The Kamala Khan game, feat. The Avengers… a bit…

Some games were destined to fail. This was one of them. When Marvel and Square-Enix announced a partnership, visions of an MCGU (Marvel Comics Game Universe) danced in all our heads. Marvel Video Games have never been grade AAA and had a long history of being, well… bad, but the recent Spider-Man games had begun turning things around, alongside the Marvel Ultimate Alliance titles. There was hope, and aren’t superheroes all about inspiring hope? So what went wrong?

In 2015, Marvel Comics wiped out the legacy heroes we all knew and loved… again… but this time everyone got replaced, and I mean everyone. Iron Man was replaced by Riri Williams, Spider-Man by Miles Morales, Wolverine by X-23, Thor became Jane Foster, Spider-Woman by Spider-Gwen, and Captain America with the Falcon. And MARVEL, not the fans, went out of their way to boast about how Diversity and inclusive this new roster was. I want to be clear, fans did not reject the new characters because of racism, homophobia or any of the other Marvel’s ridiculous PR firm’s allegations. They rejected these characters because they replaced, rather than built upon, the legacy of the original Marvel Heroes. Worse, the comics became Feminist rants, some (Like “The Mighty Thor”) going so far as to attack fans directly through dialogue and giving frequent complaints about these changes to the villains, often ripped right from responses from actual fans. Or even having Red Skull quoting Jordan Peterson, or remodeling Marvel’s villain, “Troll”, after competitor Rippaverse’s Eric July, or MODOK after Donald Trump. They were rejected because the comics became 22-page long anti-capitalist lectures… with ads. And they were rejected because a lot of them acted less like heroes, and more like villains. The hero became less about self-sacrifice for the greater good, and more about “protests bro” for the younger ones and being lectured to about the virtues of socialism by what few legacy heroes remained. They were rejected because the message of Marvel moved away from tolerance, and towards belittling the Democratic Party’s political enemies, and it wasn’t subtle about it at all. Away from holding up heroes to shine as an example for all of America for how to be our best possible selves, to being blatantly anti-American, and hostile towards the traditional Marvel Customers. From being about promoting the brotherhood of all mankind to being almost pornographic, with characters like Cyclops, Jean and Wolverine now all sleeping together in a “throuple.” The demonization of America came to a head with the revelation that Captain America was a secret Nazi all along. Of course. Because of course. And let’s be clear, that Captain America is now sitting in a jail cell, while a “good” clone made by the tesseract is running around with the shield now… when Falcon isn’t.

So we have all these new characters replacing the old, lecturing us, and helping to demonize America, 

"All New Marvel"

and Captain America, for that matter… And what do they do with these characters? How about another Armor Wars? How about another Secret Wars? How about Enemy of the State 2, or Old Woman Laura? How about another Clone Saga? How about another Civil War? That’s right, they replaced the original heroes, demonized America, lectured the reader… and couldn’t be bothered to tell unique and original stories in the process. They just re-told the stories we already knew… but with characters with no flaws, who are absolutely amazing, and even go to Sotomayor University… yes, a fictional university named to honor THAT Sotomayor… but if you noticed how awful any of this was… well, you’re a racist, a bigot, a homophobe, a “toxic” fan.

These books not only failed in spectacular fashion, taking an industry that easily sold 100,000 + issues a month and reducing it to maybe 30,000… if they’re lucky… But rather than recognize the mistakes that were made, and correcting going forward, for some reason, Marvel is doubling down. We are seeing the same thing happening in the MCU, and naturally the same consequences. Did you know that these once billion dollar apiece hits have only averaged about 500 million apiece since phase 4 began? And only one phase four Marvel film, Spider-Man: No Way Home, managed to crack a billion dollars. Keep in mind, these movies are crazy expensive to make. And as Phase 4 began we saw Wanda clearly become a villain, kidnapping and torturing an entire town, only to have excuses made for her, a Captain Falcon replacing Steve Rogers who will have tea with bloodthirsty terrorists but shows discountenance towards a grieving John Walker for killing one of the terrorists responsible for the brutal murder of his best friend right in front of him. Let’s not forget his now infamously bad, “do better,” speech at the end. But this isn’t even the worst of the bad and cringy writing in phase 4. To top this phase off, we got a She-Hulk whose archenemy was… of course the fans who have been critical of this direction since 2015. Because of course.

