UPDATE: The game is shutting down and will no longer be playable. However, this review will live on in memory of the game and all the work that the developers put into it.

Over the summer of my freshman year of high school, I developed an addiction. It was pretty awful, I blew off friends, lost my girlfriend, stayed up for days at a time and pretty much said screw everything in my life that wasn’t Diablo II. My family had gotten our first PC and Dell was kind enough to throw in a copy of the newly released game, and I took full advantage of it. Fast forward almost 20 years; I am introduced to Marvel Heroes Omega.

For the uninformed, Marvel Heroes Omega is an action RPG similar to the Diablo franchise in many ways, but instead of fighting zombies, dwarves, and the like, you’ll face off against Marvel Comics’ rouges gallery while helping the various factions from the Marvel Universe. I know, this has been done in the Ultimate Alliance series, but the combat and level progression system featured here is much, much deeper. Each character from the current roster of 40 heroes (more are available on PC and are being added regularly) features a number of abilities true to their character that leaves a number of possible builds for the hero you choose.  Each character plays as their own and not just a swap of character models that you would expect from such a large roster – even characters that heavily rely on guns such as Deadpool or the Punisher play completely different.

Your level of enjoyment will depend on which character you select and how well it fits your play style. Due to the free to play model, you will need to choose carefully. Luckily, you are permitted to try any character you like, free of charge, through level 10. As of this time, Xbox Live Gold and PlayStation Plus members can get Daredevil for free and are provided enough in game currency to buy one of a select number of characters. While not what I would call lower tiered characters, as Angela and Hulk are some fan favorites, the more relevant the characters, the more expensive it is to play as them.

Some characters can be purchased individually for a flat fee ($19.99 for Deadpool, Spider-Man, War Machine and Black Cat;  the last two being available only via this method), in group packs ($59.99 for a handful of The Avengers or X-Men, $39.99 for The Guardians of the Galaxy two pack), by paying for them using the games purchasable currency, or by earning them with collectible shards in game. Additionally, a VIP program was just added that gave everyone who spent any amount of money in the game the character Nightcrawler free of charge, as well as 5 of these shards daily. The characters you can earn will range from 200 to 1350 of these shards. To give those of you who prefer to keep your free to play games free an idea of how much grinding is involved: I’ve earned about 500 of these shards in approximately 25 hours of play with the VIP status. In an effort to be transparent with our readers, I would like to take the time to disclose that I was provided with a fair amount of the in game currency for review purposes.

In addition to the characters, you can use your own money or earned currency for XP boosters as well as additional costumes. You can also purchase the token random loot box that most games are finding ways to incorporate into their franchises these days. I did purchase one of the XP boosters, but it really is not needed, as you will level at a surprising rate, especially for a free to play game. As an incentive to level multiple characters, you can apply buffs to every character in your roster once you level a character to 25, with additional rewards and abilities being unlocked at regular intervals. The game is also fair with loot, as you will regularly have to visit one of the games many hub worlds to sell your unneeded or excess gear, occasionally even receiving huge XP caches for specific characters.

I spent most of my time in the game with Deadpool. As a huge fan of the character that predates his recent box office success; he was my first pick and well worth the $19.99 price point. Much like the other characters featured in the game, his personal quirks and personality were incorporated into his development. Upon reaching level 10, you can begin zipping around on the gigantic levels using a run or vehicular ability. While some characters use their natural or trademark abilities (Spider-Man’s web slinging, Ghost Riders motorcycle), Deadpool has a pink Vespa. I found him, like most of the characters, to be most effective while using his ranged abilities. While not all of the melee characters are awful (most are), the ranged game is the one you’ll want to play. Sadly, most of the melee fighters without any ranged abilities struggle to find a target in larger groups of enemies. This resulted in taking a huge amount of damage and dying as your character stands there, running in place, head first into a group of enemies, trying to attack one at the back of the group.

Death does not carry much of a penalty, since you can be revived by friends or other players in a hub area, or simply respawn at the beginning of the room you died in. While I did spend some time playing with friends, it did not really add to the gameplay beyond being able to with them. If you prefer to form a party for your dungeon crawling, there is no way to either type or verbally communicate with random players in the world beyond looking up their gamertag and sending them a message from the Xbox dashboard. With that being said, gathering a party is a little harder than it should have been.

Visually, the game is acceptable beings that is a free to play game and rivals many of the indie action RPGs featured on the Xbox Marketplace; however, I did run into a bug regularly where the background would simply disappear. While not game breaking, this glitch did happen frequently. With this exception and the occasional crash due to too many players or enemies being on the screen at one time, the game runs pretty smooth. The character models range from decent to WTF; case in point, Luke Cage pictured below. My biggest complaint with the presentation would be the repetitive phrases that after about an hour of gameplay will begin to drive you insane. Don’t get me wrong, there is a lot of variety, especially when one character comes across another that it has history with, but the random goons regularly will scream “Ah you broke my nose,” when you clearly shot them with your rocket launcher…

The massive game world spans a fair amount of the Marvel catalogue, featuring popular locations such as The Savage Land as well as less known locales such as Daredevil’s stomping ground of Hell’s Kitchen. Each location you’ll visit in the game’s 9 chapters rivals the size featured in any area from Diablo III, holds secret locations with secret boss battles or rooms full of enemies, with the end result being a chest full of sweet, sweet loot. The one major downfall to this is the map. While it does its purpose as far as showing you where transitions, other players, and points of interest are, once you’ve logged out, any progress you’ve made to uncover a portion of that map is lost. This makes finding every treasure room or hidden encounter a chore, and turned me off from playing a few occasions when I did not have an extended period of time to devote to the area.

While far from perfect, Marvel Heroes Omega offers a great deal of entertainment, and the fact that it is free is an added bonus. As a lifelong Marvel fan, we’ve been handed a fair amount of shitty licensed games in the past, and this surpasses a number of those in enjoyment and value. Unlike most of the games I’ve been given to review, I can assure you I will still spend hours upon hours in this virtual world hoping my wife won’t leave me. I am looking forward to what new content Gazillion throws our way (if you’re reading, Venom and Carnage in the X1 version please). If you’re a fan of the genre or the Marvel license, I strongly suggest at least trying the title, as you have nothing to lose.

9 out of 10

Pros

• Varied Cast of Characters
• Huge Game World
• Try Before You Buy Options

 

• Recommended Heros: Deadpool, Ghost Rider, Rocket Raccoon, Spider-Man, Gambit, Hulk, Colossus

 

Cons:

• Most of the Melee Fighters Are Awful
• Map Resetting When You Log Out of the Game
• Some Repetitive Dialogue
• Some Minor Glitches

 

• Characters to Avoid: Cyclops, Blade, Moon Knight, Luke Cage, Wolverine

Marvel Heroes Omega was developed and published by Gazillion Entertainment. The game initially (not Omega) launched on June 4th, 2013, and (Omega) on PS4 and X1 June 30th, 2017. As mentioned in the review, some in-game currency was provided for review purposes on X1. If you’d like to see more of Marvel Heroes Omega, check out the official site.

 

Here at GBG we use a rating method that you are more than likely familiar with – a scale of 1 to 10. For clarification, we intend on using the entire scale: 1-4 is something you should probably avoid playing, even though it’s free; 5-7 is something that is worth playing, but you probably don’t want to put any money into it; 8-10 is a great title that you can feel confident spending money on, even though you can play the whole thing free of charge. If you have any questions or comments about how we rate a game, please let us know.

Check out OpenCritic for a better idea of how our review stacks against others.