When this game was an announced, I was actually pretty excited to see it. It had been a good long while since I saw a beatem-up I was even interested in, but to see one clearly made to feel like the old games I grew up putting quarters in felt special. Add to this good cross platform play since my brothers and I are always looking for good games to play together (they are console players) and we were all in. This week, we finished up and yeah, it lived up to everything I wanted... and even made me smile with a few surprises on the way. Step inside.
Story: While it isn't up front or even a good reason for why you would play this game, there is a storyline to follow. At it's simplest, Annihilus is on the rampage. Hailing from the Negative Zone (a dimension of anti-matter), he is bringing his army forward to take over our universe and destroy all life here. But he made one critical mistake... he eventually came for Earth.
Now 15 iconic heroes (17 if you pick up Cyclops and the Thing via the new DLC) have to take it on themselves to fight back the insect hoards across the world and galaxy. And that about sums up the whole story of this game. In classic arcade beatem-up fashion, there really isn't a lot to the story here so much as locations you will play through on your quest to undo the damage this warlord from beyond is doing. Really all that changes is some bosses you encounter join your selectable heroes to make up the full 15 and one particularly notable threat interested in revenge helping you after his stage.
Do not get me wrong, what is here works, but this game is a love-letter to the old school days of pumping quarters into these games in arcades, and the story is every bit as thin as it would be in those days, basically giving you enough to justify your hero being there, but being so incredibly simple that anyone could drop in at any time and not miss a beat. It's just not going to be why you play.
5/10
Graphics: That same love letter that makes the story lack-luster works a lot more in the favor of Cosmic Invasion when it comes to the way the game looks. You are about to play a classic beatem-up game, lovingly hand dawn and fluidly animated... well for the most part (when you play as Silver Surfer, you will understand). It has a retro style that, while not quite as low resolution as the game might have looked in the 90s, is going to warm the heart of any old player who remembers those arcade days.
Everything is bright, colorful, and looking perfectly in place for a comic-book based romp from your first hero to your last boss to overcome... and variety in both is going to be the name of he game, both in heroes and villains. Some characters can fit the style the game went for more then others, sure, but that was going to happen with so much going on. Just understand that range is som incredibly on the high end that the ones who are not quite as successful will just give you a moment to say "huh" before enjoying it all the same.
Also as impressive is the variety of locations you are going to be in before you are done. I honestly do not want to give you a range here simply because some of these locations are going to surprise you and leave you smiling for it. I do not want to steal such a moment. But just like the characters they are all bright vibrant and very comic... particularly 90s comic... accurate. If you have a nostalgia for the old days, there isn't a map here that isn't going to make you smile. It's nostalgia bait, but nostalgia bait clearly made by people who love if themselves, both the comics and the era of gaming they are emulating.
If I am going to pick apart anything it's (ironically for the title) some of the between level cutscenes. Nothing here is bad, but sometimes you wish they would have put more into it, especially for your favorite character as was the case for me when mine joined the roster.
9/10
Sound: And what you get for audio is also going to be really good! Sound effects are nothing special, but you should expect that by today's standards. What is special here is the music. Orchestrated and appropriately cinematic for the areas you will fight in and the their themes, it's clear the devs were inspired by the kind of music the MCU would produce on it's better days and wanted to capture that feel. It's not going to stand out on it's own, but it's going to feel high energy and motivating while it's running.
The other standout is going to be the voices... and this is a little bit of a mixed bag. Most of the cast sounds absolutely perfect for their rolls, often harkening back to voices you might have heard in cartoons based on these characters, once again ringing that nostalgia bait bell for all who loved them back in the 90s. The ones who sound like they did then all sound perfect, but this is where the cracks show. Maybe it's me but some of the voices didn't sound quite right to my memories. Most of them did, but Spiderman in particular stuck out as a new voice I did not expect to hear. It still works for the character, I just found it jarring compared to everything else.
New cast members who were never in any of the old cartoons get a bit more leeway here for obvious reasons and they all fit exactly as they should, making for a very satisfying feel... well again with one exception. As much as I'm told she fits her character, I found myself really not liking She-hulk. It takes a special balance to break the 4th wall and do so amusingly and part of that is simply not doing it too much. She fails, reaching from just another character who doesn't stand out particularly well among an amazing cast to the annoying one in the crowd, at least to me.