Each installment of the MCU not only has had a diminishing quality of writing, like their, “All new Marvel,” comic counterparts, but the diminishing quality of special effects. These productions need those billion dollars apiece levels of success, or corners have to be cut to keep them going. And as we saw in the latest Ant-Man, which I haven’t seen and will not pay for, since, like the comics, the hero got a lecture about the virtues of Socialism… so they can live by their own standards and give me Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantomania for free… (On 4K Blu-Ray, Disney. Come on. Be consistent. Give it.) The film itself was full of very poor special effects to the point it’s becoming laughable, this is obvious from the trailers and clips Disney themselves have released. And yet… Marvel continues to double, triple, and quadruple down. Ant-Man and the Wasp may lose money. There’s next to no interest in the next film, “The Marvels,” and full disclosure… I am speaking as a shareholder… Disney is not operating at a loss yet… but they’re having to pull back, delay and reduce the quality of the special effects because they are not making as much as they used to, and their profitability is absolutely trending in the wrong direction.

I think Disney and Marvel assumed they could afford to lose us, the comic book geeks. That as soon as these characters were introduced to the “mainstream,” they would be embraced, beloved, accepted, and screw the “toxic fans.” The problem is that America is much more Conservative than corporate America realizes and that the only reason that isn’t reflected at the ballot box is due to media bias and the incompetence of the leadership of our Conservative party. Although we don’t mind Liberal messaging as long as it’s not overbearing and when the message is tolerance we agree. But when that tolerance comes as an exchange of tolerating one thing but persecuting and demonizing another, as the Left is prone to do, we can’t join them in that. But again, the Marvel hero is now a snot-nosed spoiled brat, who is practically perfect in every way, openly socialist, hostile to America, has nothing to learn from the older generations but is surely going to teach them, hostile to comic fans… and if you don’t like it, there’s something wrong with you. They’d be the villains in any other era.

So, what does all of this have to do with this video game? Well, we were hoping the game would be different. You see, video games have only dipped their toes into what many may disparagingly call “woke” nonsense. When a game goes woke, it immediately goes broke. There hasn’t been a tolerance for this among gamers, and games cost millions and years of work to develop, so developers are much less willing to take risks. And yet, a risk was taken here.

Early on, the game was advertised as the Avengers game we had always wanted. We all knew something would happen to Cap early on. But we all assumed, rightly, that Cap would come back by the end. We were shown rampaging as the hulk, summoning lightning as Thor, blasting things as Black Widow, and flying around as Iron Man… all things we all wanted. But the truth is, this game doesn’t have much of that at all. You see, Marvel saw this as another opportunity to force, “All New Marvel” on us. You can play as the main Avengers sometimes, but most of the time you are playing as Kamala Khan, the new Ms Marvel… whose hands get really big.

That wasn’t what the fans wanted, and as I have pointed out, whenever Marvel does this, the sales suffer.

But the main story did something that Marvel has failed to do everywhere else. Kamala isn’t perfect here. She’s not an activist. There’s no lecturing about the virtues of socialism… she is allowed to fail, she is respectful toward her elders, and she is allowed to learn lessons and to grow as a character, and the funny thing is… this may not have been the game I wanted, or fans wanted… but it is not a bad game. In fact, it has caused me to actually like Kamala. I’m a fan now. Though not because she was forced on me, but because the writers at Crystal Dynamics cared enough to develop a version of the character that was more than what her comic and MCU counterpart has been allowed to be.

