Hands on with the Marvel Cosmic Invasion Demo

While the Marvel Cinematic Universe seems to be on the ropes, it seems the Marvel Video Game Universe is on the rise (Relatively…don’t remind me of the cancellation of the Black Panther game). Fans of the House of Idea’s iconic characters certainly have titles to look forward to with MARVEL Tōkon: Fighting Souls, the recently re-surfaced Wolverine and of course Dotemu and Tribute Games’ love letter to the beat’em ups, Marvel Cosmic Invasion.

Unlike Tōkon, there are no barriers for fans to check out a slice of the game this week (Ok, maybe if you don’t have a PC, that’s a barrier.) and we were lucky enough to get an advance look at the title!

The demo which is available now features a 2 level sample of the game’s arcade mode, featuring 9 of the 13 revealed characters. We were able to hit the streets of New York and take to the skies in a sequence where we were dealing with a jailbreak on the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier. Most of the characters’ looks evokes the feel of Marvel Comics during the 90s with some exceptions and they are animated beautifully. You can experience the demo solo with a pair of heroes, or experience multiplayer locally or via online play.

In my first run of the demo, I opted for the combination of Captain America and Spider-Man. Much like Tribute’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge, characters have a defensive option in the form of a dodge, but Cosmic Invasion remixes this concept by giving some characters the ability to block. So my initial run gave me a nice sampler of both options as Spider-Man is a dodge character and Captain America, with his mighty shield…is you guessed it, a block character. Cap’s block is actually interesting as it is the only one which will actually deflect projectiles if timed properly, other character’s “perfect blocks” are either a parry which stuns or a riposte.

 

While the 2 stages demo can be completed in roughly 20 minutes or so. I did go back and give all the characters a try. One of the things I noticed and frankly disliked was a majority of characters lack an attack after a neutral jump which keeps the character in place (Phyla-Vell is the only character whose neutral jump attack leaves where she leapt from). However I enjoy that every character has some sort of gimmick, Cap’s shield deflecting projectiles, Spidey’s webs slowing down enemies, multiple characters capable of “flight” (it’s more of a hover…but it makes dealing with airborne characters a lot more palatable) and Phyla-Vell’s attacks even applying a “poison” effect.

I find the game’s tag system to be an interesting addition. There are combo possibilities, but as of the demo there isn’t really a “reward” for skilled play (I’m guessing the campaign mode will have goals or challenges, but the arcade mode is more of a throwback experience.). I could see having a block/dodge character combo would be great for scenarios where you have shield wielding enemies which you have to strike from behind…but otherwise I personally didn’t get much value from tagging (outside of preventing a character from dying) or using assists.

Of the available cast, I have to say I was shocked that the character which felt the best for me was Phyla-Vell. Her Quantum Sword gives her amazing reach, she has the ability to “fly” and her strikes inflict “poison” on enemies sapping them of their health. A close second is properly Wolverine, I enjoy the character’s speed and I’m certainly not opposed to listening to the dulcet tones of Cal Dodd, who famously portrayed the character in Capcom fighting titles, X-Men: The Animated Series as well as X-Men ‘97. She-Hulk is an interesting character in the sense she’s mostly a grappler character, but most of that ability is rendered useless against bosses. The characters which kinda disappointed me are properly the ones I least suspected…the wall crawlers. Both Spider-Man and Venom’s jump attacks usually involve swinging across the screen and as someone who likes to plant their feet in a perimeter it really doesn’t work with my play style.

Since I wanted to be really thorough with my play through of this demo, I even got out of my comfort zone and checked out the online play. Finding games was easy, finding games that weren’t at the 2nd boss (Taskmaster) was hard. However I did get a game where I got to go through 90%~ of the demo with 3 other players and I have to say it’s a bit chaotic. I’m thinking between the larger character sprites, the smaller area of play, and the volume of enemies that scales based on the number of players…at four players it gets a bit hard to keep track of your character. I think for this game the best multiplayer experience is probably capped to 2 players.

Enough talking about characters and mechanics let’s talk about the stages. The New York stage is definitely more of the visually interesting stage, with references (Damage Control) and perhaps breadcrumbs of what to come (A Daily Bugle Poster declaring “Norman Osborne Missing”. There’s also some character specific interactions, such as late in the level there are some billboards featuring Spider-Man’s long time love interest Mary Jane Watson at which a passing Spider-Man will quip that he needs to “Set his VCR to record the show”. The Helicarrier does have its own flair, specifically on the upper deck where agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. engage in a firefight with the invading agents of A.I.M. The trailers that we’ve seen already gave us a look at a battle on Bifröst and promises a journey into the Negative Zone…so I’m certainly looking forward to what iconic marvel locales we’ll throw hands on in the final game.

If you want a beat’em up game done well you certainly should call Tribute Games and it looks like Marvel Cosmic Invasion is another feather in the cap of this Canadian developer. I’m certainly excited to see which other heroes will join the cast and as 2025 is getting close to its climax I can’t wait to punch Annihilus and the Annihilation Wave in the mush when we get the final product.

Marvel Cosmic Invasion is coming out on PC, and consoles in 2025.