When you were a kid, I bet you wanted to be a superhero, right? What power did you want? Flight? Super strength? Super speed? Invisibility, which is a fun power to want as a child but a really gross power to want as an adult? For me, and likely for most other trans people out there, it was shape shifting. Whatever it was, I can bet it wasn’t the ability to deal cards, so why the hell is Marvel’s Midnight Suns pushing a card battling system into what was shaping up to be one of the most intriguing superhero releases in ages?
Look, I know there’s Gambit, but a) you absolutely did not want to be Gambit, stop lying, and b) cards are just part of Gambit’s schtick. It’s like saying Captain America’s power is loving his country. Gambit can make things explode, and chooses a deck of cards because they’re portable, flexible, and suit his image. The cards in Midnight Suns have no extra layer of Gambitness to them. They’re just cards.
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Marvel’s Midnight Suns is doing a lot of things right. It has a cool cast full of iconic heroes like Wolverine, beloved but underused characters like Blade, and grossly underappreciated surprises like Magik. While you can’t, unfortunately, smooch the supes, it also has a character dynamic system like Fire Emblem: Three Houses or Mass Effect, letting you talk to and get to know characters in between missions, adding a layer of personality to the whole affair.
So far, those are fantastic foundations for a superhero game, because they come with the expectation that when I’m not chilling with Doctor Strange, I’m cracking skulls. Instead, I’m heading out into the field to play gin rummy.
It’s important to remember that Midnight Suns is essentially Marvel XCOM. It was never going to come with Batman: Arkham combat, Spider-Man traversal, or Avengers… um…
Anyway, it was never going to be as fast and fluid as your typical superhero hits. I don’t mind that it’s a strategic RPG, where time stops and you move your characters like pieces on a board, deciding which move to make, which foe to target, and how to get around the environment. Look, I’d snap your hand off for an actual Magik game where I just get to be Magik and hurt people, but I understand Midnight Suns is not that. Just… cards. Why did it have to be cards?
The developers have confirmed that the cards will not be inside loot boxes nor will they be bought by microtransactions – skins will be, but that's fairly typical. Having to buy the cards would have made it worse, but that's not the main issue. Deck building games are fine. Not my thing, but sure. Whether you like them or not though, the genre just doesn't fit with the superhero mythos. Can you imagine a Wolverine panel where he goes "Sorry bub, I can't punch your lights out, I only have item cards left." Doctor Strange can manipulate realities to his will, but he can't find a single timeline where he has a critical damage card. It's less Marvel XCOM and more Marvel Slay the Spire, which I'm sure sounds incredible to some of you, but superheroes shouldn't have their superness defined by which cards you picked for them at the start of the battle.
I know it's a game, and superheroes in games need to have limitations placed on them to provide some level of challenge, but the cards just feel so arbitrary and cheap. Even if it's not a loot box cash grab, it's a strange mechanic for a game that otherwise seems so intent on trying new ideas to fall back on. This was never going to be a typical superhero game, and I'm okay with that. I'm excited, even to see how the superhero genre can thrive in different spaces. Just… cards. Come on. Blade doesn't need a card to tell him what to do.
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