'Marvel Rivals' Feels Like It's Arriving Five Years Too Late

Marvel Rivals could be dead on arrival.

Yesterday the reveal trailer for Marvel Rivals was released, showcasing the 6v6 hero shooter for the first time. With a brand as big as Marvel attached a lot of people are excited by the possibilities of what appears to be Overwatch but with Marvel characters. However, after watching the trailer my first thought was that this is a game that is arriving five years too late and will be dead on arrival.

There’s no argument that getting to run around as your favourite Marvel characters and fight others is fun, countless games over the years have proven that and I’ll still argue that Marvel Heroes, the ARPG from the mid-2010s was great fun and didn’t deserve to be shut down so soon. But the footage from the reveal trailer for Marvel Rivals looked underwhelming and eerily close to early Overwatch footage, just not as good.

We’ve seen lots of games try to copy the Overwatch formula and only a handful of them have found any kind of success, with many such as Battleborn dying within months of launching. The only ones that have succeeded in the hero shooter genre have brought something new to the table, and other than the Marvel license I’m struggling to see anything in the trailer that looks unique. In fact, a lot of the abilities shown off look exactly the same as ones in Overwatch, which will only further the comparisons.

Showing actual gameplay as part of a reveal is a brave move, and one that may have backfired on Marvel Rivals, as the footage didn’t look great. The best way I can describe it is janky, it didn’t look smooth, with abilities seemingly not connecting with enemies as they should, and movement looking slow and boring. If Marvel Rivals wants to make an impact in this crowded hero shooter genre then it is going to have to rival Overwatch 2 and that is not going to be an easy task if thats how the final game ends up playing.

Then we come to the timing problem. All of these issues would still have been a factor if Marvel Rivals launched five years ago, but in the current climate launching a mediocre game with a fancy licence just isn’t going to cut it in the live service era. I’m sure five years ago Marvel Rivals would be being marketed as the next major esport, touting its competitive play with a major licence to entice in viewers. But with interest in all but the top competitive games waning, there’s almost no chance that Marvel Rivals can make any kind of impact in the esports world.

You only have to look at other similar games, even ones that have done well such as The Finals, to see that keeping a player base right now is hard and even the smallest mistakes can result in a big drop off of players. And The Finals was a game that did things differently and brought something new to the table, which at first glance Marvel Rivals doesn’t seem to do.

I, of course, hope to be proven wrong and that Marvel Rivals turns out to be a truly innovative and exciting hero shooter that is more than just an Overwatch clone with a Marvel license. But on first viewing, it appears that is exactly what the game is and while that may have stood a chance at carving out a decent niche five years ago, now the industry is in a position where those kinds of games can’t be supported long term.

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