8/10
Gameplay: If you've played the arcade beatem-ups of old, you have a good idea of what to expect. You will make your way from one end of each linear level to the other meeting an occasional mini-boss on the way and finishing each one with a final boss specific to that level, and in order to progress you will need to do this with every level before the one you want to try next. This has to be noted as the game has a level select it will bring you to after each one, letting you pick from what is currently available, not only often splitting the route in two, but including repeating finished ones if you desire. And you may wish to, since unlocking new characters as you play means you can experience those older levels in whole new ways with whole new allies to play as. For example I made a point once me and my brothers had unlocked him to play as much of the game as possible with Venom on my team. He's a favorite of mine, and has been for a long time, so I wanted to play from Symbiote eyes
Another reason to repeat missions is also a leveling system: every character gains experience when you finish a level with them selected, letting you get things like extra passive abilities or health. So playing through a level a few times with new characters can only make you more powerful... and if you don't succeed, you still walk away with at least a portion of that XP so you never waste your time entirely.
But as for how it plays, well that gets a little more modern. You will start each mission by selecting two heroes you will be able to switch between at will during play. In fact certain events like being grabbed by enemies will require you to do this to have your other hero take over and break your current one free so he can retreat and recoup. Add to that combo moves with your currently inactive character assisting your active one and you have a lot of flexibility to play with this function. However, once one hero is taken out, the other will take over for the rest of the mission, so balancing when to use each will be a key to playing well.
In addition each character plays their own way, and you will quickly find your favorites, playing to the strengths and weaknesses ,and even completely different move sets for each character. Most of the time the moves will follow the same button commands as everyone else, but for example where double jumping will make Storm or Iron Man take to the air, Spiderman or Venom will swing across the screen on a web, and someone like Cosmic Ghost Rider has no double-jump function at all, but trades it in for the ability to hit things above him in the air with his regular attack. And this is only a smattering of just how varied and how open this system is to learn. And as a result this game comes off as incredibly deep while playing, but easy enough to learn exactly how to play everyone. Its a perfect balance from a control standpoint for any beatem-up to follow.
Once in combat however, things really start to shine. It's fast, furious, lots of enemies on the screen when things heat up, and yet the game manages to very everything up more then enough to feel fresh pretty much for your entire go-round. Unless you are achievement hunting, this is not a game you have to worry about wearing out it's welcome. And even when you are done, it still feels like the kind of game you might re-open months later to relive it for a few hours and enjoy it every bit as much as you did last time or a favorite to pull out for a while when you have friends over between fighter tournaments or kicking each other's ass in PvP arena shooters. This is a game you will come back to from time to time long after the credits roll, provided the genre speaks to you anyway.
7/10
Bugs: Sadly this is not a game that worked perfectly despite the fact that it probably should have. Overall it ran fine but we had several bugs during the experience.
- Desyncs? I am not sure what else could have caused this but there were many times while playing where one of us would see an enemy not there or when selecting characters one of our selections would go berserk on everyone's screen but theirs. Hell one of the times we finished the end of the game we had an ending scene with several of the heroes showing up double instead of the full cast that should have been there and one bug enemy wandering around like he couldn't figure out which one he wanted to attack. However these are all minor.
- Crashes: Far more annoying was the game's desire to crash. They only happened one night, but that night the game manages to crash a console twice and 3 times to desktop on my media center PC before we were done. Suffice it to say that night was not a good night playing.
Digital Rights Management: This is one of those games that will use the store you bought it in as DRM. So depending on where you get it, you will either have to run it through the Microsoft store or (if like me) through Steam.
Source: PC Gaming Wiki
Overall: Fast, frantic, and fun as hell. I absolutely had a blast playing this one. Having finished it with my brothers I loved every second of our initial run. Having hung around to help them acheivement hunt, I saw just how far it can be stretched. While true at that point I was having more fun for the fact that I was playing with them then the game itself, I was still discovering new moves available and still felt like if I walked away for a few months, I could come back fresh and ready to do it again... or take a new group of friends to play again without a second thought. It's just that kind of game that understands how repleat play should work and something you may not ever truly be done with.
Score:
System Requirements:
- Intel Core 2 Duo E6550 or AMD Athlon 64 X2 6400+
- NVidia GeForce 320, AMD Radeon HD 6570, or Intel HD Graphics (1GB VRAM)
- 4 GB RAM
- Windows 10 (64-bit only)
- 1 GB hard drive space
System Specs:
- Ryzen 5 5600G running at 3.9 Ghz
- 16 GB RAM
- Windows 11
- PDP DX Wired Controller (Crimson)
Source: Steam
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