Despite enjoying an almost 20-year stranglehold on Hollywood and audiences, it’s remarkable that we haven’t gotten a game based specifically on the Marvel Cinematic Universe in a decade. While James Gunn has recently talked about the work being done on games set within the freshly reborn DC cinematic universe, the MCU hasn’t received a proper licensed tie-in game since 2016’s Lego Marvel’s Avengers. And if Lego versions don’t count, then the last would have been three years earlier with Iron Man 3: The Official Game… which was a Temple Run clone on Android and iOS.
But outside of the MCU, Marvel properties have enjoyed a streak of well-received games for several years, including the surprise hit of Square Enix’s Guardians of the Galaxy and 2K Games’ Midnight Suns. 2023 brought us Insomniac’s wildly successful Spider-Man 2, a game that appeared frequently across Best Of lists that year and, in moving 2.5 million copies in 24 hours, became the fastest-selling PlayStation Studios game in history. Since then, the developers at NetEase Games have given Marvel another juggernaut with Marvel Rivals, and the free-to-play hero shooter has now become the first game in a decade to revisit the MCU timeline in the countdown to Avengers: Doomsday.
