Your Favorite Marvel Characters Are Finally Getting the Hero Shooter Treatment

It doesn’t feel like it should have taken this long for someone to realize that taking Marvel characters and throwing them into a hero shooter would be, at worst, an easy cash grab, and at best, a stroke of gaming genius!

That’s exactly what happened just today with the announcement of Marvel Rivals, the upcoming, free-to-play, six-versus-six third-person shooter starring a swath of some of the most beloved superheroes and villains to ever grace the genre fiction zeitgeist.

Developed by NetEase, the game is set to launch with 18 playable characters in the form of Black Panther, Doctor Strange, Groot, Hulk, Iron Man, Loki, Luna Snow, Magik, Magneto, Mantis, Namor, Peni Parker, Rocket Raccoon, Scarlet Witch, Spider-Man, Storm, Star-Lord and The Punisher, with additional characters planned for future content drops.

Each character looks to be boasting the hero shooter staple of unique attributes, attacks, and cooldown-sensitive abilities, along with a game-changing ultimate ability that one must fill a meter to access. Rivals doesn’t call it a day there, though; immensely destructible environments and coded synergies between certain characters look to add another layer of depth to a genre already known for its strategic stylings.

The big question then: When can we get our hands on Marvel Rivals?

When does Marvel Rivals release?

There’s no confirmed release date at the time of writing, but a closed alpha test version of the game will be available to a few lucky players sometime in May, so a full release date announcement shouldn’t be terribly far off; certainly within the year, one would think.

Whenever that happens, we’ll likely get a closer look at just how involved the apparent plot—in which a bunch of Marvel characters join forces to prevent Doctor Doom’s battle with an alternate version of Doctor Doom from tearing the fabric of the multiverse apart—is with the actual game. (I.e. whether or not we’ll get a campaign mode or something of the sort.)

Of course, given that a gaming juggernaut like Blizzard dropped that particular ball with Overwatch, it’s probably for the best that NetEase treats Marvel Rivals as the medium it actually is: a game.

(featured image: Marvel Games)