Marvel's Avengers Is An Absolute Mess
Assembling The Avengers
One thing that makes Marvel's Avengers such a frustrating experience is that every so often it will thoroughly impress and convince you to keep on pushing through all the other issues.
From the very first mission you are put in the shoes of Kamala Khan, resident Avengers super fan, and you get to share in the awe of seeing The Avengers with her at A-Day. You very quickly become immersed in the world and connect with Kamala. Little details such as in-universe Avengers comics and Kamala's own fan fiction demonstrate that Crystal Dynamic know how to create a detailed world full of charm and characters worth exploring.
The game's story is able to keep up this momentum and handles Bruce Banner just as well as it does Kamala. But soon enough you're torn out of the narrative missions which allow the characters to bounce off each other and instead you're bombarded with side missions that offer very little other than a small open world to explore that has nothing interesting in it, just waves of enemies that need fighting.
It's so frustrating because it distracts from what is a great story and experience.
More and more characters are introduced. Iron Man, Black Widow, Monica, M.O.D.O.K, the list goes on, but the more characters you meet, the more side missions, vendors and NPCs who offer nothing but repetitive daily tasks begin to take up your time.
You can't focus on immersing yourself in the narrative when you're running around The Chimera with J.A.R.V.I.S telling you another vendor would like to talk to you. Small quality of life issues like each storefront being spread out while movement speed is a tedious jog make all of this even harder to accept.
The main story actually isn't that long either, it only feels like it takes ages because you have so much side content to get through. And it's not even the worst side content you could play, but feels like we almost had a much more focused Avengers game before they had to change things to make it work as a long-term service.
Had Avengers aimed to be a twenty hour campaign with replayable levels and combat arenas, it honestly would've probably been a much better experience.
Another reason the game takes a while to get through for a lot of people is the constant technical issues.