When it comes to campaigns in superhero video games, Marvel’s Spider-Man essentially reigns supreme. It has it all: the panoramic vistas of New York, the challenging levels, and the fun gadgets. And up until now, there was never a game that could rival its AAA ambitiousness.
Though Square Enix isn’t shy when it comes to detailed campaigns in video games, Marvel’s Avengers is ultimately an arcade game that’s meant to be played for fun online. However, though the campaign feels like a tacked-on game mode that seems like a glorified tutorial to serve the online game, there are actually a lot of positives to be said about the Square Enix smash hit.
10 Avengers: Different Playable Characters
Marvel’s Avengers turns a childhood dream in to a reality, with the ability to play as six powerful characters including a huge green monster, a super powerful war hero, a Russian martial arts enthused spy, and a god, each with their own special moves and abilities. Some of them might be more powerful than others, but the craftsmanship that has gone in to the detailed differences is second to none, and when they rally together, it couldn’t be anymore satisfying. Team work makes the dream work.
9 Spider-Man: Detailed Environments
Though the Avengers’ environments are very linear, it’d be easy to think that the hallways and war zones of the game would be much richer in detail than they are, but it couldn’t be further from the truth, as they barely reach the depth of Spidey’s open world.
The web slinger’s New York is possibly the most detailed creation of New York ever seen in a video game, and the game’s side missions encourage players to explore the vast city, as opposed to Marvel’s Avenger’s sterile environments.
8 Avengers: Weapons
As gamers have choice of six characters, they all have different weapons, many of which have a different learning curve and completely different set of skills, not to mention that they are fun as hell. Opting to play as Captain America sees his shield in a way fans have never seen it, as it glows up when in use. And even though we won’t see the web slinger anytime soon, Black Widow has a grappling hook that works suspiciously like swinging with Spidey’s webs.
7 Spider-Man: Movement
Though there it comes with a steep learning curve when players get started, Spidey’s movement is so fluid. From slinging through the sky off of buildings to sliding underneath bad guys and jumping over bosses, the whole feeling is just so smooth. Though the movement in Avengers can be fun the majority of the time, it never quite feels as transcendent as Spider-Man, and can at times feel clunky, making the campaign even more of a chore and a loot grind to get through.
6 Avengers: Story
The story of both Spider-Man and Marvel’s Avengers is where they are most evenly matched, as the endearing story of mentorship between Spider-Man and Miles Morales is wonderful, and Peter Parker’s personal relationship is so true to the way millennials interact today. However, Marvel’s Avengers has a fantastic story that is surprisingly intimate.
Believe it or not, there are still a lot of gamers who play games for the story mode alone. And it’s a big ask for those players to spend $70 on a 10 hour story mode, but the relationship between Kamala and Bruce is one of the best narratives in a superhero game, and each of the Avengers have their own inner turmoil to fight through.
5 Spider-Man: Villains
Weighing up Spider-Man against Avengers might be unfair because Spider-Man has had a gallery of unique villains ranging from mad scientists to, well, even madder scientists long before the video game existed. But the thing is, Sony implemented them in to the game so well and they were not just familiar to their comic book and movie counter parts, but they were challenging and interesting too. Though The Avengers do have a history of villains that consists of aliens, robots, and even themselves, Square Enix has held back.
4 Avengers: Excitement For The Future
Though Spidey has much better villains, they game has been lambasted with most of the web slinger’s best nemeses. However, Square Enix cleverly opted not to overfeed fans and go for a villain that has never been seen before in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This means that unless they are true fans of the comic books, it is most players’ first introduction to MODOK. And though she was menacing enough, it leaves open the possibility for tons of DLC and sequels featuring villainous titans like Dr. Doom, Loki... and Thanos?
3 Spider-Man: Combat
Not only does Spider-Man’s combat heavily borrow from Rocksteady’s influential Batman: Arkham series, as Spidey bounces off one enemy’s chest on to another, succinctly taking on several henchman at once, but it takes it one step further. Each one of Spider-Man’s outfits have special abilities and his web slinging abilities encourage experimentation with stealth, which has never been done in a Spider-Man game before.
2 Avengers: Re-Imagining An Already Established Franchise
Spider-Man is exciting and gliding through New York in a fresh outfit is fun and all, but that sandbox has been built several times over, and the history of Spider-Man has been stretched paper thin in video games by this point; Uncle Ben was murdered and Peter’s in an on-again, off-again relationship with MJ. But in Marvel’s Avengers there’s so much new lore for players to sink their teeth in to. For example, we find out that Tony Stark owns Area 51 and that Black Widow was born in the 1920s. It never feels like a rip of off the movies.
1 Spider-Man: Length
Barely scraping the 10 hour mark, Avengers’ campaign is very short, especially considering that some Square Enix games have bosses that take longer than 10 hours to defeat. When it comes to Spidey’s campaign, though the web slinger is skinny as hell, there’s a ton of meat on the campaign itself, totting up to almost 20 hours, and it never gets repetitive, not to mention that there’s a slew of side missions and back packs to find that could take completionists up to 40 hours to hit 100%.