MARVEL Future Fight

How many games have you played on your phone and thought, "meh, not what I was looking for" and uninstalled the game after a few tries? For me, the number of said games must be in the hundreds. But here comes Netmarble's MARVEL Future Fight and tries to get some of my attention. And it didn't even try hard and was successful. Let me tell you this first off, I have finally found the game I was looking for.

I recently saw a short article on a gaming website that there is a new Marvel game on the Play Store and the App Store. I was not expecting anything special and am more of an DC Comics fan than I am a Marvel fan, nevertheless, I just tried my luck finding a game for my phone that was something I could enjoy in the rare instances I'm not playing something on one of my consoles or the PC.

Gameplay:

(everything I remember to the point I have played)

Let me introduce you quickly to the gameplay and the game's contents (if you want to skip this part, because it's going to be very long, just scroll down to the "Evaluation" part): The game is an RPG, which is controlled by your left thumb like an analog stick and on the right side of the screen, you can see the skills of your currently active character. You can choose three characters per mission, which you can switch into the game whenever you want, you can also switch back at any time. There is a cool down time but nothing really to consider in your early missions. Also, the other two that are "sitting on the bench" will help you sometimes, I think randomly, by using one of their skills and add a little damage to what you produce anyway, which can be crucial sometimes when you are up against a boss. In addition to your crew, you have the option to get the assistance of a fellow player as a so called Team-Up. They won't help you randomly like your characters but can be called by pushing their icon on the right. They stay for a few seconds and fight alongside your team.

There are four types of missions you can choose from: Normal, Elite, Daily, and Villain Siege missions. The Normal missions are the more story-driven easy stages with eight chapters in total and eight to ten missions each, whereas the Elite missions are the same with higher-leveled enemies and better drop rates as well as other items. In a mission you move from point A to B, kill all the enemies in between and face a boss battle at the end. There are five daily stages, which are but one mission with harder difficulty as you move up the stages. And finally the Villain Siege, you will find nine stages and will fight bosses only. The bosses have a fixed health amount you have to beat down with three characters. If you lose the battle the health bar will not be reset but instead you can choose three other characters, the used characters are out for the rest of the Villain Siege missions, and fight the boss again until he or she falls. Win all the battles and you get fat prices in form of items and Chaos Tokens.

With Chaos Tokens you can buy biometrics and Norn Stones, with which you can master a character if you get enough together. There is also the counterpart to Chaos Tokens which are the Honor Tokens. Both, Chaos and Honor Tokens, can be used in separate shops seen in the screenshot above.

Biometrics are used to collect new Marvel heroes and to rank your already collected characters up. Just like with the Norn Stones, you need a certain amount to perform this action. You can find these materials/items in missions as well, however, not all biometrics for characters can be looted via missions but like with Hulkbuster by getting gifts and rewards after solving quests and events.

Which leads me to the vast amount of quests. You have daily and weekly quests, and missions and achievements. In the Google version, latter two are also connected to Google Play, so there is a way to collect some experience and level up your Google Play account. The former two though, there aren't just a bunch of dailies and weeklies, no! I can't even complete the daily quests, so how am I suppose to do the weekly ones? Incredible, there is always stuff to do.

I already mentioned that you can add heroes to your collection by grinding and looting their biometrics to then unlock them. You can of course, if you have the money or collected enough crystals through rewards, buy all the heroes. I find the prices are a bit too high for me and I am the type of Free to Play gamer that don't often buy stuff, there are exceptions though. The collection of heroes is big enough for endless days and nights of grinding and leveling up. There are currently 31 heroes to unlock (which can be seen in the screenshot below) including heroes like Spider-Man, the Incredible Hulk, and Captain Marvel, and villains like Dr. Octopus, Ultron, and the Kingpin. You start off with three heroes, which you will follow through the whole story as you march on to fight the enemies and even friends from other dimensions. Starting characters are Captain America, Iron Man, and Black Widow, one of the three classes, which are Combat, Blast, and Speed, then there is a fourth class Universal, which is combining all of the classes.

