Marvel's Midnight Suns (Computer)
Official GBAtemp Review
Product Information:
- Release Date (NA): December 2, 2022
- Publisher: 2K
- Developer: Firaxis Games
- Genres: Strategy
- Also For: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S
Game Features:
The strength of an interconnected universe, like the Marvel Universe, should be in the diversity of stories it can offer. You can have big, save-the-world stories or small, personal ones; fantastical stories or grounded ones; darkly serious stories or lightly comic ones. This works fine when you're dealing with comic books, where it's easier to take risks on a strange story, but when these universes expand out to bigger ventures, things will naturally become more homogenized. We've seen this happen to Marvel's movies, and its first two games (Marvel's Avengers and Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy) seemed to be on the same track, being broad action-adventure titles.
Marvel's Midnight Suns completely breaks that trend, and proudly displays the weirdness of the Marvel Universe. Focusing mostly on the demonic and mystical side of the MU, the story begins when Hydra resurrects the demon Lilith so she can summon the Elder God Chthon to fulfill an apocalyptic prophecy. You play as The Hunter, Lilith's son who killed her three hundred years ago when she last tried to destroy the Earth (unfortunately, you also died in the process and can't quite remember how you stopped her), after having been resurrected by the Avengers and the Midnight Suns.
Playing in this unexplored corner of the Marvel Universe lets Midnight Suns set itself apart in a few big ways. Firstly, the sleek sci-fi look that often defines recent Avengers stories is replaced by this Halloween-haunted house vibe. A lot of the enemies you face are demonic (including demon-possessed versions of popular supervillains like Venom or Sabretooth), your base of operations is a creepy church with an explorable spooky woods, even your pet dog is red and spiky with a demon tail. It's a fun twist that makes everything a little more memorable.
Secondly, it lets some relatively-obscure characters come to the forefront, since many of Marvel's most well-known characters don't necessarily fit into a story like this. Alongside marquee Avengers like Spider-Man and Captain America, we've got mid-tier mystical characters like Ghost Rider and Blade, or relative unknowns like Caretaker or Nico Minoru. It's a breath of fresh air to see some new faces, and it opens up the possibility of some interesting, novel character dynamics being explored.
Unfortunately, the strong premise and cast are let down by the main storyline. The initial setup is so comic booky and fun that it's hard not to get excited: you need to stop Nazis from summoning the Devil. It gets by on that charm for a while, but the main story plays out with no real surprises. Some recognizable characters are brainwashed into working for the bad guy, you spend a lot of time chasing McGuffins and trying random magic spells, and conflicts brew between the experienced Avengers and the scrappy Midnight Suns. It's all fairly rote, and there's often a gloomy tone that doesn't match the silliness of the premise. Most of the characters don't feel particularly well-served, either. Everybody speaks in the same snarky, aloof style and, with few exceptions, no character has much of a unique voice, despite the fact that each individual hero gets their own optional hangouts and character-building scenes. While nobody acts out of character exactly, they're the most watered-down and basic versions of themselves; they all seem to be either retreading ground already covered in the comics, or so worried about breaking canon that they don't get much of an arc. Surprisingly, The Hunter has the most personality among the cast and provides most of the levity. Matt Mercer performs the character with a stoic, epic fantasy hero seriousness that works well in action sequences and plays comedically when used in mundane conversation or to baby talk his dog.
There may be something to the fact that the original character is the most compelling, because the further the writing strays from Marvel canon, the more compelling it becomes. Midnight Suns shines when it lets its hair down and embraces its own absurdity. For example, one multi-part questline involves Nico trying to plan a surprise birthday party for Magik, and enlists Hunter to get other heroes on board to help with the preparations. Along the way, Hunter is told that Magik dislikes surprises, and the player is presented with the question of if they should betray Nico's trust and warn Magik, or risk Magik not liking her party. This material unfolds over about a week in-game with the same seriousness as the Hell-on-Earth apocalypse scenario happening all around it.
Bizarre moments like this spring organically from the gameplay, too. While out on a mission, Ghost Rider opened a portal to hell in the ground and, unthinkingly, Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man swung kick a man into it and quipped about how much of a loser that guy was anyway. Then we went back to our secret base to go fishing and talk about our feelings. A lot of dumb fun can be found in the custom costumes for the Hunter, as well. There's an inherent ridiculousness to this kind of grand crossover - especially one in a videogame, where the narrative has to bend to the whims of the gameplay - and Midnight Suns is at its best when it's willing to play with that. Unfortunately, those moments mainly pop up on the fringes of the main questline.
Midnight Suns also has an impressive pedigree as a strategy game, coming from the same developer and director as XCOM: Enemy Unknown and XCOM 2. Smartly, it makes enough changes so that it doesn't feel like a reskinned XCOM. Overall, this game focuses on combat above all else, making everything off the battlefield much less anxiety-inducing. The most illustrative example of this is in the difference between how each game approaches resource management. In XCOM, you have a few resources that have many applications, so your biggest concern is how to distribute them; in Midnight Suns, your resources only serve one purpose, so there's never much of a question on if they should be used right away, or what they should be used for. There's also no ticking clock to ramp up the pressure, enemies always scale to your level, and the story can be progressed at will (rather than needing to build something to move forward), which all make your off-the-battlefield decisions less important.
