk gameplay. Hulk runs into the group of enemies, picking one up and swinging him around to hit the others. Other enemies picked up and thrown, or picked up and slammed against each other. Hulk also picked up chunks of the ground he was standing on and threw it at enemies.

During the final part of the Hulk gameplay, he ran and wall jumped across destroyed sections of the bridge before executing a QTE that picked up one tank and threw it into another.

Next up was Captain America on the helicarrier as the enemy forces appeared. As expected, Cap can throw his shield at enemies, ricocheting around the environment before returning. Cap also held his shield up to an enemy and punched it from behind, knocking the enemy back. In the demo, Cap encountered an enemy with a shield and was able to specifically target the leg of the enemy to toss his own shield at, making the enemy vulnerable.

• 

• 

• 

At this point in the trailer, we move over to Black Widow as the villain of the demo appears: Taskmaster.

Black Widow begins to battle Taskmaster, using her dual pistols as he begins to fly around with a jet back. A QTE sequence begins, with Black Widow and Taskmaster flying around the Golden Gate Bridge. Eventually, they land and Black Widow spends a few minutes attacking Taskmaster. During the fight, Taskmaster has a few attacks such as jumping down with his sword, or setting out explosives. These are marked with indicators, allowing you to tell where the AoE reaches, giving you a better chance to avoid the attack altogether. Eventually, Black Widow uses a cloaking device to get the upper-edge and defeat Taskmaster, securing the detonator and disabling the bomb on the bridge.

However, its at this point that we see the scene from the trailer, where the helicarrier is destroyed, with San Francisco crumbling in the distance.