THERE are some standout Marvel licensed games, like 2018’s Spider-Man or more recently Marvel Snap, but they still have a reputation for being not so hot.
Take Marvel’s Avengers, which is widely considered to exist, and not much beyond that.
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However, Marvel’s Midnight Suns is different. It’s a strategy game developed by Firaxis, possibly the studio responsible for gaming’s best strategy games, like XCOM and the Civilization series.
Midnight Suns isn’t a simple ‘XCOM but with Marvel characters’; instead, thought has gone into matching different strengths and superpowers into a cohesive system.
It’s played out more like a deckbuilder, which helps each hero shine in their own unique way.
Each hero comes equipped with a deck of eight cards, and all heroes cards are shuffled together before you pick three for your mission.
Composing teams this way is much simpler as each hero has a utility in a different number of ways.
With such a vast array of characters to choose from, you can start to feel overwhelmed. There is a system in place to try to negate this, though.
Unlike XCOM, these characters aren’t blank slates for you to mould, but are already fully formed fighters.
This gives a feeling more like Fire Emblem than Firaxis’ other strategy titles.
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Their likability varies, Tony Stark is a fairly limp representation of his film persona, but Blade and Nico Minoru are fun to be around.
There feels like there is almost too much to do outside of battle; researching, crafting new cards, opening loot, training, sparring, hanging out, solo missions, and more to unlock as you progress.
It keeps good track of these things, and you’ll settle into the rhythm of doing each one daily.
Your hub, the Abbey, has a surprising amount to explore. It’s packed with resources and collectibles, and hidden areas that require unique abilities to unlock.
The Abbey and combat work together, with battles giving you more to do in the Abbey, and the Abbey giving you greater power in combat.
While you have three heroes in one deck, they can’t dominate the battlefield alone.
There are different objectives other than your standard ‘defeat all enemies’, which keeps each of the missions fresh.
Tough decisions have to be made, between keeping a hero alive, and completing objectives, and even those familiar with the genre will be forced to make them on the harder difficulty settings.
Things will hopefully expand further as we play more, with more characters, facilities and abilities to unlock.
Midnight Suns is clearly a game made for the squad-based strategy fans first, and Marvel fans second, but looking at the selection of games available now, that’s how it should be.
Written by Ryan Woodrow and Georgina Young on behalf of GLHF.
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