Whether you're talking Insomniac's beloved Spider-Man games or the recently announced Guardians of the Galaxy title from Eidos-Montréal, there's never been a better time to be a gaming Marvel fan. On top of the handful of recent and upcoming triple-A console and PC titles available, those who want more quick-hit experiences can dive into the world of mobile gaming. With titles like turn-based hero collector Marvel Strike Force and ever-expanding fighting game Marvel Contest of Champions, mobile players have several options as well. Those options are expanding by one later this year, as Netmarble, the team behind action/RPG Marvel Future Fight, is back to one-up itself with an all-new open-world action/RPG for mobile devices called Marvel Future Revolution.
Click here to watch embedded mediaInitially revealed at PAX East 2020, Marvel Future Revolution takes the multiverse concept to new levels, with multiple Earths from different realities converging to create one "Primary Earth." The story, which is penned by Marvel Comics writer Marc Sumerak, kicks off with Vision sacrificing himself using the Convergence Engine to prevent the newly unified worlds from being destroyed. This locks the worlds together, bringing together disparate pockets of reality.
Heroes and Villains
While this event brings together all kinds of heroes from different realities, it also brings together a massive alliance of villains. Now, the new heroes must work together as Omega Flight to stop the villains who are trying to rise up and take advantage of the situation. At launch, players will have the ability to select from eight different heroes as they battle the forces of evil. When the game is available, the roster will include Iron Man, Captain America, Spider-Man, Captain Marvel, Doctor Strange, Black Widow, Storm, and Star-Lord. When you fire up Marvel Future Revolution for the first time, all eight of those heroes are available to you to select and play as, with no unlock requirements.
Unsurprisingly, that roster will only grow as time goes on (Netmarble's other Marvel game, Marvel Future Fight, currently features more than 200 characters, while the roster of Scopely's Marvel Strike Force is rapidly approaching that milestone). In fact, by the end of the year, a new playable character will join the Marvel Future Revolution roster.
While each character has an iconic look, they are also fully customizable with tons of different costume combinations. You can swap out individual costume components for each character's body, hands, feet, and head. With this ability to mix and match, Netmarble hopes to deliver more than 400 million different costume combination possibilities per hero. In addition to costumes inspired by known moments in the comic books, players can also look forward to costumes from the Marvel Cinematic Universe as well as original costumes inspired by the various world regions in the game (more on those later).
Of course, there's no need for a massive team of heroes if there isn't a coalition of powerful villains to thwart. In the footage I saw, iconic villains like Thanos, Red Skull, Maestro, Ultron, Kingpin, MODOK, Yellowjacket, and Loki were facing off against the legions of heroes. These heroes and villains collide and clash across various regions of this new Primary Earth, delivering unique areas from the pantheon of Marvel comics.
New Stark City
The Arenas of the Revolution
Now that we know all about the characters that'll be flashing across our screens, what about the places you can visit? After all, this isn't some ordinary version of Earth these battles are taking place on. In fact, Marvel and Netmarble were able to dig deep and flex their creative muscles with the settings available in the game.
Xandearth
"We sat down when we first met and we just started writing locations and characters and things that a Marvel fan would dream of having access to," Marvel Games VP of creative Bill Rosemann says. "Usually in stories, you could travel to Xandar or travel to Sakaar or go through a time-warp to experience Hydra America. That was a dream of, how can we bring these locations that are all based on popular characters, popular stories, really cool villains, and bring them all together so that you can go from one to another. If you're a new Marvel fan, it looks cool and it's fun to explore this fantasy world. But if you're a longtime Marvel fan, let me tell you, the amount of – I won't even call them Easter eggs – it's just Marvel ingredients that fill every nook and cranny."
Sakaar
At launch, players can do battle across five regions, each with its own striking visual style. Hydra Empire poses the question, "What if Hydra took over and reigned after World War II?" This puts players into that scenario as they battle through a Hydra-controlled portion of the United States. Next, Midgardia is where survivors of Asgard have built an Asgardian city on Earth. Next up is New Stark City, which is a technologically advanced metropolis built by Tony Stark. New Stark City houses Omega Flight as well as many of world's most brilliant scientific minds. In the Earth version of Sakaar, you fight through a desert wasteland full of arenas, ruled by Maestro. Finally, Xandearth arrives on Primary Earth from a reality where Xandar was destroyed by Thanos and the survivors moved to Earth and created a new capital city.
Hydra Empire
"We thought about each character – Star-Lord, Storm, Spider-Man, Captain America – could there be environments that are drawn from their history, so it might mean more to them?" Rosemann says. "So in the story, they might have a more personal connection like, you can imagine when Captain America goes into the Hydra Empire, game on! He's taking down Skull. We just kind of did a greatest hits; we just started writing down great stories, great characters, great locations, and we knew that we could pick and choose. There is nothing holding us back, because in this story, all the worlds – and not only different worlds, but different realities – are all coming together. It just opened up the entire Marvel toy box to us."