There’s a lot going on in Marvel’s Avengers, with plenty of content across several different categories, quite a bit of replayability, and a surprising amount of underlying systems governing its loot-driven RPG approach, so it’s understandable that for many players, a lot of this either won’t make sense right off the bat, or simply might not seem like it’s something that’s worth paying attention to. It is, though, and here, to help things make easier for you as you head out to take down A.I.M., we’ll be compiling fifteen tips and tricks that you should keep in mind while playing Marvel’s Avengers.
GEAR
Gear is a big part of the core loop in Marvel’s Avengers, whether you like it or not, and actually plays a pretty important role in how you build your heroes- but don’t get too attached to any single gear piece, especially in the early goings. You might find something with great perks, something that you’ve invested resources in to power up, something with a high power level, but it’s pretty much a guarantee that something better will come along soon. Marvel’s Avengers is giving you new gear pretty much all the time, so it’s best to keep checking back regularly and swapping out what your heroes are equipped with. Keep powering up new gear, and keep discarding older, low-powered pieces to maintain a steady supply of resources with which to do that.
MISSION MODIFIERS
This is something that Marvel’s Avengers teaches you pretty early on, but it’s easy to forget about amidst everything else going on in the game- before you head out on every mission, you can check its modifiers to see if there are any special abilities, elemental attacks, and the like that you need to be on the lookout for during that mission. Once you know what that mission’s modifiers are, you should deck out your heroes accordingly- so if you run into a mission area where enemies use cryo attacks, make sure you have gear equipped that can deal with that. This, in fact, is another reason why you shouldn’t be too attached to any single gear piece.
EXPLORING
Marvel’s Avengers isn’t an open world game (don’t get to say that too often for a AAA release these days), but that doesn’t mean it only gives you room to do critical path stuff. A lot of the areas the game’s missions take place in are large open sandboxes, and it’s always a good idea to explore these You might fight collectibles, gear chests, friendlies in need of help, special enemies that will drop high powered loot, and more.
TACTICAL AWARENESS
Pressing up on the d-pad highlights your mission objective and tells you where to go. Marvel’s Avengers calls this Tactical Awareness, and it’s actually pretty useful for plenty of things. For starters, in the aforementioned large, open areas, using Tactical Awareness regularly shows you where the optional objectives of that area are, and how many of them there are. Then there’s the fact that if you run into a cache or a room with a locked door, you can simple use Tactical Awareness to figure out where its locks, which you need to deal with, are. So use Tactical Awareness, and use it often.
COLLECTIBLES
Marvel’s Avengers has a lot of collectibles for you to collect, from files and audio logs to comics and codex entries, and it’s a good idea to seek these out and keep checking on your collection every now and then. Some, like audio logs and codex entries, provide narrative flavour and context, but others, such as comics, actually have gameplay advantages, giving you small pasive stat buffs. Sure, on their own these stat buffs are pretty negligible, but if you amass a good collection, they do start making a difference.
HARM CHALLENGES
HARM Room challenges are introduced in the game pretty early on- these are basically augmented reality combat simulation rooms where you can train with your heroes, and while that might seem like something that’s easy to ignore, it’s actually a good idea to do all the HARM Room challenges that you get. For starters, they teach you some important combat stuff, but on top of that, they give useful rewards as well, such as decent quantities of XP with which to unlock new combat skills, and the aforementioned comic books to add to your collection.
DROP ZONES
Drop Zones are one of several different kinds of multiplayer missions in Marvel’s Avengers (which can also be played solo if you wish)- and if you’re not playing the game just for the campaign and to experience the story, doing these whenever possible is highly recommended. Drop Zones are pretty quick – they take no longer than 10-15 minutes – but very useful. Not only do you get guaranteed gear rewards, which are almost always worth the effort, these missions are also a great way to level up quickly, given how much XP they give out.
DODGING
Combat in Marvel’s Avengers starts out a bit shallow, and can initially seem like a button-mashing brawling affair, but it gets more complicated as you go, as you unlock more combat skills and run into different kinds of enemies. In the busiest combat encounters, dodging becomes crucial. The game often throws a lot of enemies at you at the same time, which means attacks are coming at you from all directions quite frequently. Though there are on-screen indicators to tell you when an attack is coming in your direction from a specific direction, it can be easy to lose track of those in tense combat encounters- but make sure that that doesn’t happen, because if you’re not good with your dodging, you’ll go down pretty quickly, and pretty often.
PARRYING
Once you’ve got the dodging down, it’s time to practice parrying, which is obviously more useful, given the fact that you also hit back at enemies after avoiding their attacks. Parrying is something that you have to unlock in the skill tree with some heroes, so make sure you do that as well. Perfectly timed parries can be crucial in hectic combat encounters.
HEALING
As we’ve mentioned a couple of times by now, you can go down with surprising ease in some of the busier combat encounters in Marvel’s Avengers (of which there’s no shortage), which means healing is something you have to be on the lookout for constantly. Unfortunately, the game doesn’t tutorialize this aspect of the combat very well. Often, enemies drop Willpower orbs upon being defeated, so keep a look out for these during combat. Meanwhile, you’ll also often find breakable cylinders in the environment, which heal you upon being broken. It’s usually a good idea to be aware of where these orbs have been dropped and where these breakables are, and use them when your health is at critical levels.
KNOCKOUT ATTACKS
Enemies that have been stunned can be taken out with special knockout attacks, denoted by a prompt to press Triangle and Circle (or Y and B) at the same time. Do this whenever you get the opportunity. Not only do these do massive damage that usually kills the enemy (unless they are bullet sponges, which can happen), knockout attacks also heal you up quite significantly. So do knockout attacks whenever and wherever possible.
INTRINSIC ABILITIES
Each hero in Marvel’s Avengers has an intrinsic ability, and these function differently for each one of them, even in terms of how you use them. Once again, the game doesn’t explain this very clearly, but for some characters – such as Hulk, Ms. Marvel, and Thor – you have to hold down R2 for as long as you want to use the intrinsic ability. You don’t just press R2 or hold it down for a couple of seconds to activate it- hold it down for as long as you want to use it.
ENVIRONMENT
Something else that you’ll want to keep on the lookout for during combat encounters in Marvel’s Avengers is things in the environment that you can use to your advantage. There are often fuel tanks, barrels, and more in the environments that can explode upon impact, and you’ll want to use these to your advantage whenever possible. With particular heroes – such as Iron Man and Black Widow – making these things explode to deal heavy damage to enemies around them is particular useful, since you can do so from a distance with their ranged attacks.This isn’t a novel concept by any means, but it really does make a difference during combat.
SHIELDED ENEMIES
Marvel’s Avengers throws many, many different kinds of enemies at you, and eventually, you’ll need to learn to proiritize taking out some before the others. To be more specific, some enemies will come at you with shields that will block most attacks, and since your companion heroes aren’t particularly great at dealing with these shields, it will fall to you to do so. Heavy finisher attacks or charged heavy attacks are great for breaking these shields, so focus on these enemies first, or else they’ll prove to be a pretty big nuisance to you and your companions.
DIFFICULTY
If ever you find that combat in the game is getting too hectic or too much to deal with, there’s no shame in knocking down the difficulty. While doing missions on higher difficulties nets you with better rewards, doing them on easy doesn’t bring any penalties- you get the same guaranteed rewards from missions that you would have if you did those missions on normal.
