Don’t send help, I’m perfectly happy with my new obsession.

When I was a kid, I wanted to be Spider-Man. My eldest daughter, like her father, runs around making ‘Spider-Man hands’ and pretending to web up the Green Goblin and Doctor Octopus (“Her name is ‘Doc Ock,’ dad!”). My favorite superhero ever is Superman, but Peter Parker is right up there with him. I think Magneto is one of the best fictional characters ever created, and the recent X-Men ‘97 clearly lays out why these characters, and their struggle for societal acceptance, are just as relevant now as they ever were.

After X-Men ‘97 reinvigorated my fandom, I got an email from NetEase announcing Marvel Rivals, a hero shooter featuring Marvel characters. There are plenty of good Marvel games, but I’ve still played enough bad ones in my time that I was skeptical. The most popular hero shooter in the world, Overwatch, didn’t grab me long-term, either. I played quite a bit with my friends, but it was never something I booted up alone, let alone as part of my daily ritual.

So what was the chance a new hero shooter would grab me, siphon off my evening hours, and take me away from my beloved fighting games (my idle time fixation since 2008)? 

Incredibly high, it turns out.

Fast-forward to eight months later and I play every day. I play a little after making coffee in the morning. I check in with my crew and see when everyone will be on. Hell, I’m gonna play some after I finish writing this. It isn’t just a compulsion, either. I’ve known obsessions, same as anyone else. For years I ran to World of Warcraft every day for community (and to run away from the pain of my broken engagement), and Vampire Survivors held me in its thrall with its aggressively engineered dopamine drip. With Rivals, those factors exist (as they do with many games), but my appreciation runs deeper. I’m genuinely looking forward to playing now, and in the long term. I want the team to keep supporting this game, because I’m excited to try each new character, to see where they take the story. I like spending more time in this version of the Marvel universe.

The development team cooked with pretty much every character, from design to gameplay. Like my favorite fighting games (shoutout to Arc System Works), the vast majority of these characters have their own unique play styles and mechanics like Bruce Banner transforming into two different power levels of Hulk, Storm passively buffing nearby teammates, Moon Knight’s darts bouncing between enemies, and Loki’s ability to make clones and swap places with them. There is always something new for me to learn.

Since I came into it with a deep attachment to the characters, and the art department nailed their designs, all NetEase really needed to do was nail the moment-to-moment. Reader, it did. I haven’t had the same “I can’t wait to get home and boot this up” feeling about a multiplayer game since Halo 3.

Rivals may not be the most complicated game in the world, but there is great variety in the roster. Variety is the spice of life, and Rivals is well-seasoned with characters to fit my every mood. If I feel like being an obnoxious piece of shit, I can play Squirrel Girl or Iron Man and just spam explosive area attacks. If I want to relax, hang back, and heal, I can play Cloak & Dagger. Spider-Man can zoom around the map, Captain America is fast and can bounce his shield off multiple enemies with a satisfying clang while socking them in the face with the hard fist of justice. As good as it feels to inhabit my favorite characters, it’s also been fun to watch relative unknowns like Luna Snow, Squirrel Girl, and Jeff the Land Shark become incredibly popular, with toxic, trolling Jeff gameplay going viral on TikTok.

(You should also know that while Jeff is known as “Satan’s greatest warrior,” among the Rivals community, Squirrel Girl would certainly have a seat of honor at the dark lord’s table.)

I mentioned community earlier, and this is another place Rivals has exceeded my expectations. Since it’s free-to-play, it’s easy to convince people to give it a shot. Watching my friends list on Steam, I saw people playing I had never seen in a competitive multiplayer game, or a team game in general. People saw me playing and reached out, interested in trying it. It reconnected me with my cousin, and his cousin (whom I hadn’t spoken to in nearly 20 years), my wife’s cousin and her boyfriend (whom I didn’t know played games at all, let alone competitive games like this), as well as friends in other countries (like Skybox’s own Kris Cornelisse). I talk to them much more often, we spend time playing together most days, and it has been very edifying to have that reliable community back in my life, which I haven’t really had since I stopped playing World of Warcraft.

As much as I love it (and feel Rivals offers a compelling, complete package) there are very clear things I want to see change as the team continues to update it.

