Worth: $16.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Intro:
Those with the patience to stomach the bloat are in for a good time …
The XCOM series really changed the public perception of turn-based tactics games. Whereas once they were seen as the exclusive domain of fussy micromanaging nerds with fecund neckbeards, XCOM made people realise normies could play and enjoy these games as well.
That said, the insane difficulty spikes, the cruel and capricious RNG and the slender narrative tended to keep this series from total mainstream acceptance. It was a curious development, then, to hear that XCOM devs Firaxis got the Midnight Suns gig, delivering a game chockers with Marvel heroes and villains and a wholesome, mostly positive, narrative.
Could the devs responsible for enabling mass save-scumming actually do the job well? Turns out, heck yeah! Although with a few chunky caveats.
Marvel’s Midnight Suns is essentially the story of The Hunter, a player-generated character who fights a seemingly endless battle against their mother, Lilith. At the start of the game, they’re resurrected from a timeless slumber to join with heroes like Doctor Strange, Blade, Captain Marvel, Spider-Man, Ghost Rider and, like, heaps of others.
The game essentially exists as two parts. The first part is classic Firaxis turn-based tactical combat with a twist. This time, instead of misleading (and deeply frustrating) percentage-based hit/miss chances, a deck-building card-based system has been utilised, where you can use a certain number of moves and powers that complement one another, and can be upgraded.
It takes a little while to get used to, particularly if you’re an XCOM veteran, but honestly, this new system works well for superhero combat. Fast-paced, visually exciting, and very tactical, it’s the kind of easy to pick up/hard to master gameplay that becomes addictive and deeply satisfying the more you engage with it.
Anyone worried that Firaxis would lose their edge with this new property need not be concerned, this is fantastically dense and detailed stuff, although considerably less dependent on the indifferent whims of the great Elder God RNG.
The other part of the game encompasses base management, team building and (occasionally) book clubs and yoga. Seriously. While Midnight Suns’ main focus is combat, a good portion of the title is centred on improving relationships with the various heroes. This takes place in a variety of ways, but mainly involves you scrolling through endless reams of dialogue. For real, there’s dozens of hours of chatter in this game, very little of it super compelling, and it’s pretty much a foregone conclusion that you’ll be skipping through most of it after the first ten hours or so. It’s not even that it’s bad dialogue per se, but it’s so redundant and repetitive and good lord, they could have used a script editor on this thing.
So, when it comes to Marvel’s Midnight Suns, the question you need to ask yourself is: will I wearily tolerate flabby sections of stilted banter in order to get to the next section of brilliant, finely-tuned tactical turn-based combat? For your humble word janitor, this was an easy “yes”, but your mileage may vary.
Those with the patience to stomach the bloat are in for a good time, proving that while you may be suffering from cinematic superhero fatigue, the video game version of the popular genre is still innovating in strange and wonderful ways.
