Write a comment
Annihilus has invaded the galaxy from the Negative Zone and is threatening to destroy all life as we know it (so, a typical Tuesday in the Marvel Universe). It’s up to a team of heroes to band together to stop Annihilus in Marvel Cosmic Invasion: the latest 2D side-scrolling beat-’em up from the creators of TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge. However, instead of being another smash hit for the studio, Cosmic Invasion falls short and, instead, delivers a very mediocre and by the numbers game that fails to live up to their predecessor.
“Hulk! For once in your life, don’t smash!”
I’m going to be perfectly blunt here: The gameplay is nothing special and feels like a step back from their last title. Admittedly, I was having fun with the game and enjoying the combat, until I hit a point where the difficulty suddenly spiked and I had to backtrack just to level up my characters in a forced grinding session so I can have enough health just to even stand a chance. I talked about difficulty spikes in games before and how they can sometimes hurt an otherwise great game and Marvel Cosmic Invasion is no exception. Don’t misunderstand me, I do enjoy difficult games. In fact, there are some games I enjoy playing at the higher difficulty selections like Shadow Warrior 2. But, some games do have a tendency to hit you with a difficulty spike out of the blue that forces you to backtrack and grind just to have a chance at survival and that is something I never enjoyed. Cosmic Invasion falls into that category very quickly once you get past the second stage. It’s odd because their last title, Shredder’s Revenge, had some minor spikes in difficulty but they still felt fair to the player and you never felt like you were forced to backtrack for any reason, other than completing an objective you missed. Yeah, that game also had a leveling up system, but it never felt forced on you and I honestly forgot it was even in said game. Here, though, it really does feel forced and I was not a fan of it at all. Even with higher health bars, it still felt like my characters lost their health way too quickly. The boss fight against Venom, for example, I swear his attacks took off dang near half of my character’s health, leading to many frustrating restarts. What doesn’t help is just how spongey the enemies and bosses are and how long it takes to even take down a basic grunt, let alone the annoying flying ones, though the latter is due to the perspective. While it is satisfying to lay the smackdown on the opposition and see them flying, thanks to whoever you’re controlling, it feels like it takes way too long to get to that point. The bosses especially suffer from this as, while you’re whittling down their lifeforce, they can suddenly grow a second lifebar you have to whittle down before returning to the main one, which can lead to many cheap deaths and game overs. In short, the combat really just feels like a step backwards from what’s been done in the genre lately. Really, outside of some special moves that I’ll delve into in a bit, there really isn’t anything special about the gameplay.
The same, however, can’t be said about the characters themselves and that’s something I do need to praise the game for: All the characters you can control feel unique and different from each other and offer unique gameplay strategies. For example, Nova can fly around and avoid many ground attacks and easily pick off the flying enemies while Wolverine is able to regenerate a bit of health. I also enjoy the team up attacks you can pull off with a simple button press and these can really turn the title of battle. See, unlike most beat-em ups, you choose two characters and can freely switch between the two during the stage, with some having stage exclusive dialogue if they’re the recommended characters for said stage. Each character also has unique special moves and, what I call, a powered-up punch which can be activated by holding down the attack button for a set amount of time. Rocket, for example, when you hold the button down, can whip out a massive gun and, when held down a bit more, said gun grows more guns on to it, making the Engineer shed a tear of happiness, to do more damage, though the range is somewhat poor. While all the characters are fun, I did find myself sticking to a small handful as they felt more suited to my playstyle and felt more natural for me to use, those being the aforementioned Rocket Raccoon and Beta-Ray Bill (who I am happy to see in a game and wish he gets a proper MCU introduction and not just a statue in Thor: Ragnarok). A few characters, though, either never clicked with me or just felt too slow to use. She-Hulk, for instance, despite being a neat addition, is one such slow character. I find this weird because I always saw her as the more agile Hulk-being (I’m basing this on her comic and cartoon and MCU counterparts here), so why she’s the lumbering tank is a bit of an eyebrow raiser. Though, I won’t deny her muscle design is nice. As for the enemy roster, this is another area I am mixed on, mostly with my enjoyment of fighting them. While some are fun to fight, like the A.I.M agents, others are just too annoying for their own good. I mentioned the flying enemies as being a nuisance, especially those flying symbiotes during the lead up to the Venom fight which, I swear, they’re the reason I struggled so much on that darn level, but there’s also the these worm-like enemies that can burrow underground and are able to get some very cheap shots on you and there’s also a few A.I.M agents packing flamethrowers that, thanks to the camera perspective, can be a real pain to avoid. Yeah, their threat levels do lower once you get more familiar with their patterns and some characters can easily avoid their attacks, like those who can fly like Nova, they are still a sour point in this game and I do wish developers would stop including flying enemies in brawlers like this. I get they’re included to bring a bit of challenge to the game but there are better ways of doing that without incorporating enemies that are designed to be a pain in the tail to fight. But, I do have something else I want to praise and that’s the unlocks. Outside of a few characters you unlock after beating them in their boss fight, like Venom, you can also unlock various modifiers like skin colors and stuff for the arcade mode, alongside bios for every character in the game, by earning Cosmic Cubes throughout the game. These are earned by either finding a cube in the world or by doing challenges and leveling up. I actually kinda like this way of unlocking bonus features as it harkens back to the days of the N64 and such. I was also surprised by how easy it is to get the cubes as, by the third level, I had unlocked most of the Cosmic Matrix already.
