So maybe Marvel’s console game portfolio is a collection of hits and misses. But Avengers Initiative sure makes it seem like the House of Ideas wants their portable releases to be a different story.
Avengers Initiative will be very familiar to anyone who has played Chair Entertainment’s Infinity Blade title. Players will be controlling the Hulk as he hunts down monstrous supervillains who’ve been broken out of confinement. Swipe and tap to attack, tap select areas on the screen to sidestep and launch quick attacks. The action/RPG hybrid structure from Infinity Blade is here too, with a bit more complexity.
Where Marvel’s portable game differs from other similar titles is in how it approaches resource mining. You’ll still spot and tap pick-ups to add them to your inventory but some meteorite fragments will need punching to offer up their treasures. AI sports more attacks and skill types than other Infinity Blade play-alikes, with various special moves that get unlocked as you go.
Developed by Wide Load Games, Avengers Initiative is a good-looking title with tons of spoken dialogue. Marvel/Disney clearly wants to deliver a console quality experience but one that offers a pipeline for microtransactions for extra costumes. Further episodes will likely revolve around other Marvel characters and you can see where this will be an ever-expanding effort from Marvel’s game division. The mobile title also hooks into the Marvel XP platform which aggregates points across different games and platforms — like Avengers Alliance on Facebook — into one user profile. It’s a solid if pricey debut that seems to promise better playable versions of the Marvel Universe than what fans have gotten recently. You’ll be able to download iOS and Android versions tomorrow.
Avengers Initiative ($7.49) [iTunes App Store]
Avengers Initiative ($6.69) [Google Play]
Leave a Reply