You could think, okay Jay, that's enough already, but it goes on with contents. I just got started... nah nah, I'm almost through, hehe! So what's left? Of course as I already mentioned above, you can level up your heroes and villains with Norn Stones and biometrics but there is also two other ways. With every level of the character you can also upgrade their skills with gold only, which you get as rewards for completed missions and quests. You unlock more skills by ranking up and mastering your character. Highest rank, as far as I know, is three stars, every star can be mastered. That's pretty much the system. Additionally to ranks, masters, and skill levels, every character has four types of gear. You can upgrade your gear with items you need to collect in missions and with some gold. And this is the key to really make a strong hero/villain out of what you get initially. That's not enough boosting your character though, there's even more! With ISO-8, which is explained in the game as some sort of a material from another universe and was brought to planet Earth by a "mysterious Pulse" as the Marvel Wikia page suggests. You can equip more ISO-8 the higher level your character is, which I completely forgot to mention. You can level your PCs up by just gaining experience fighting the bad criminals and otherworldly creatures and machines. The last method to gain an
improvement of attributes is to suit up your hero with different costumes. Currently, there are only a few of the Avengers: Age of Ultron movie costumes available.

Lastly, there is only two things left (thank god), the first is the Arena where you can compete with other MARVEL Future Fight players in a 3v3 battle going 1 on 1 at a time. You can choose up to five assistant characters which you can call just like the Team-Up functionality in the missions. Win battles, gain points, rank up the ladder, and win crystals, which are the premium currency in the game. With crystals you buy for instance costumes (I bought with all the in game crystals I received the costume for Captain America to buff him up a little) or crates with biometrics and items. The last thing is the Dimension Rift. Every now and then you get a message whilst working your way up to the boss of a mission that a Dimension Rift was found and you can enter it with your friends. Five friends try to close the rift, where you get more stages to complete.

Evaluation:

If you read the contents and gameplay, I salute you. If not, don't feel bad, it's just chit-chat over this and that.

What I like about the game:

You may have noticed, the game is complex in a certain way, not much on an intellectual level, more like, there is so much shit to do. I have never seen such a depth with that kind of perfect and understandable way of presentation. All the other games I have played on my phone were so confusing. This on the other hand shows you by just playing the story that there is much more to the game as you initially thought. You can't replay the game enough, and I have spent many, many hours of nights I should be sleeping, playing the game and forgetting time. That gives MARVEL Future fight a big plus for contents and presentation.

The graphics are wonderful. I didn't know how capable my phone was to show until I started the game. The 3D comic art graphics are very nice to look at, the design of menu screens and sprites are beautiful and suitable for a Marvel game.

The music, even though not really varying, feels just like in a Marvel movie. You have some electronic, dub step, and film music elements and they fit perfectly with the gameplay and surroundings of the story and time.

The story, which I had no expectations whatsoever, is pretty good. There you are with the Avengers, fighting against the evil (as always) who found a way to bring in the bad selves of heroes from other dimensions to fight alongside the villains. The dialogues are funny and easy to read as I expected of a game based on comic books.

What I am neutral about:

The controls feel sometimes a bit clunky and the character moves sometimes, for my taste, a bit too quickly and makes movement in levels look very odd. It's not really bad, since when you played a mission and gained three stars (all of your team member survived) you can play the game in Auto Play+, which controls the character, attacks enemies, and uses skills automatically. That makes it easy when you are in need of some items and want to loot them over and over again, just like in every RPG. For every team member lost in a mission you lose a star, having only one or two stars lets you play the game in Auto Play only, meaning your character will be controlled and attacks but will not use skills.

What I don't like about the game:

The sound effects are just awful. I really don't understand how the music can be so wonderful and at the same time you have sounds that sound like they have recorded in a bathroom while somebody is literally pooping the shit out of him. Sometimes I really get annoyed by the sound effects only, mainly because there are only so many so the same sounds get repeated again, and again, and again... argh, stop it, B!

The battery consumption of the game is enormous. Watch out, I always play the game while charging. Makes no sense to play it otherwise. Also the back of my phone gets really, really hot. So breaks every few half hours or so are recommendable.

The wrap-up:

The pros are outweighing the cons by a long shot in MARVEL Future Fight and I can say, this is my favorite mobile game in a long time. I will have many more nights (and days when I supposed to play the game anyway :D) playing the game, smashing machines and bodies left and right, grinding all the way to the top of the leader boards and leveling up my heroes and villains to fight against the army of other dimensions. You can get the game for free for your iPhone or Android device, and you should get it. Try it, maybe you have just as much fun as I have.

Released: May 6, 2015
Developer: Netmarble Games
Genre: RPG
System: Mobile
Price: Free
Available: Play Store, App Store