Review for ‘Marvel’s Midnight Suns’

Marvel’s Midnight Suns

This is a video game by the team that made the X-COM games. It’s a Marvel Game. The gameplay is fantastic, and I enjoyed the story/characters, but it dragged out the story.

At first, I was willing to give the game the benefit of the doubt. At first, I thought the dialogue/story was charming in a pulp ’90’s comic book sort of way, where everything was very blunt, but otherwise fun.

But after 15 hours, the pulp started wearing on me. By hour 30, I muted the dialogue and just started skipping through it whenever possible. I finished at hour 57, and I was still continually getting fresh dialogue. I’m pretty sure there was enough dialogue for around 90 hours or so.

This game felt too ambitious. I quite enjoyed this game for the first 15 hours or so. The main quest was huge, and the combat was so great that I valued the fact that it’s huge. Contrasting this was the story/dialogue. The story/dialogue was good, at moments great, but just too much. Because there’s so much dialogue, it inevitably becomes busywork. If the game had less of this dialogue, it would have been more compelling and not become busywork.

Here’s the thing: contrary to what some other reviews have said, the dialogue isn’t bad. The writers of this game set out to write something pulpy and generic, where the heroes are friends and the villains twirl their mustaches. There’s nothing wrong with writing a generic story, so long as you write it well. This story accomplishes what it sets out to do; I can respect that.

I like the individual characters.

• Magik and the Caretaker have a harsh texture to their personality you don’t see very often from genuine heroes.
• I liked the general idea behind Ghost Rider’s ‘imposter syndrome’ plotline, even though that plotline went on too long.
• All of the superheroes seemed true to form, with one or two unique quirks.
• I especially liked the clash between Robbie (Ghost Rider) and Tony (Iron Man). Robbie’s from a poor community, which Tony accidentally destroyed because Tony’s business gentrified the community by merely being nearby. Their conflict felt authentic and real.
• I loved the final act of the story. While I stand by the fact this game was TOO LONG, that length helped me bond with the various characters. At the climax of the game right before the final battle, there was an extended ‘goodbye’ sequence, where all the heroes sat around watching movies and chatting with one another.
  • This felt authentic and earned, and had me feeling nostalgic and emotional. In any other story this might have felt sappy; it struck the right note here, like the cherry on top of a sundae.
• The game was too long and the ‘friendship system’ felt repetative. However, there was narrative payoff for all the characters individual character arcs.
  • I liked how Jonny Blaze passed the torch to Robbie, culminating Robbie’s character arc of not being confident in himself.
  • I liked the texture of Tony’s character arc, surrounding the loss of Banner, coming to terms with his father’s arms dealing, and ultimately his failure surrounding the cannon. I liked how him being a smug asshole ultimately resulting in him underestimating Lilith and a major setback. Tony felt like a self-obsessed jerk, but in a realistic way.
  • Wanda’s trauma, surrounding recovering from being mind controlled, felt real. The final pay-off with her going 1v2 against Lilith+the Hulk felt fantastic payoff to this.
  • I loved Magik’s birthday party storyline. The party inevitably ended horribly, resulting in her going to sulk in Limbo. The clash of personalities felt perfect, and was great foreshadowing to the end of the story.

I liked the villains.

• Bruce Banner’s heel turn resulted him chewing on the scenery in a glorious way.
• I enjoyed the protagonist’s banter with Lilith, and the final twist in the final battle.
• Doctor Faustus had crazy mad scientist energy which was compelling and fun. I was sad when he died so early in the game.
• Redeeming the Hulk and Scarlet Witch was compelling and fun.

The problem is that this game is too big. The whole ‘friendship’ system did NOT work. To min-max the game you had to engage in a bunch of inane conversations with 15 heroes for 50+ hours. As a result, each individual character interaction felt half baked, and overabundant. These writers are clearly talented- you have to be talented to juggle so many balls- but this format didn’t work.

The various heroes had problems, and the protagonist/player had to act as psychologist, trying to coach various heroes like Doctor Strange/Ghost Rider/Captain America through psychological damage. I would have been fine with this, if only one or two of these heroes had psychological problems; doing it for almost all 15 heroes was grating.

And finally, the character models were good… when looked at from a distance. In the combat screens, when you look at the character models from a top-down perspective, these are great character models. However, this game was so dialogue based that it frequently zoomed in to look at these characters up close, and animated their mouth moving. This didn’t always work; up close the character models look like plastic. When they tried to smile, it was vaguely horrifying.

But overall, the game is excellent.

This game had a few gloriously good story beats. I enjoyed spending time with Magik in Limbo. I liked the dynamic between the two Ghost Riders, between Hunter and the Caretaker, and between Doctor Strange and Iron Man. Blade’s book club was a bit silly, but it seemed pulpy silly in the way comics can be sometimes. I could keep going, but overall the story serves the game well.

I liked how the different characters had distinct personalities. In a lot of books/games, characters are fairly ‘generic,’ for a lack of better word. This game had the benefit of generations of comics to draw upon, giving different characters strong personalities.

I enjoyed the voice actors, they did a great job.

The combat was magnificent. Honestly it was so good that it carried the entire game. After almost 60 hours playing this, I feel like I’m still only scratching the surface of this game’s potential. I’m sad to have finished it, I want to keep playing so I might find new combos.