Marvel Rivals Is Finally Reviving The Movie Tie-In Experience
10 years later, the Battle of New York has returned to consoles.
Despite enjoying an almost 20-year stranglehold on Hollywood and audiences, it’s remarkable that we haven’t gotten a game based specifically on the Marvel Cinematic Universe in a decade. While James Gunn has recently talked about the work being done on games set within the freshly reborn DC cinematic universe, the MCU hasn’t received a proper licensed tie-in game since 2016’s Lego Marvel’s Avengers. And if Lego versions don’t count, then the last would have been three years earlier with Iron Man 3: The Official Game… which was a Temple Run clone on Android and iOS.
But outside of the MCU, Marvel properties have enjoyed a streak of well-received games for several years, including the surprise hit of Square Enix’s Guardians of the Galaxy and 2K Games’ Midnight Suns. 2023 brought us Insomniac’s wildly successful Spider-Man 2, a game that appeared frequently across Best Of lists that year and, in moving 2.5 million copies in 24 hours, became the fastest-selling PlayStation Studios game in history. Since then, the developers at NetEase Games have given Marvel another juggernaut with Marvel Rivals, and the free-to-play hero shooter has now become the first game in a decade to revisit the MCU timeline in the countdown to Avengers: Doomsday.
In just two years, Marvel Rivals has become one of the most consistently played online multiplayer games.
On April 30, Marvel Rivals launched a new game type based on 2012’s The Avengers, an asymmetric PvP mode in which one player controls an amped-up Loki against a team of the MCU’s original six Avengers. In addition to receiving a major health boost, Loki has a new playstyle inspired by his use of the Mind Stone in the movie: he can manipulate other players into fighting against their team, and summon alternate-universe versions of the Avengers to aid him. The new mode is part of an ongoing rollout called Path to Doomsday, which will see Rivals recreate specific moments from the films through playstyles, events, and rewards.
Rivals has consistently paid homage to the MCU with alternative character skins, but this is easily the biggest event to evoke the films since the game's release, and it’s a pretty clever idea. The ongoing nature of Rivals as a live-service game is a perfect way to represent what Doomsday will most certainly be: simultaneously a trip down memory lane and a push into new ground. Doctor Doom has loomed in the lore of the game’s unique story, no doubt being timed to another in-game movie tie-in.
Victor Von Doom is lurking in the background of the MCU and Marvel Rivals.
As for properly licensed MCU games, there are several reasons why Marvel (and, until recently, DC) moved away from the practice. Marvel Games, the licensing brand owned by Disney, does considerably less in-house development now, and licensed games demand more rigidity from outside developers — they have to engage with existing canon, create characters that resemble current actors, and so on. Games like Spider-Man 2 and Rivals are praised in part because they can have their own idiosyncratic visions of classic characters, and they wouldn’t have that same freedom if they were constrained to the MCU.
But with DC Studios expressing interest in licensed games again, there’s always the idea that the licensed Marvel tie-in could make a return, especially if Doomsday and Secret Wars truly produce a creative reset for the franchise. Until then, Marvel Rivals will take a trip back through 20 years of MCU storytelling through its own unique lens.
Marvel Rivals is free-to-play on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.
