izigame.me

Marvel Battle Waifu Dress-Up Simulator 2022 is Pretty Great!

No seriously. Lots of mixed reviews but I've been playing this thing as of time of posting this for like 12 hours. Is it perfect? No, but that's mainly due to technical issues right now. I'm not going to give a super-duper in depth report on every little thing, I'm just going to highlight the stuff that I find the best (and worst) and whatnot. Sound and graphics are fine, I'm not running a rig you'd find at NASA or MIT here.
*Win 10
*Ryzen 7 3700x
*64gb RAM
*RTX 2060
The Good
--The Power Fantasy--
Teaming up with earth's mightiest heroes (and some of the less than mightiest) has never been more fun, this time with a self-insert OC of your choosing. Knocking around Hydra troopers like rag dolls to smash into each other or explosive barrels or NYC mailboxes feels amazing. 1 HP minions that blow away like dust in the wind to set up chain attacks or environmental combos make you feel super powerful, while whittling down chunkier enemies is less of a chore (so far) than one might imagine, due to the amount of stuff you can play with on a given battlefield. So long as you don't use it all up too quickly! The big flashy Heroic attacks feel amazing and flashy, too! The higher-tier ones definitely even more! Like Ghost Rider's ghost ridin' and Miss Marvel's particle mega beam cannon.
--The Combat--
Coming from having played the more recent XCOM games as well as Phoenix Point, I knew more or less what I was getting into. I won't rehash what's above but the change from the slow deliberate cover-to-cover hopping and Hail Mary long shot hopes and dreams being shattered to in your face superhero explosions is definitely a change but it suits the theme. If you temper expectations as to how the combat plays out versus the much slower, more deliberate offerings in the genre you'll enjoy it a lot because the more cinematic approach here does the entire thing a lot of justice. We want to see Iron Man blasting Hyda goons with his palm repulsors, not hiding behind a waist-high wall and missing Hydra Bob with a 95% chance to hit.
Some folks might seriously dislike the randomness of the card system but you get a chance for a couple of redraws per turn, and the abilities always do what they say they'll do with no chance of failure. So while it may make things more predictable, the card element adds some of that randomness back in which represents the chaos of a comic-style brawl.
--The Banter--
There is only so much I can say about this without spoilers but maybe I'm just a daffy old woman at the ripe age of 37 (at the time of writing) but I find the character writing and interplay to be fantastic. From the main character and Blade riffing on each other from the start for being weird immortal monstrosities to Tony Stark ribbing Stephen Strange about talking to his cloak. I'm someone whose only real exposure to comics were 90's cartoons, role-playing with strangers on the internet via text interface, and snippets of the MCU. But even I could tell a lot of love went into the characterizations and their interplay. Like Blade making Miss Marvel uncomfortable by talking about midnight snacking when a moment later he mentions it's a late night falafel stand. Plus you have time to chat with each of your team members to learn their backstories if you need a refresher on their origins. Plus building friendships and pumping iron with Carol or going mushroom picking with Nico is pretty great because while some people are complaining the main character is bland, they're an amnesiac magical weapon that's been in a vivid coma for 300 years after they died fighting their mother, the antagonist currently, the last time. Besides, they get more personality as it goes on.
Seriously though I'm old and references to Ghostbusters, Aliens, and Gremlins made me smile. Pretty sure they intended this for an older audience, and I don't mean because of any 'mature content'.
--You Can Pet The Dog and Hug the Cat--
'nuff said here.
The Bad
--Performance. Performance. Performance.--
This is the big sticky point. This game needs some patching. I'm honestly having no issues with the game outside of it running like crap for seemingly no reason. Running around the spooky forests of Salem? No slowdown. Turning a corner in the Abbey? I need to stop and try to turn my camera three or four times to actually make it focus where I want to because it hitches and jumps so hard I don't know which direction I'm going.

UPDATE
This thread on the Steam Forum has more or less solved my stuttering and loading issues. It outlines the course of action necessary to halt the 2k Launcher from actually opening up with the game.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/368260/discussions/0/3717188244458896501/
Who knew that having a piece of useless background software running and constantly cloning and halting its own processes would create horrible stutter in a game?
The Whatever
--Cash Shop--
Elephant in the room. Costumes for coins. It's a terrible practice. Do I have the season pass? Yes. I want Storm and Deadpool. Glad it came with the costumes? Also yes. There's some cool, quality stuff in there. For the people that are miffed at having to shell out for black knight Ghost Rider or goth beauty Nico, I get it. The game does unlock costumes as you go that aren't premium, but cosmetic DLC in a AAA game at full price is still rough. Who knows if they'll add more as the life of the game progresses though?
--Customization--
Bear with me. It's great. But it's also kind of trash. At the start of the game, making your little paper doll hero/heroine is full of incredibly limited options. Very few hair and eye colors. No makeup at all. What gives? Well, you have to play the game. Unlocking more full customization options comes not too long after the introductory business, but you still need to play the game to get the Gloss (whatever it is) so you can unlock more options for making your self-insert waifu look the way you want her to. And once I got my Hunter looking how I wanted, my enjoyment went up immensely.
Plus more casual outfit options and other cool things unlock as you go or make friends. Doctor Strange in the EMO KIDS sweatshirt is amazing. I bet Tony put him up to it. Or probably Nico. Additional color palettes also require earning the Gloss but again it's really just a 'beat some dudes and finish a mission' currency.
--More Heroes--
This is just me wanting some of my other favorites. I wish Karolina would show up (sadly she's in the shittiest timeline right now. Her writers are on crack.) I'd love to see Psylock. But I definitely understand that with a hero roster that banters with each other, voice line and mocap time is not small potatoes. Still, I do hope there's more unannounced heroes coming in the future.
Final Verdict
Solid 75-80 out of 100. And that's mainly because of the performance issues. Or the texture bugs. As. Cool as it was having my character's entire head be made of shiny metallic black stuff or the joy of waiting 5 minutes for a level to load when it took 30 seconds the last time, these issues really need to be shored up. Then I'd definitely put it up at 85-90 or so.
MAYBE the game will feel repetitive later. MAYBE I'll find the story to be trash as it goes on. For now, I like it. For now, it feels like playing a comic.
Rough but REALLY GOOD!