Avengers Beta Review: 4 Ups & 6 Downs

Downs

6. Unbelievably Sluggish, Repetitive Combat

Maybe it's simply because Crystal Dynamics and/or Square Enix want to target the most age groups possible; make the game as accessible as possible from a difficulty and combat legibility standpoint, but there's a slow, sluggish nature to combos across the board that quickly feels exhausting.

Yes, there's baseline variety in terms of switching to ranged attacks or taking flight as Iron Man, but everybody gets a light attack string, everybody has a charged heavy attack. Character specials rarely change the flow of a fight and Kamala and Hulk even have ranged attacks, despite it not making much sense (Kamala launches her fist and Hulk produces a mound of dirt), instead of something more unique.

Where it is neat that the same button for Black Widow's counter is Hulk's rage attack-boost, far more could've been done to differentiate the roster. Crystal Dynamics have given you a vanilla moveset so that jumping between heroes doesn't feel too jarring, only to blur the lines too much.

Going forward we've got a paltry six characters at launch, with more like Hawkeye or Spider-Man being plugged in over time (the latter on PS4/5 only).

The problem is we already have a solid idea on how they'll play and feel. Black Widow and Ms. Marvel can already swing from parts of the environment in Spidey's case, and it makes you wonder if the framework these characters get slotted into is already too restrictive.