Slap on your tights, it's clobbering time!

Hello to all our new readers, and welcome back to those who have been following ZAM's bi-weekly column, The Free Agent. Our mission, as always, is to answer the question "Can gaming REALLY be free?"

Well of course it can. But, as we learned in the last episode of the Free Agent, sometimes free comes at a cost. And in the case of Star Conflict  that cost was both time and content. Be sure to check out Episode 4 if you want to know more.

So as we set aside our pilot’s jump suit for a pair of tights and a mask, will the Free Agent discover the same problem with Gazillion Entertainment's, brand new Marvel Heroes? Or does this super-charged Action RPG MMO deliver as a true free-to-play title?

Face palm...

They did it again, slapped that MMO label on yet another game that just barely squeaks by the definition. And, sadly, in trying to add MMO elements to an otherwise reasonably well polished Diablo-esque Action RPG game, they really killed it for me.

Okay yes, you replaced the lobby style match making of Diablo3 with an "open world" where you can team up with other players to tackle event bosses and complete quests together. But, after wandering aimlessly down deserted streets populated only with the leftover corpses of defeated henchmen and other low-life scum that the super heroes somewhere up ahead of me had looted and tossed aside, I began to wonder, is this better than a lobby? Do I feel more immersed in this game, or is having all these other players in this open world just getting in my way?

Of course eventually I caught up with the rampaging super hero death squad and became one of them, wandering through the mean streets of Hell's Kitchen like a plague of locusts, devouring XP as we went and leaving nothing but devastation and lag in our wake. That's cool and all... if the name of the game was "the 8th Plague of Egypt", but last I checked I was supposed to be Super Hero not a giant freaking grasshopper.

Typical launch week problems, with a chance of Locusts

I'm not cynical by nature, I swear. I am willing to recognize that this game is new and fresh and there is a critical mass effect at launch. Once the locusts, I mean super hero death squad gets thinned out a bit, the open world is probably not all that bad. And of course there are instanced pockets of content/storyline throughout the open world where you can play in a group of 5 heroes.

Now that feels more like a super hero game, right. The Fantastic Four, the Avengers, the X-men, super hero teams are essential to this kind of game, and I'd even go as far as to say that it's a huge part of immersing oneself in a super hero storyline.

So there I am playing as the Thing in my first "super-squad" area, ready to step up to my role as the tank of the group and looking forward to some good ol' fashioned clobbering time. But what's this? The last member of our group arrives and low and behold, it's me. Well not me, as in I, but me as in another Thing. How can there be two Things in one group?

"Multi-verse, multi-verse" cry all the hard core comic book geeks, but I'm sorry, I just couldn't suspend my disbelief. It really bugged me, to the point that I actually logged for a while and came back later in the hope of finding another group that I could actually believe.

And no I am not just copying Penny Arcade’s comic on the subject, this actually happened to me. But perhaps the fact that it's such a similar joke is indicative of a larger issue.

When I did finally log back in I was excited to discover Venom was on the loose in my area. Being the super hero that I was, of course I ran to intercept him. As one of the world event-boss super villains, Venom packed a serious punch. Good thing there were some locusts to help me out, namely 5 Hawkeyes, 4 Storms, 4 Things, 3 Dare Devils, and 2 Spidermans. Groan...

Okay, so that's the ugly and the bad, but what about the good?

There certainly was some of that as well, but with less than a week to actually play Marvel Heroes, I don't feel as though it's fair for me to give a full blown review of this game, or attempt in any way to label it out right as a success or failure. So all I've shared are my immediate impressions and some things that frustrated me.

Also it's worth noting that I've never been a huge fan of Action RPG games. Maybe it was all those hours spent picking up nothing but the leftover bolts and arrows when I would play Diablo2 with my mouse-click happy friends that turned me off the genre. Either way, don't let me dissuade you from trying it out; that at least won't cost you anything.

Lucky for anyone who thinks I'm just a jaded Diablo reject who hardly gave Marvel Heroes a chance, there is another one of ZAM's talented writers who got early access to the full release, (something free never gets you) and was consequentially able to play a whole lot more of it than I. Not only that, but I think you could describe him as a bit of a Diablo nut.

While I don't agree with everything in his review, I think he did a great job of showing what Marvel Heroes is all about, so go check out his article. After you finish reading Page 2 of the Free Agent of course...