Marvel's Midnight Suns is the latest game attempting to bring an iconic superhero team to the interactive medium, and it already seems to be succeeding where others have failed. This is the second Marvel ensemble game to launch in recent years, and many fans were worried that it was going to repeat the pitfalls of its predecessor Marvel's Avengers. However, players were pleasantly surprised when Marvel's Midnight Suns hit shelves and delivered an engaging adventure.
Unlike Marvel's Avengers, Midnight Suns seems to get a lot more right than wrong. The combat system is fresh and engaging, and the heroes are fully realized in a sold story. It seems to be hitting all the right notes even with performance problems, and Firaxis has plans for more content that will expand the experience. It has been a wild ride for Marvel fans so far, which only makes Marvel's Avengers look worse.
Marvel's Midnight Suns has Activities Outside of Missions
Outside of combat, Marvel's Avengers and Marvel's Midnight Suns let the player roam around different hub areas. Marvel's Avengers lets players explore the Chimera and the Ant-Hill, meanwhile Marvel's Midnight Suns lets players wander around the Abbey. These hubs serve as a place to select missions, craft various items, and interact with the heroes, but Marvel's Midnight Suns lets players do a lot more.
In the hub areas of Marvel's Avengers, a lot of what players see is simply a backdrop for a pretty lifeless world. Marvel's Midnight Suns, on the other hand, gives players boatloads of things to do within the Abbey. They can craft things, hang out with various heroes, raise their friendship levels, spar, explore the grounds for collectibles and puzzles, and spend all sorts of different resources to upgrade and customize its appearance. They can get lost for hours just exploring in-between missions, which feels exciting.
Each Hero Feels Unique, and Combat is Engaging
One thing ensemble superhero games have to get right is the feel of their heroes, and for the most part both games succeed. However, the deck-building system in Midnight Suns offers a massive amount of different cards for each hero that all feature attacks heavily engrained in their abilities. Ghost Rider can pull the life out of enemies, Maqik can throw enemies across the map with her portals, Blade can unload massive damage via sword strikes, Iron Man flies across the map delivering devastating blows, and Spider-Man can tangle everyone in his webs. Each hero feels like how they should feel, and each offers a variety of abilities that can make combat pretty wild.
Marvel's Avengers gets the look and feel of its heroes right, but the combat boils down to the exact same thing every time. Players will spam the attack button as they knock points off an HP bar, and do this repeatedly until the mission is over. While there is some fluff that makes each character feel unique, at the end of the day every combat scenario is the same. It makes the gameplay and mission structure feel repetitive, and a lot of the heroes in Marvel's Avengers feel like copies of each other.
Marvel's Midnight Suns Has a Load of Villains to Fight
At launch, Marvel's Avengers let players fight two different villains repeatedly in a mission type called Villain Sectors: Abomination or Taskmaster. Since release, a couple more villains have been added for players to fight, including Maestro and Scientist Supreme. While these are cool, the villain offerings still feel lackluster for a game that was supposed to deliver the fantasy of being an Avenger.
Marvel's Midnight Suns launched with more than double the amount of villains that Marvel's Avengers had. Players can battle Venom, Sabretooth, Crossbones, as well as Hulk and Scarlet Witch throughout the story. Some of these villains randomly ambush the player during missions, which leads to an extra level of challenge. To top it all off, players will actually be able to play as Venom when the DLC rolls around. There just seems to be a far greater presence of iconic Marvel villains in Marvel's Midnight Suns then there is in Marvel's Avengers, and that divide will probably grow as Firaxis releases more content.
There Are No Live-Serivce Elements in Midnight Suns
One of the biggest criticisms of Marvel's Avengers was the fact that the studio chose to make it a live-service game. The mission structure was repetitive, there was a heavy focus on multiplayer gameplay, and an even heavier focus on an endgame grind that Square Enix was willing to offer purchasable XP boosts for - but those have been removed. Marvel's Midnight Suns focuses on very different things, which makes it far more inviting for Marvel fans.
Marvel's Midnight Suns seems to be focused on delivering an intriguing single-player superhero adventure, and there is no multiplayer mode as players expand their personal Midnight Suns. The mission structure is also far less repetitive as the Midnight Suns deck-building mechanic can lead to all sorts of different shenanigans, and players have to constantly utilize new strategies. While there are still microtransactions, they are not too overbearing and are simply cosmetic.
Marvel's Midnight Suns feels like a breath of fresh air after the failure of recent superhero ensemble games. It is a classic single-player game that brings Marvel superheroes to a new genre, and it is a lot of fun. Things may change as the game gets older and Firaxis releases more content, but for now it is already off to a better start than Marvel's Avengers.
Marvel's Midnight Suns is available now for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S, with PS4, Switch, and Xbox One versions in development.