You’ll be able to throw down as Earth’s mightiest heroes, and villains, in a free-to-play team-based competitive shooter coming soon. Marvel Rivals, from developer NetEase, will start rolling out in the form of an alpha test in May, with further tests coming in the lead-up to launch.
Marvel Rivals features a roster of more than a dozen playable characters from famous comic book teams like the Avengers, X-Men, and Guardians of the Galaxy. The alpha test will feature an array of heroes and villains to play, including Spider-Man, Black Panther, and Magik. The debut trailer showed lots of other characters, like Dr. Strange and Luna Snow, making use of their powers–like Strange opening up portals for his teammates. It all looks very similar to Blizzard’s Overwatch, albeit in third-person and with a roster of classic comic characters.
In true comic-book fashion, you can use dynamic “Team-Up Skills” to combine the powers of two heroes into a devastating attack. Rocket Raccoon can be seen riding on Groot’s back while firing, and Hulk can provide some gamma energy to give Iron Man’s repulsor blast some extra oomph. Matches in Marvel Rivals will be third-person, 6v6 battles with destructible environments like Asgard and Tokyo 2099.
The story revolves around Doctor Doom as the primary antagonist, as he’s teamed up with his own 2099 counterpart to force universes to collide in an anomaly called the Timestream Entanglement. That premise nicely tees up tons of heroes and villains to clash. To that end, Marvel Rivals is preparing to have loads of post-launch updates, adding new characters and maps at a regular pace.
Marvel Rivals is being developed by NetEase, and the announcement notes that the team includes veterans from the Call of Duty and Battlefield series. So far there is no word of console versions, which may simply be due to the PC version entering alpha testing.
“We are overjoyed to bring Marvel Rivals to players around the world,” said producer Stephen Wu in the announcement. “We have always loved Marvel’s universe and its characters, and we are so excited to develop this game. This is the game we want to make, and we feel very lucky to be the team who made all of this come true.”
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