Marvel Rivals Is a Chaotic Mess, and It Should Stay That Way
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Playing Marvel Rivals is sometimes like watching a train wreck play out in real-time, and trying to stop it with a broom. Jeff the Landshark can suck up a whole team and spit them off a cliff, Iron Fist can punch as fast as Iron Man can fly, and Venom can take potshots from a whole team for a minute straight and still not go down. So many characters in Marvel Rivals feel unbelievably, hilariously broken, and honestly, I wouldn’t have it any other way. There are enough shooters out there focused on balanced competitive play — Marvel Rivals is perfect the way it is.
When Overwatch was released in 2016, it was a sensation truly popularizing the hero shooter genre, where each character had a unique combat style and abilities. Since then, dozens of other games have brought their own take to hero shooters, inundating the genre with countless experiences to occupy players' time. So much so, that you could easily argue there’s an oversaturation. There are simply too many games for any one person to play, especially when all those games require massive time investments to learn the “meta.” On top of that, the economic boom the esports scene experience is starting to dwindle, putting even more pressure on new multiplayer games to perform.
The vast differences between characters are what give Rivals its personality, and play into the strengths of the Marvel Universe as well.
That’s what makes Marvel Rivals’ debut so impressive, it doesn’t just stand out because of its superhero styling, but because it’s pure, unadulterated fun. Every single character in Rivals feels drastically different, and with 33 characters that means nearly every single match feels unique. Obvious favorites have emerged, like Iron Fist players who blitz the back lines and demolish healers, or a Hawkeye who downright bullies characters with lower health. But ironically, a huge portion of the game’s roster is broken in one way or another. That’s part of the beauty of Rivals, it’s incredibly easy to pick up and play, but has a surprisingly high skill ceiling for players that really want to learn their character.
In a roundabout kind of way, the sheer number of “broken” characters ends up making the game feel weirdly balanced. Like, if every team can have two or three characters with ridiculous exploits, then it’s still a good time that can go either way. In a sea of other multiplayer options, that’s part of what I love about Rivals.
For me personally, there’s not a single multiplayer game I’ve been able to stick with since the release of Rocket League. As I get older and have less time to play games, I just find myself frustrated by most multiplayer games — the amount of time I need to keep up with them, how do I figure out the current meta, how I unlock new gear, etc. I loved Rocket League because it was the game I could boot up any time any day, play for 15 minutes, and have a blast.
Having your whole team eaten by Jeff is the same kind of cold fury, but secret admiration, as having Kirby suck up your characters in Smash Bros and jump off the screen.
Rivals is the first game in years to recapture that same feeling for me. There’s certainly a place for highly competitive shooters that can also flourish in an esports scene, and then there’s room for ones that can be casual fun.
This isn’t to say the game doesn’t need fixes and improvements, and changes won’t happen. Jeff’s absurd party-eating ability will likely be changed at some point — a Doctor Strange exploit already has been fixed in the game’s extensive first patch. Changes should happen, especially with new characters being added every few months. But I hope every new character is a chance to re-experience the joy this launch week has yielded, an opportunity for hilariously broken new matches, and the memes to go along with it.
As long as I’m having fun with Marvel Rivals, I’ll keep playing it — and that’s quite literally the only thing that matters.