Resource management was often the most difficult part of XCOM, and Midnight Suns lets mission rewards feel fun and, well, rewarding rather than a point of stress. This leaves all of the strategy and difficulty for the combat, which creates a very different experience because once you finish a mission, any mistakes you made are essentially wiped clean; there's no situation where a mistake from the first mission will eventually come back to bite you. That lack of difficulty may be off-putting to a certain kind of strategy fan, but it's not surprising that something with a big license is much more accessible. There are, of course, difficulty settings, but they only affect the combat. You can keep increasing the stats on enemies but eventually the fights simply begin to feel unfair, rather than delivering the strategic-minded combat XCOM has.
This doesn't mean that the combat is lacking strategic depth, however. While each character's abilities are customizable, they all have a unique style of play that can't be changed. Of the possible thirteen heroes, you can only bring three into any one fight. Your team's make up will also be impacted by what characters are recovering from injuries or who is essential to the mission you're going on. This means that, while certain characters will naturally work better together than others, you're encouraged to either adjust your characters regularly to fit their constantly-changing partners, or to develop your characters to allow for more versatility. The design can feel restrictive at times, but in a way that makes you want to overcome the challenge. Your roster is constantly expanding too, up until the last mission, growing from eight to thirteen over the course of the game, meaning you never lose that excitement of seeing what cool new thing you unlocked.
The combat is very offensively-minded, which adds significant pressure to get things finished as quickly as possible. The enemy will get reinforcements on their turn for the first few turns of a mission, so slacking in taking them out will lead to an unmanageable buildup of enemies. There's no cover system and no movement restrictions on yourself or the enemy, meaning your only hope of a good defense is a good offence. Every mistake feels crushing, so you need to think a few steps ahead. The lack of random chance, for you and your enemies, also makes you less likely to take risks, so it's easier to forecast the outcome of most fights many moves ahead. These changes in combat make missions much quicker and intense than XCOM's. This takes XCOM's already addictive gameplay loop and makes it even harder to put down, caught in a cycle of intense battles, needing to see what cool thing you just unlocked, and not being able to wait to try it.
The overall loop is pretty familiar here: you go on a mission, return to base so you can develop new resources or equipment, then choose your next combat mission based on what resources it gives you (or if it lets you progress in the story). Midnight Suns adds in two more things to do in between missions; you can hang out with the various heroes and develop friendships to give them a stat boost (similar to Fire Emblem), or you can explore your base on foot. The exploration sequences fill in some backstory and help you unlock cosmetics or hangout spots, but mainly serve as a pacing tool to break up the combat. You'll unlock abilities to open new paths as you progress through the game, but because the grounds all looks so similar, it can be frustrating to find an old lock for a key you just acquired. These sections are optional, however, so if you don't want to take a break from the action then you won't be slowed down by them.
While there is a lot to like here, it can get repetitive after some time. There's not many different maps, at least for the generic missions, and the differences among them aren't that noticeable because there's not many ways to interact with the environments. There's no cover and anyone can hit anyone else regardless of position on the map, so even a wider variety of maps wouldn't really change the combat too much. There's also not much variety in the enemy types, and when new ones are introduced, it feels like you'll be fighting them exclusively, instead of mixing them in with the others.
While the core gameplay is great and provides plenty of replayability, it's hard not to feel that some corners have been cut. Attack animations generally leave something to be desired, especially the team-up attacks which just have your heroes generically fighting a barely-seen enemy against a background of speed lines. Dialogue often doesn't match up to the subtitles, and will sometimes deviate completely. One late-game addition to your roster lacks any of the friendship scenes or bonuses, and has almost no extra cosmetics.
The in-game marketplace sparked controversy upon release, housing 23 premium skins that would take another roughly $60 to purchase (though they also all come with the $50 season pass, and a handful were available as pre-order bonuses). While the game showers you constantly with cosmetic rewards in-game, they're simply different palettes for the standard costumes on your character.
The first DLC, just released at the end of January, falls into this same pattern of dubious monetization. "The Good, the Bad, and the Undead" adds Deadpool to your roster, along with three story missions and a new type of enemy. The story missions are all fairly short, maybe adding up to an hour's worth of content, and the new enemy types will only show up in specific, generic missions, so you won't see too much of them. Even Deadpool's character model seems rushed, like he's a reskin of Captain America, given how tall and buff he is.
Marvel's Midnight Suns is an excellent strategy game that doesn't totally live up to the promise of its pedigree, as a comics property or a strategy game. Hardcore Marvel fans might find the portrayal of the characters a little shallow, but will surely appreciate the work it does in expanding the mystical side of the Marvel Universe; anyone looking for the newest from Firaxis may be a little disappointed that it lacks the crushing punishment of XCOM, but will still find a lot to love in its strategy offerings.
Verdict
- Combat is fast, fun and strategic
- The world and premise are unique and interesting
- Nice variety in hero strategy and development
- The strategy elements set themselves apart so this isn't just licensed XCOM
- Iconic Marvel characters don't feel like the best version of themselves
- Lack of difficulty might be disappointing for some
- Lack of variety in mission objectives, maps and enemy types
