Marvel Rivals

Release Date: Early 2025

Platforms: Xbox Series X/S, PS5, PC, Mac

Marvel Rivals is like Overwatch if it snorted a line of adderall off the TTRPG table in a comic book store. The free-to-play superhero PvP shooter aims to fill a gap left by Blizzard’s struggling hero shooter, and boasts a massive cast that will only get bigger, but it’s unclear if this will strike the right cord. There are so many aspects of this that feel directly lifted from Overwatch—Doctor Strange wields a shield like Reinhardt, The Punisher has a turret form like Bastion, Luna Snow can send heals across the map to a single teammate like Zenyatta. Hell, even the modes are similar, with opposing teams either fighting to maintain control over an area or one squad attempting to escort a hi-pri mobile object across a map.

But there is just so much going on that it’s immediately overwhelming. The roster is huge, the voice lines are constant, the colorful explosions and flashes of light as every Marvel hero fires off their abilities makes matches hard to read with all the visual noise. I only had a little bit of time with Rivals (back-to-back Summer Game Fest appointments that almost all run over make for an intense experience), but it took me more than half of my appointment to get a feel for everything. By the time I did, I was quite good at Luna Snow, who felt like the perfect character for me, a perpetual support player (though I did notice that NetEase and Marvel Games had to scrape the bottom of the hero barrel for a solid support character, as Luna was introduced into Marvel canon via the mobile game Marvel Future Fight).

I’m not sure if Marvel Rivals will have any legs. Overwatch has, indeed, left a gap in the hero shooter market, but Rivals feels clunkier, busier, and less inspired than Blizzard’s hero shooter once was. I guess we’ll have to wait and see. — Alyssa