Marvel Rivals is about to release to the public on December 6, and it is a hero shooter from NetEase that is very much attempting to clone Overwatch in big and small ways, using Marvel heroes as a base.
But with a lot of talk this year about “aesthetics,” particularly in regard to the disastrous launch of Concord and its disastrously designed characters, it’s hard not to think that Marvel Rivals is the opposite in absolutely every single way.
What’s difficult here is that we have seen probably dozens of iterations of each of these famous characters over the years in terms of different styles and looks, and despite that, I have to say that these designs, and the additional skins that they’re getting as part of the traditional hero shooter model, are some of the best I have ever seen for any of these characters.
I don’t really know how else to describe this other than just showing you, so here is a giant image gallery showing off what I’m talking about here:
Seriously, I simply cannot get over these. I feel like I’ve already spent like $400 on this game already because of how good the skins are, despite it not even being out yet. Can aesthetic alone be enough to make a game a hit? No, it needs gameplay to be a big win as well, but aesthetic can help sink something if it looks unappealing at baseline, which is part of what doomed Concord from moment one as a wannabe Guardians of the Galaxy copy. Here, we have the actual Guardians of the Galaxy. Yes, this game is massively boosted by the Marvel IP, but it is incredible just how well they’ve redesigned essentially all these characters for this game.
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