Marvel Rival First Impressions

I will talk about my experience with my recent game play of Marvel Rivals 2024, the pros, the cons, and my overall opinion.

This game is a 5 vs 5 player hero shooter in the same vein as Overwatch or Team Fortress 2. I don’t usually play those types of games. In fact, as far as TF2, I haven’t played it in years. I tend to play single player games and action style hack-in-slash games. But I wanted to try out this one so I could get an idea of how these sorts of games are played out.

And overall I did have fun playing it.

The character I mostly played was Dr. Bruce Banner, also known as The Hulk. He’s my favorite Marvel Comic character, so I’m glad that I got to play him in a new game. He was a lot of fun to play. Him being a tank (or Vanguard in this game) makes obvious sense and as well as having a lot of health, not to mention he does good damage. His tool kit as well, the Heavy Blow, Incredible Leap, Indestructible Guard, Gamma Burst projectile and Radioactive Lockdown all fit his character. His signature ability, Hulk Smash, very much lets you go full mayhem on the enemy team with as close to a fully realized walking force of gamma radiation as the jolly green giant. 

That’s when you are the Hulk though. Just like in the comics, there are two sides to the character. Before you get to play as the Hulk, you have to first play as Dr. Banner. Now, you don’t have to stay as Banner throughout the fight . You can activate Hulk by just transforming into the Hulk in the spawn room at the start of the match. However, once you lose all your health in your Hulk form, that’s when you’re forced to turn back into Banner, and he’s nowhere near as durable as his Green counterpart. 

That doesn’t mean he’s entirely useless or vulnerable, he has his own toolkit such as his Gamma Ray Gun and Gamma Grenade to back him up and do damage. The grenades do help with pushing back the enemy and even giving you a jumping start to run away from them. However, if you’re not careful and go deep into enemy territory, you’re basically at their mercy. Believe me they had no mercy for someone who’s been doing nothing but punching them repeatedly in the face throughout the entire match. You have to be very careful in that regard and not rush gung ho into the fight.

As for any other character I played, the only one was Venom who is another favorite of mine. However, I do not have much to say about him. I’m not saying he’s shallow. The truth is far from it. His tool kit and abilities are very interesting. It’s just that in the one game I played as Venom I didn’t know what I was doing, even though he’s said to play much easier than the Hulk. But like I said I’m still new to the game and new to the hero shooter game genre in general. Picking up another character to play when I’m used to my all time favorites is tricky. But I will say I’ll try to give him another go in the future. I just need some practice.