I hope Rivals gets placement matches eventually because there are tons of annoying smurfs all over the place (high rank players who play in lower ranks for easy wins). Also, PC and console can team up for Quick Play, but not Competitive, which is frustrating because my community of players could be larger if I could also team up with console-bound friends. I’d love to see that resolved, even if it is an opt-in crossplay toggle (like console Quick Play has) to play together in ranked, and I’m hopeful this could change because the development team has been incredibly responsive to player feedback.

I love the character ban system (and absence of a “role queue”), because it means I have tons of control with how games go, which is one of the best parts of Rivals. If I’m playing a melee-only character, I can suggest my team ban flying characters so I can rampage more freely. If I’m playing a low-health support character I try to ban flanking assassins like Black Panther and Spider-Man. I’ve played full DPS squads, full heal squads, and full tank squads. If you can dream it, you can do it. It’s big dumb fun that encourages creativity, which prevents the meta from getting stagnant. If a character is too toxic or powerful, you don’t have to wait for a nerf. Even if you just find them annoying, you can just ban them.

I’ve also had lots of fun in the limited-time modes, which lean into the absurdity. One clone match mode forced all players onto one of two characters, with those two determined by a pre-match vote. I played one in which two teams of three Rocket Raccoons and three Hulks fought each other (we fought over the final objective point for what felt like forever, as all the healing and transforming meant people rarely actually died), and another where my team was composed of six Winter Soldiers (“AGAIN!”). Another mode recently introduced gave everyone a giant head (welcome back, 007 DK mode!), and yet another functioned like an auto-chess battler. Part of me wishes these modes would stick around after introduction, and Rivals would keep expanding to be an impressive hub of Marvel mini-games, but I know that’s somewhat unrealistic.

As someone who generally plays FTP games without spending any cash, I really appreciate that there are regular events awarding free costumes (most of which look incredibly cool). Getting to at least Gold in competitive during each season awards exclusive costumes for the newly-introduced characters, which is a fun bonus, and you can earn enough currency through these special events (and the free portion of each season’s battle pass), to pick up new costumes from the shop or help pay for your next battle pass. Rivals also uses the gold standard for free-to-play battle pass monetization modes, because once you buy a battle pass, you keep it forever and can work on the unlocks whenever you want. All of this combined has made this a comfortable place for me to spend my time, all without preying upon my rampant FOMO (trust me, I have a problem).

One way I can tell a game is truly special is when it starts pulling in people from a wide variety of different communities who wouldn’t normally interact. Take Dragon Ball FighterZ, which pulled in people from BlazBlue and Guilty Gear, as well as Marvel vs Capcom, Street Fighter, and even Tekken. Similarly, Marvel Rivals has pulled in players, both professional and casual, as well as content creators and streamers from Call of Duty, Fortnite, Counter-Strike, Overwatch, and more.

Season 3 released recently, bringing two fun, new maps and adding Jean Grey (Phoenix) to the roster, who is masterfully designed. With a hitscan primary attack, the ability to chain fiery explosions together, free flight, a teleport, and an ultimate ability that immediately removes all bonus health and deployable objects from the attack area, she effectively combines four of my favorite characters into one (and then some). She’s been my main since S3 launched, and Blade the vampire hunter arrives eminently. I can’t wait to see what he plays like, and if he has a voice line about Luna Snow trying “to ice skate uphill.”

The team really listens to feedback from the community, and is dialed in to what is working and what isn’t, on both the competitive and casual sides. Balance patches are frequent enough that people don’t have to deal with problematic characters for too long (unless they are named Luna or Hela, which seem to be permanent staples), and characters who consistently underperform get buff after buff to try to bring them up into competitive relevance. The team also seems to understand that “balance” doesn’t mean characters can’t have outrageous abilities. Since it’s a superhero game, different characters just become crazy powerful in different ways.

With the relatively recent change hastening the pace of new character releases to one per month, and shortening seasons to 2-month chunks, the meta will be constantly shifting, with new things to discover and experience. I like a lot of the launch roster, but the character designs post launch have really been special, adding more complicated movesets, new mechanics, and interesting team-ups to keep things fresh.

Marvel Rivals has given me new ways to enjoy playing as childhood favorite heroes, villains, and those in the gray area in-between (I’m looking at you, “19 inches of Venom”). It’s drawn me into a competitive genre I never connected with before. It has become a reliable place to spend time with family and friends. Rivals has been my obsession for months now, and with the future of the game looking bright, I don’t see that stopping anytime soon.

Score: 9

This review is based on a free to play game, however the author has made multiple in-game purchases and is being judged for it by his co-founders.