The gameplay is level based and doesn’t feature a lot of the common villains. The actual Task Master

makes an appearance, as does the Abomination, but you’re mostly fighting robots. Its enemy variety is not great. Its level designs is… not great, but they are serviceable. But you know what? The music is great, and the graphics are absolutely breathtaking. Although the characters are not played by the same people who play them in the MCU, the actors they chose to play them do very well, especially Bruce Banner. Legendary voice actor Troy Baker delivers a performance that blows Mark Ruffalo out of the water, portraying him as shy, nervous, deeply saddened, and as someone who has a hard time speaking. Yet, he mentors Kamala and grows to genuinely care for her, and while her comic counterpart has been disrespectful towards the “olds”, as all of her “All new” counterparts tend to be, this version of Kamala reveres him, listens to him, and even deeply admires Captain America in a way I have never seen in the comics. The performances for this story were absolutely stellar. Had “All New” or the MCU been handled with this level of care, I think the results would have been different.

The story, beyond the welcome changed approach to Kamala, and the brilliant performances by a stellar cast, however, also suffers from another leftover from the 2015 era… Marvel’s attempt to ditch the X-Men, and replace them with the Inhumans.

The actual MODOK

The story, in a nutshell, is about a new technology that goes wrong, causing an explosion and exposing people to a substance called Terrigen. It kills some but turns others into superhumans, called Inhumans. Of course, they face bigotry, and the villains claim they are trying to craft a cure when in reality they’re trying to steal their powers. This is a plot right out of the X-Men, not the Avengers. In the midst of all this, the actual MODOK, George Tarleton, is created and emerges as the central threat, as he wants to wipe out all superpowered heroes, fearing that having that level of power can only inevitably lead to abuse of that power, even as he abuses his new powers over machines. This part is really good… but again is the sort of thing we would expect from an X-Men villain.

All these parts combine to make for a good game, but not an Avengers game. It is really a Kamala Khan and the X-Men game with an Avengers coat of paint. But it’s not a bad game. Well… not the main story anyway.

This is where things get really complicated.

The game’s story concludes with a battle with MODOK and a giant Sentinel-like robot. Again, this feels more like an X-Men game… but from there, there are several DLC expansions. One centered on Spider-Man (PS5 only), one on Hawkeye and his “All new” replacement, Kate Bishop (who unfortunately remains as insufferable as her comic counterpart), one on Jane Foster… I didn’t even bother… one on Black Panther. (Yay!!!!) But the truth is…. These come with a severe difficulty spike, and the way you handle it is to re-play the same levels over, over, and over and over, hoping to get upgraded equipment that may or may not be powerful enough to help you power through this ridiculously difficult DLC.   There’s also a “Games as a service mode,” where you can jump in, play with other players, and play the same levels, over and over and over…. And over, and over…. And over… but hey, any gear you find here you can keep for that damned DLC.

Any additional story is minimal. The DLC is terrible, and the grind fest “as service mode” is repetitive and gets boring very quickly. It’s terrible. There are no excuses for it, no redeeming features. It is terrible. And that grind, combined with the exploitative loot system, and the myriad of expensive crap to buy, a main story that isn’t what people wanted, even though it’s not bad… lead to this game bombing in spectacular fashion.

As of the end of this month, all the purchasable cosmetics will be made free as a make-good. But come October, the game will be shut down completely. I understand the main story will still work, but all the online stuff will be shut down.

If your intention is just to experience the main story, and you don’t mind that this game is not the

Avengers game it was advertised as being, it can be purchased super, super cheap. In my view, the story is certainly better than anything the MCU has put out in the last several years, and certainly better than the comics. Though it is not an Avengers experience, it’s important to understand that going in. A lot of people were angry that the story centered around a character often derided (rightly) as an insufferable SJW. But this Kamala is not her comic book counterpart. She makes me wish her comic book counterpart were this likable… indeed lovable. You root for her, you feel for her. She builds real bonds with the other heroes, and she is respectful to them, especially Hulk and Cap. More importantly, she experiences loss, she fails, she learns and she grows. I think the writers did a very good job with that aspect of the story, even if the rest of it was ripped right out of the pages of the X-Men.

Good, not great. But without a doubt, the best version of Kamal Khan’s Ms. Marvel we’ve been given.

3/5