Marvel Rivals is a bit of a genius trick, really. The concept of making a hero shooter, well, about super heroes? Downright savvy. Comic books are famous for having dozens upon dozens of characters with entire wardrobes of bespoke outfits pre-created—not to mention their powers lend themselves well to the 'three-to-four abilities plus an ultimate' design. That's like, most of your conceptualisation work done already.
But with that dearth of concepts come some real stinkers. While there are plenty of 'weird superpowers' lists on the internet, I got really curious about the hyper-specific criteria of 'this would be bad fodder for a hero shooter'. Most of these characters are absolute wimps, true, but I'm more interested in how their abilities are utterly unworkable from a game design standpoint.
In no particular order, here are five characters I can pretty confidently say won't be showing up in Marvel Rivals, unless NetEase carries its game to 2200 and really has to start scraping the bottom of the barrel.
- Asked point-blank if they're trolling dataminers with fake characters, Marvel Rivals dev scoffs and says they'd 'rather spend our time developing the game'
- Marvel Rivals' growing roster of heroes scares me, but the game's director seems sure that all is under control: 'Everything is progressing smoothly'
Some matadors wear capes
Let's start off easy. Manuel Eloganto is just straight-up a matador. He's tussled with Daredevil a few times, but his abilities can literally be summed up as 'is a Matador' and 'he's pretty quick' and 'he's a huge jerk'. Which might work in a game like, say, Valve's Deadlock, where you have one guy who is just an asshole. In Marvel Rivals? Not so much.
Like, sure, you could make a moba-esque kit with a Matador theme. It's more that there's no reason I can fathom that anyone would want to actually play as this guy. Also, in 1967's Daredevil Annual #1, he tried to blind the famously blind superhero by throwing his cape over his head. I'll let you sit and ponder that one.
Hindsight is 20/20
Carlton LaFroyge is Hindsight, and he has the power to, uh, learn from his past mistakes. There's a joke here that I can make about how most hero shooter players are utterly incapable of learning from their deaths, but I'm too busy scratching my head as to how you'd boil this guy down to four abilities and an ultimate—which I guess could just be him shouting 'get on the payload, please!'
He joined the Warriors for a while, and he seems passably smart, but—really, c'mon. 'Being a potentially good life coach for people who've already made mistakes' isn't videogame material—I get that kind of feedback at the end of every game. Usually shouted at me over voice chat. Quite loudly. I promise I'm trying my best.
I'll never look at an ice cream the same again
And now we enter the wonderful world of mutants. In fairness, mutants do give Marvel's writers a blank check to throw just whatever power they want at the wall—sometimes that's part of the joke. As is the case with Soft Serve, who can poop ice cream. Because her body is apparently a portal to the ice cream dimension. Screw it, who cares anymore.
This one's impossibility has less to do with whether you could turn ice cream poo into game mechanics, and more to do with age ratings. Marvel Rivals is T for Teen in the US, and I'm not sure NetEase is in any great rush to get a M for Mature label slapped on their videogame. I just can't fathom a single animation that would come out (eurgh) of Soft Serve that wouldn't immediately shoot its recommended age into the stratosphere.
Forget me, forget me not
I have a lot of respect for ForgetMeNot, actually. Xabi is a stand-up dude, despite having some of the worst luck out—see, the moment you stop looking at him, you forget he ever existed. This is about as existentially and emotionally horrifying as you can imagine, but he's constantly heroic in spite of it. Say what you want about Spider-Man's tragic love life, but at least he can feasibly have a girlfriend.
For example, when a poor girl got locked into a OSHA-violating defense system at the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning, ForgetMeNot swapped places with her, knowing she'd forget about him as soon as she went off to get help. Mr. ForgetMeNot is a real one.
The issue is, how do you make a hero shooter character out of that? The answer is: You can't. All of his potential power comes from being able to amble through basically any situation completely unnoticed. I guess you could make him unable to interact with anything, turning your gameplan into waiting for the enemy team to get distracted while you discreetly push the payload, but that's not exactly stirring gameplay.
The good news is that he could already be considered to have a canonical appearance in Marvel Rivals—we've all just collectively blanked on every game he's ever been in. Try not to think too hard about it, it's better if you forget.
You may explode it. Once.
Bailey Hoskins is, from my understanding, one of the few mutants that has it worse than Xabi does. He has a very special power: He can explode, once. Sort of in the same way that you or I could explode once, if we swallowed a bomb—except he doesn't have to eat explosives first, he can just do it.
This just feels like utter game design poison, specifically because there's some meat to the bone, but you can only get around 10% of the way there before having to throw your hands up and walk away. Sure, other superheroes are also dying and respawning—but how do you work with this guy?
The only way to accurately represent Mr. Hoskins would be to have every single button (that's not movement or jumping) mapped to an instant self-destruct move. Funny? Yes. Completely impossible to balance? You betcha.
Of course, maybe I'm just being small-minded with all of these picks. Marvel Rivals has, so far, been able to outdo other hero shooters by really not giving too much of a hoot about fine-tuned balance. Maybe Mr. Hoskins does have a role, maybe ForgetMeNot could have a place in the background, maybe Soft Serve… no, actually. I still don't want Soft Serve to be involved. Sorry.
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'The Middle East's answer to Marvel Rivals' is an 'AI-powered', crypto-infused hero shooter that looks like hot garbage
