As Marvel: Future Fight turns one year old this month, is this enjoyable dungeon crawler mobile game starting to show it’s age?
For the newcomers to Marvel: Future Fight, this easy to jump into mobile game is fairly straightforward with quick story missions divided by chapters. They serve as the main way to level your ever expanding team of Marvel superheroes and villains. The characters joining your team can have their equipment and abilities strengthened by using components and gems found in story and daily missions. The player can also take on bad guys in Villain Siege events, compete in Battleworld events or play with players around the world in Team-Up Play.
A year in, the PVP system is still the weak link as it unfortunately highlights the game’s balancing issues it still needs to straighten out. Get ready to be stun-locked by Hulkbuster, Lady Loki, literally any Spider-Man or Woman in every PVP match until you give up and make it your sole mission to do it back to everyone else. This reduces the diversity of characters players select for matches, which is disappointing.
Since this is a free to play mobile game, the in game currency ‘crystals’ can be purchased with real world money to speed up certain tasks or acquire characters faster. While crystals aren’t a necessity to completing the game and are given out as at an albeit slower rate, Marvel: Future will constantly remind the player that it’s more than willing to take their money at any point. The ads aren’t oppressive but they are constant.
The wide variety of playable Marvel characters is the crown jewel of this game. Heroes are relatively easy to acquire over time and the attention to detail on each character’s animations and flashy abilities is impressive. This game’s roster is incredible with Silk, Thor (Jane Foster), Ms. Marvel, Sister Grimm, Miles Morales swinging in along side the usual Guardians of the Galaxy, Avengers and Spider-Man heroes and villains. Deep cuts from the comics are also represented as either characters or special uniforms that can change characters into different versions of themselves. The opportunity to create a dream team consisting of Singularity, Secret Wars: 2099 Captain America and World War Hulk is delightful.
The MCU makes a big appearance as well in Jessica Jones, Daredevil and movie based costume changes for any of the Avengers. Few Marvel games include Agents of S.H.I.EL.D. characters and even fewer include Phil Coulson as a playable character. Marvel: Future Fight not only has Coulson as beastly Blaster type but also included in the roster are Daisy Johnson, Bobbi Morse, Lash, Lincoln Campbell, Deathlok and Raina and Gordon as story mission bosses.
The story chapters themselves are quite enjoyable. The dialogue is well written with an original story penned by comic book writer Peter David. You’ll rarely if ever find yourself skipping through dialogue to start the mission; it’s more than compelling to keep the player interested. The first time you hit a mission you can’t beat isn’t frustrating at all as leveling your group and finding the components you need to level your gear is easy.
However, having an easy to breeze through story missions might also be a drawback. Because of its dungeon crawler roots, there isn’t a focused sense of progression once the player clears the story or plays a few PVP battles. Once most of the missions and extras are unlocked, the main thrust of the game changes to leveling up your characters for no other reason that to see those numbers become even bigger numbers.
Some of the daily tasks quickly become a grind. The added feature of being able to put fully cleared missions on an auto run cycle does help but still turns repeating the same missions over and over again into a chore. While the game tries to mix thing up with Battleworld arena matches, Alliance Battles and the recent switch to real time PVP battles, even more variety in mission types would be appreciated in future updates.
Marvel: Future Fight has remained just as fun as when it first hit iOS and Android devices. Though the play style might feel stagnant after a long sessions, the game will have players coming back for the chance to play as characters rarely seen in Marvel games. Marvel: Future Fight has the potential to continuously expand into more than a free to play dungeon crawler and it’s exciting to see what they have planned next.
Played on an iPhone 6 and iPad Air
Pros
Widest variety of Marvel characters seen in the mobile games so far, most pulled from the comics and MCU alike.
‘Set it and forget it’ missions for those that don’t want to babysit the game.
Art style is fantastic.
Easy to jump into for new players.
Characters have a good amount of customization.
Almost never crashes. Almost.
For cosplayers/artist: the game offers detailed 3D turnarounds of all of the characters that can double as great reference material.
Cons
Gameplay might get repetitive over time.
This game will suck your mobile device’s battery dry even on the lowest power setting.
PVP isn’t balanced.
The notifications you get make no sense and don’t represent what’s actually happening the game.
The game would be absolutely delighted to take your money and will continue to tell you about that fact.