E3 Hands-On: Marvel Super Hero Squad Online - Preview
by VGChartz Staff , posted on 17 June 2010 / 5,619 Views
Years have gone by, licenses have been bought and sold, and finally Gazillion Entertainment is bringing the X-Men, Iron Man, Marvel's First Family, and many more to PC browsers in a massively multiplayer fashion.
Marvel Super Hero Squad Online isn't your typical MMO. While the classic MMO archetype has you creating your characters, picking classes, and customizing every detail; Super Hero Squad puts players right in the roles of Marvel's greatest heroes. Fun and easy gameplay supercedes traditional roleplaying elements.
Combat is accomplished solely through left and right clicks. Left clicks are basic attacks that result in each characters' basic combo. Right clicking engages the alternate attack. There is also a meter that build up as you successfully fight. When this meter fills up, you can use that character's unique attack.
The game is very sparse right now. Towns are very open lots of item that you can interact with, but generally to no better effect than making it jiggle. Each door can open, often only to a balcony higher up in the building, though we were promised they are going to be hiding easter eggs throughout the game for those hungry for exploration. Combat areas are large and you'll spend more time roaming around them than actually fighting with the very slow combat system.
Admittedly, this game is intended for children. Combat and movement is made to be very simple and that is achieved very well. We played as Cyclops and Ms. Marvel against some skrulls, culminating with a boss battle against Super Skrull. The pace was slow but fairly easy.
The game does excel in capturing what makes the television show and action figures great. The style and humor is captured while retaining what makes the characters great within the confines of a children's game. Wolverine is Wolverine, even if he can't kill or make people bleed. Our favorite moment came from playing with the emotes mapped to the number keys. One of Cyclops' emotes is performing the sprinkler dance move with his arms and optic blasts.
They're promising lots of alternate costumes and homages to classic Marvel storylines which should help pull in older Marvel fans, but until then the game is great for kids and shallow at best for adults.
