Marvel Heroes (video game)

Marvel Heroes is a free-to-play massively multiplayer online action role-playing video game developed by Gazillion Entertainment and Secret Identity Studios. Characters such as Iron Man, Captain America, Deadpool and Wolverine serve as characters that players can unlock in the game. Players who pre-purchased a game pack received early access to the game on May 29, 2013. The game was then officially launched on June 4, 2013, on Microsoft Windows. An OS X version is planned to follow post-launch.

The lead writer of the game is Brian Michael Bendis, who has written a number of major Marvel Comics. The plot revolves around villains, with the main antagonist as Doctor Doom, and heroes in various conflicts.

Gameplay
Gameplay is very similar to that of the action role-playing game Diablo II. Marvel Heroes is free-to-play with micro-transactions used to fund and support the game. Players will not need to spend money to access the full game.

As characters gain levels, they gain a passive stat increase for stats that help that particular character and gain power points, allowing the player to further define the abilities of that character. Each character has three power trees that they can spend points. Each of the trees generally focuses on a certain mechanic or play style, such as Iron Man's shields, Hawkeye's trick arrows, or Deadpool's guns. As the character gains levels the player has access to more skills to spend points on and is able to put more points into existing skills. Each skill has a level cap, so more points cannot be put in a skill until a certain level is reached. End each skill has a maximum of 20 power points and a maximum of 40 points can be reached from gear bonuses. Currently, the game has a maximum level of 60. The majority of the game is dedicated to obtaining items, but there are other things you can do while in-game. There is a crafting system to upgrade gear and costumes, combine/split crafting materials, craft consumables/ artifacts and player vs. player combat (in beta).

In version 1.2 of the game, released on September 5, 2013, it re-balanced the game's systems almost entirely. It features a better defense system that scales with your level, every stat is a rating, added a new item slot called a relic that can be upgraded 999 times, and added the ability to replay the story mode at levels 30 and 45 at harder difficulties. The system of playable character drops is covered by the new “Eternity Splinters” system. These rare drops can be used as currency with Adam Warlock so players can get the heroes they want to play (faster than the previous random hero drop system) and without spending money. In addition, the splinters can be used to get a random Cosmic item and to upgrade the character's Ultimate ability.

Synopsis
The storyline of the game deals with Doctor Doom obtaining the Cosmic Cube and features other super-villains trying to prevent the heroes from interfering with Dr. Doom's use of the Cube. After stopping Doom, you can unlock the Bifrost Bridge to Asgard. Each location in the game is composed of several "instances" at any one time. This allows the game to run on one huge virtual server, rather than the game being split into different servers. Many missions take place within smaller instances. These instances are reset if the player leaves and returns.

Settings
The game takes place in several locations, including, the Raft, Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan, the New Jersey Docks, Madripoor, the Savage Land, Mutant Town, Doomstadt, Latveria and Asgard. Additional locations will be added in the future updates. The game's current main four hubs are the Avengers Tower, the X-Mansion, the Helicarrier and Odin's Palace.

Characters
Marvel Heroes features more than 100 characters from the Marvel Universe. Players will be able to choose from a large and diverse cast of superheroes and villains. Each playable character is a different archetype, either Melee or Ranged with each having unique sets of attributes and talent tree. Each character, also, have their own specialized statistic (e.i. accuracy, agility, energy, strength and will). At the game's release there were 21 and as of March 2014 there are 32 playable characters. These characters range from well-known and iconic such as Iron Man and Spider-Man to lesser-known and obscure such as Squirrel Girl and Rocket Raccoon. Additional playable characters will be added in future updates (e.g. Nova and Star-Lord). The game adds at least one new character every month.

Every player will start off with one of the starter heroes upon registration. The roster of the starter heroes changes over time. Players will be able to unlock the other remaining characters by spending an in-game dropped items called Eternity Splinters. However, all playable characters are available for purchase with real currency via the game's store.

Players can also unlock Team Up characters. These characters are not fully playable, but act as a summon or a bodyguard for the playable characters. They provide assistance and passive powers to the main characters. They can also be acquired through Eternity splinters or via the game's online store.

Costumes to change your character's appearance can also be purchase in the game's web store or can be acquired through drop from enemies. Enhanced costume is an iteration of a playable character, based from a complete different character. For example Beta Ray Bill is an enhanced costume for Thor, and will have the same exact power talent as Thor. Enhance costume characters has their own unique appearance and own unique voice work.

Four costumes (consisting of Iron Man 3-inspired Iron Man armor, Weapon X outfit of Wolverine, Hulk's future form Maestro, and Spider-Man's black symbiote costume) are exclusive to players who purchased the limited edition character Ultimate Pack, under Gazillion's "Founder's Program." The packs were released prior to the game's launch, which also included beta access, early game access for the final game, access to characters right away and added in-game currency.

Future Characters

Cryptic Studios
Marvel Heroes was originally known as Marvel Universe Online and later Marvel Universe. Marvel Universe Online was the original working title of Champions Online. The massively-multiplayer online (MMO) game was developed by Cryptic Studios and was to be published by Microsoft Game Studios exclusively for Microsoft Windows using a license from Marvel. The project was changed on February 11, 2008 due to what a Microsoft spokesperson referred to as "an inability to compete" with the current MMO marketplace. Less than a week later, Cryptic Studios announced that development would continue using a new IP license related to Champions, a superhero role playing game.

Confirmation of the project's cancellation arrived on February 11, 2008, although rumors of the possible cancellation had existed since November of the previous year. Shane Kim, the head of Microsoft Games Studios, stated in an interview that the cancellation was primarily due to the competitive market for subscription-based MMOs, and that while one current MMO was successful, "everything else wouldn't meet our level or definition of commercial success".

Gazillion Entertainment
On Tuesday, March 17, 2009, it was revealed that Gazillion Entertainment had signed an exclusive 10-year deal with Marvel Entertainment games, of which Marvel Universe is one. The first title released was Marvel Super Hero Squad Online, which targets younger audiences. Marvel Universe was eventually renamed Marvel Heroes and started being developed as a massively multiplayer online-action role-playing game rather than a massively multiplayer online role-playing game like Cryptic's canceled version of Marvel Universe had been. Gazillion Entertainment has chosen to use Epic Games's Unreal Engine 3, instead of the Unity 3D engine used for Marvel Super Hero Squad Online, with studio director Jeff Lind stating "We love Unreal Engine 3's streaming system. It's made our entire technical approach possible and is easy to work with. We also love the flexibility we get from the actor components, which have empowered us to make all kinds of customizations without sacrificing the built-in features of the engine.” During a live stream session David Brevik, the President/COO of Gazillion, further detailed the game's engine. He noted that while Unreal Engine 3 powers the game's front end visuals and audio, much of the components that make a massively multiplayer game were written using entirely new code that interfaced with Unreal Engine 3.

During development, Gazillion used an internal team of 75 people working for three and a half years. There were many others that are part of the support and marketing. Gazillion has raised more than $80 million to fund the game's development, but it hasn't disclosed exactly how much was spent. In contrast to other MMO developers, Gazillion always planned to use the free-to-play model.

Reception
Marvel Heroes received mixed reviews; on the aggregate review website Metacritic the game attains an overall score of 61 out of 100 based on 32 reviews. IGN gave the game a 5.7/10, praising the story but criticizing the combat and limited customization.