Black Panther is great, but ‘Marvel’s Avengers’ is still failing

T’Challa has officially arrived in Marvel’s Avengers. But is it already too late?

On paper, developer Crystal Dynamics’ “War for Wakanda” expansion is a much-needed boost. The free addition to Avengers doesn’t just add Black Panther as a playable hero. There are also some new villains to face off against, a decent-length story that introduces everyone, and a whole new setting to visit in Wakanda itself.

Black Panther is a strong addition to the existing roster of playable heroes. His powers and fighting prowess are in the same vein as Hulk and Ms. Marvel: Very up-close and physical in combat, which should be appealing to people who prefer to fight more aggressively. The big superpower twist is the energy absorbing/dispersing suit, which powers his blocking ability in the game.

Time your block right, and a burst of kinetic energy sends incoming attackers flying off their feet. Even if you miss the timing for a burst, the suit still protects against damage with a successful block. It’s a potent tool, and one Black Panther players definitely need to rely on for winning fights; his health drains fast when you don’t use it. That makes him one of the more trickier heroes to master in the Avengers roster, but one who’s worth the effort.

The Wakanda-set story is a worthy introduction for both T’Challa and the place his Wakandan home occupies in the Avengers video game universe. We’ve only gotten the faintest hints about the guarded African nation up to this point, and War for Wakanda explains why while justifying the sudden arrival of outsiders.

More than that, though, the War for Wakanda story offers some new ideas for how Avengers can even be played. New pattern-matching puzzles are relatively simple, but go a long way toward breaking up what can sometimes feel like a monotonous slog through combat arena after combat arena. And the final showdown with Ulysses Klaue goes several steps further than “beat up the boss.” I won’t spoil the specifics, but it’s a more involved, and subsequently more rewarding, boss encounter than we’ve seen in Avengers so far.

The Wakandan environment itself is a sight for sore eyes, bringing new color palettes and level design twists into a game that hinges its long-term appeal on repeatable missions. The setting also diversifies the lineup of baddies you face, with additions like giant mechanical spiders creating new combat challenges and just making the hectic battlefields look a little different, for a change.

Taken together, it all feels like Crystal Dynamics is finally starting to capitalize on the great potential Avengers has had from moment one. But Wakanda is an odd fit in the sense of it introducing new approaches to the gameplay that aren’t reflected elsewhere in the other content. And really, the dissonance runs deeper than that.

There are fundamental structure and pacing issues in Avengers that have, over time, been exacerbated by updates. Back in March, Crystal Dynamics slowed down the speed with which players earn character levels, each of which equates to more skill points for unlocking a given hero’s powers.

The decision was explained thusly: “In most RPGs, the amount of XP you need to level up increases as you gain levels in a curve, but our system is a straight line. This has led to pacing issues, such as skill points currently being rewarded too fast, which may be confusing and overwhelming to newer players. We want each decision to invest in a skill or Heroic [special ability] to be more meaningful.”

Avengers is more failure than success largely because it’s killing the wish fulfillment.

It’s a nice sentiment, but the reality of actually playing Avengers doesn’t match up. This is a big game that launched with six playable characters, the core super-team, and has since added three more — Black Panther, plus Kate Bishop and Hawkeye. Getting even one of those characters up to the max level of 50, where all your powers and supporting abilities are finally unlocked, is a good 20-hour-or-more commitment.

Lots of players go into an RPG, pick a character, play the game, and that’s the end of it. It’s enough to just see the story through from the perspective of whichever class or hero you’ve chosen to play. Avengers isn’t like most RPGs, though. There’s a layer of wish fulfillment here, where you kick ass as some of the coolest and most well-known super heroes in all of comics.

The time commitment it takes to max out a single hero in Avengers isn’t outrageous. But unlike other games of this type, you’ve got a situation here where most players probably want to spend time with more than one hero. Maybe even master more than one. That’s where Crystal Dynamics’ expectations about the time people ought to put into this game starts to break down.

Avengers is more failure than success at this point, almost a year into its life, largely because it’s killing the wish fulfillment. I had a blast learning the game in story mode and then working Iron Man up to the max level. But no part of me wants to repeat that process for the rest of the Avengers roster. That means anyone else I’d want to play with is underpowered.

War for Wakanda highlights this issue in a very clear way. Playing as Black Panther through the three story missions plus his HARM Room training exercise carried me up to level 21. Not even halfway to max level. But when I returned to the Wakanda map to see what other new activities there were, all of the options were geared toward significantly more powerful characters.

Let that sink in: I couldn’t play as Black Panther in Wakanda-set missions until I leveled him up further. What??

That’s a common issue in Avengers. Part of the problem is Crystal Dynamics’ decision to give each hero two separate ways to level up: The character level, which unlocks more skills and abilities as you earn experience points (XP) in combat and missions; and the power level, which is dictated by the gear you have equipped. The two are roughly intertwined during the early phases of a hero’s progression, but the idea is to eventually hit the max character level so you can focus solely on collecting loot and increasing your power level.

Crystal Dynamics claims that you need the character levels and progressive unlocking of skills because it teaches you how skill trees in Avengers work. There’s a measure of truth to that view, but it’s an exaggeration. Most people will get a handle on skill trees after bringing one hero up to level 50. Iron Man and Captain America play very differently, but you tweak their skill trees in basically identical ways.

Turning back to Black Panther, it’s clear from War for Wakanda that Crystal Dynamics remains committed to forcing players to slog through every hero’s leveling climb. That story didn’t get my shiny, new Black Panther even halfway to max level, and the 21 levels I did earn isn’t reflective of the normal pace because there’s an in-game event running through August that doubles everyone’s XP gains. At the normal pace, the Wakanda story would’ve brought me to level 10 or 11.

Avengers is in a tough spot, having to strike a balance between catering to fans who want more of a Destiny-style, long-term action-RPG experience while still giving more casual players the thrill of stepping into the role of their favorite hero and beating up Marvel Comics menaces.

War for Wakanda is successful enough at delivering for the latter group. You can jump right in and enjoy the entire Black Panther story as T’Challa himself without having to worry about leveling him up first. Finish that, though, and the disappointing reality of Avengers‘ most glaring flaws pop up right away. There’s a whole new world of Wakanda out there to explore, but don’t expect to bring the new hero to his homeland until you spend a bunch more hours leveling him up.

Not only is that a boring, fun-averse way to build out an RPG, it also defies all logic and reason. Avengers still carries all the same potential we saw back when it launched in Sept. 2020. But while War for Wakanda takes some promising steps forward, the stubborn insistence on forcing players through a tedious gauntlet of XP grinds keeps it — and Avengers as a whole — from reaching the heights we so wish it could.

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