“It's called a Zune. It's what everybody's listening to on Earth nowadays”
Something else I have mixed opinions on is the overall sound. It’s not bad or ear-grating, thank goodness, but it’s not impressive as a whole package. The music, however, is impressive and I found myself headbanging a bit to a few of the tunes. That’s something I will always praise these side-scrolling beat-’em ups for: The music always kicks the right amount of rear and Cosmic Invasion is no exception to that rule. That being said? The voice acting is spotty and not the good type of cheesy. While some characters do sound decent like Beta, Rocket, and Iron Man, others really just don’t work. Venom sounds too much like he’s gargling water when he talks and, again, She-Hulk sounds too much like a stereotypical woman trying to sound tough (like Mulan tried to do, but not as funny or charming). Also, her fourth-wall breaks, while in character with her, feels slightly forced and, quite honestly, not as endearing or funny as Deadpool. I understand they were trying to make it feel like a game from the 90’s but, personally, I think they could’ve done better with the dialogue and tried to make it sound less 90ish. The same can be said about the non-playable characters' voices. Sauron, the mutant Pteranodon who many may recognize from a Spider-Man comic that’s been memed to death, is the most grating of the bunch and Lady Hellbender, a character I had NO idea even existed, has a voice that weirdly doesn’t fit her design. She’s a muscular woman, like She-Hulk, but she has this stereotypical Russian tough girl voice that, I dunno, just doesn’t fit her. Truthfully, I wish the dialogue had the same treatment as the music and wasn’t as cheesy. I don’t mind cheesy dialogue in games as there are plenty I can think of whose dialogue is anything but cheesy. It’s just that this game’s more of a bad cheese than a good cheese.
“Yeah... I was talking about, like, a pretty necklace. Or a nice hat. You know. Something to make the other girls go "Ooh, that's nice””
If I had to praise anything, it’s the graphics. This is, like Shredder’s Revenge, a beautiful pixel video game, with small attention to details throughout from the character animations to the background themselves. I found myself getting distracted, at times, just looking at the background and seeing what’s going on during my playthrough. In fact, fans of a certain small elasmobranch cartilaginous fish will get a kick out of their cameo, which is something else I’ll give this game and that is that the cameos feel warranted. While there were some I had no idea who they were, like this Kangaroo fellow, the rest were recognizable and, again, felt warranted for what’s going on in the game and what it was dealing with. Something else I’ll give the graphics credit for is that nothing feels busy. You’re not constantly bombarded with pop ups and bright flashes as you’d see in other games and that is something I have to give huge praise for. I will say the artstyle on some of the characters are hit or miss, for the most part. While some look good like Rocket, Iron Man, and Venom, others just look a bit lame. Cosmic Ghost Rider, for instance, looks really stupid with that dome helmet (why they didn’t go with classic Ghost Rider, I have no idea) and, this may be a real hot take…but I don’t like Captain America’s design. I understand it’s his original design but it still looks stupid. The protruding wings on his face mask and overall costume design makes him look like a mixture of the Reb Brown movie mixed with that 90’s Captain America movie (sans the glued on ears). Still, character designs aside, the graphics are easily the best part of this game and something I will praise to no end.
“Reality is often disappointing.”
Compared to their last title, I must say I was slightly disappointed in this game. While there were some bits of fun to be had and there was nothing game breaking in it, the admittedly mediocre gameplay, the difficulty spikes, and forced grinding really did sour my enjoyment of this title. It’s a real shame cause I did surprisingly enjoy Shredder’s Revenge and was actually pretty excited for this title (not just because of Beta-Ray Bill’s inclusion), but the more I played, the more the cracks showed and the more disappointed I felt in it. Still, it’s not a bad game and there are some rays of enjoyment in it; it’s just disappointing that it could’ve been so much better.
