Marvel Rivals Doesn’t Stray Far from Overwatch but it’s Super Fun Regardless

ign.com:

Marvel Rivals is not attempting to reinvent the wheel. When it was first unveiled earlier this year, the gut response—from fans and skeptics alike—was that it looked a whole lot like an Overwatch facsimile with licensed Marvel heroes and villains filling in the roles abdicated by Genji, Winston, and Roadhog. After jumping into the closed beta for a few hours, I can confirm all of those suspicions. This is a hero shooter that has studied the established formula hard, but so far, that has resulted in an experience that's flashy, polished, and ready to get under your skin.

Like most multiplayer games, Marvel Rivals glosses over the specifics for why this alliance of superheroes has decided to beat each other to death over a variety of team-based objectives. (It has something to do with a partnership between two different versions of Doctor Doom. Beyond that, who knows?) But everything else here should be very familiar to anyone who's spent time in a big, bouncy arena shooter. You'll be split into two teams of six players, with rosters categorized into basic tank, support, and DPS roles, all of whom are blessed with a variety of unique abilities and an Ultimate that charges up over the course of the game. Victory will be achieved if you can move a payload to the end of its route, or if you're able to camp on a control point, and all of the action takes place in blooming battlefields plucked from the greater Marvel canon. Remind you of anything?

Yes, Rivals takes its cues from Overwatch much more than it does from Valorant or Team Fortress 2. The tactics here aren't built around twitchy gunplay. In fact, a sizable chunk of its cast aren't wielding firearms at all, and across the board, they tend to absorb a ton of bullets before keeling over. Naturally, that makes Rivals more approachable to those who are turned off from traditional shooters. Do you want to toss up protective magical barriers and weave portals to teleport around the map? Dr. Strange might become your main.