Marvel Rivals has made already made a huge splash, and it hasn’t even launched. The game’s recent beta test revealed a polished hero shooter that liberally takes inspiration from Overwatch but manages to provide its own unique spin on the genre. Of course, a huge part of the game’s appeal is the chance to play as beloved Marvel heroes and villains. The sheer appeal of the Marvel brand is already doing a lot for the game, and while it has some of the essentials, the roster for Marvel Rivals feels a bit odd at the moment. It’s a hodgepodge of iconic and obscure characters that lack a distinct theme, and the best way to fix is staring the game’s developer NetEase in the face. It’s right in the game’s name: Marvel Rivals.
The Marvel Rivals roster is weird
The oddest part about Marvel Rival’s roster is the lack of certain distinct characters that are featured in almost every Marvel game. You have the mainstays like Iron Man, Hulk, and Spider-Man, but other big names like Captain America and Wolverine are conspicuously absent. You have four Guardians of the Galaxy, but only two X-Men, and absolutely no one from the Fantastic Four. Layer in some truly obscure Marvel characters like Luna Snow and Jeff the Land Shark, and it all begins to feel a bit uneven.
Don’t get me wrong, most of the characters in Rivals fit their hero shooter roles well, but it feels like the game needs to have some kind of bigger purpose to who’s playable.
Despite the Rivals name, there’s a serious lack of actual rivals featured on the roster, with just Spider-Man and Venom and Thor and Loki. There’s a lot of room to expand on the idea of pitting rivals against each other, or even forcing rivals to team up in some cases, especially with who’s currently in the game.
What Marvel Rivals is missing
Magneto absolutely needs a rival alongside him, and while Charles Xavier could be a fascinating pick in a game like this, Wolverine could fill that slot too. Thanos could be a good foil for the Guardians, Abomination for Hulk, Killmonger for Black Panther, the list goes on. The idea of rivals can also apply to hero pairs, like Wolverine and Cyclops, The Punisher and Daredevil, and Hulk and The Thing.
Leaks have already shown some looks at characters like Captain America, Human Torch, and Black Widow, but NetEase would be smart to theme its content additions or seasons to specific groupings of characters. Maybe one update focuses on the Avengers and their villains, and the next on the Fantastic Four and their foes.
Leaning into the rivals theme could go much further than just representation on the roster, it could be further worked into gameplay. Marvel Rivals’ most unique addition to the hero shooter genre is its Team-Up Attacks, letting you unlock new skills and options depending on who’s part of your team. For example, putting Scarlet Witch and Magneto on the same team gives the master of magnetism a magic blade attack, while Rocket can ride around on Groot if they’re playing together.
This leads to a wealth of interesting team compositions, but is it also can feel unbalanced. If you’re going up against opponents with a team-up attack but your team doesn’t have one, you’re at a clear disadvantage.
One way to solve this is simply more team-up attacks to ensure nearly every team has one, but you could also create some kind of rival skills. Maybe Venom gets a boost if he’s going up against Spider-Man, and vice-versa. Or Loki and Thor could get unique skills to make their rivalry even more dramatic. Yes, implementing this kind of system would require a lot of tuning and balancing, but that’s clearly already a major issue for Marvel Rivals, one that needs a solution.
Marvel Rivals has a rock-solid foundation as a hero shooter, but the appeal of the Marvel universe can only go so far. Sheer name recognition might carry the game for a while, but it still needs a truly unique idea if it’s going to claw its way to the top of an extremely competitive genre. Leaning into Marvel Rivals’ name might just be the spark it needs, but the key is finding a smart way to manifest that both thematically and mechanically through gameplay.
