Top 13 Marvel Games Ever Made for PC
For years they were the exclusive province of nerds, and now they are a widely loved cultural phenomena. That’s right, I’m here to talk about superheroes. For the most part there are only two groupings of superheroes, you’ve got your Marvel and you’ve got your DC. I’m more of a Marvel fan myself, and it’s hard to deny that they’ve had a much better time with their cinematic universe, but how do their games measure up? Let’s look at 13 of Marvel’s best games, and you can decide.
13. Marvel Heroes Omega
Marvel Heroes Omega Gameplay
If you’ve been keeping up with Marvel games, you’ve probably already heard of this one. You might have heard of it and not realized it was the same game as well, because this one has technically been out for some time. It was originally released as Marvel Heroes, but has been updated and released for consoles under the title Omega.
For those of you who haven’t given this one a whirl yet, I’ll get you up to speed.
Basically Marvel Heroes Omega is a free-to-play online action RPG that plays like the lovechild of Diablo 3 and Marvel Ultimate Alliance. You take control of one of 61 characters (as of March 2017) and fight your way through a long main plotline and a collection of side quests and dungeons that you can do to level your characters, get better loot, and earn currency you can use to buy things in game (including new characters and skins for those characters).
The gameplay transitions quite smoothly onto a console controller, making the comparison to Diablo 3 feel even more deserved.
The skins you can unlock for characters are varied and interesting ranging from classic skins from comics, movie skins, and alternate universe skins. For example with Spider-man you can get both his Tom Holland Civil War skin, but you can also get alternate universe variants of the character such as Spider-man Noire, and Spider-Gwen.
With the amount of things packed into this game, that is still receiving regular updates and new characters this long after its original 2014 release, and it’s free-to-play model, there really is no reason for a Marvel fan not to give this one a whirl on their PC, Xbox One, or PS4.
Pretty much all fan favourites are represented, though there’s a fair few less known characters available too
It’s every bit as chaotic as you might have imagined, given the games I compared it too
12. Marvel Future Fight
Marvel Future Fight Gameplay
(I’ll start off by saying this game is for Android and IOS. Don’t let that turn you off of it though, I have this on my phone and I play it near-daily.)
Alright, so this one is kind of similar to Marvel Heroes Omega in some ways, but not in others. It has story missions which play in a similar fashion to the campaign in Marvel Heroes Omega, but it also has headed to head pvp matches, and world boss invasions. I’ll be perfectly honest, I prefer this game though it is obviously smaller given it’s platform of choice.
Like all mobile games, you get further faster if you are willing to pay, but I found this game a lot easier to get free things in than most of its kin. Especially for new players, there’s a lot of incentives in place to make sure that you get a reasonably strong team of characters you actually like to start the game off with. It gets a little harder after that, but it’s nice that the first month or so really helps ease you into the game.
There’s a staggering amount of characters you can unlock in the game (126 as of June 2017), and a lot of them have a few different skins you can unlock for them. It’s also interestingly unique in that skins in this game are often not just a cosmetic upgrade, but actually impact how the character plays somewhat. For example, if you use the Lady Loki skin on Loki, all his (her?) attacks become ice based attacks. If you use the 1940’s skin for Ghost Rider, his motorcycle based attacks are replaced with a fiery 1940’s car.
They just added X-men characters to it a few weeks ago, and they just keep adding more and more content. As with most games like this, the more time you put into it the more you are going to get out of it. There’s a bunch of super-powerful characters (Odin, Dormammu, Thanos) that are really hard to unlock, but you feel a great sense of achievement when you actually get there. That, and with how powerful they are if you level them it becomes a lot easier to beat the harder levels and bosses in the game with them.
This one is also free-to-play, and it has some fairly cheap deals if you want to pay a little into in but not too much (there’s a monthly deal that helps you unlock characters that’s about $12 CDN or so which I got and have been fairly happy with). Basically though, this game is great and you should really give it a shot, especially if you are looking for something fun to play on your phone.
My current favourite team
The combat and gameplay really looks a lot nicer than you would tend to expect from a mobile title
11. Guardians of the Galaxy: The Telltale Series
Guardians of the Galaxy: The Telltale Series Gameplay
I’m going to come right out and say it, I love Telltale games. I loved their Game of Thrones game, and I loved their Wolf Among Us game. When I heard they were making a Batman game I was just sitting here desperately hoping they would do something with Marvel, and then they did and gave us this wonderful game.
For those of you who don’t know, Telltale makes games that are basically interactive films. You make choices in how the story plays out, and you complete quick-time events and make dialogue choices. You never really know which choices will impact the story in a large way, and a great many of them impact it in a small way. They’ve made quite a few games now, and they’ve pretty much all done rather well.
If you’ve ever played one of their games before, you’ll know more or less what to expect.
The game is going to be five episodes in length, with the first two episodes currently out and available for purchase.
So grab the first episode, and if you like it you can pick up the rest. The great value of episodic games if you get to get your feet wet before committing to actually purchasing a full game.
The good old dialogue wheel that most gamers will be familiar with
Everyone’s favourite band of marvel trouble makers
10. Marvel Ultimate Alliance
Marvel Ultimate Alliance Gameplay
There are very few Marvel games that have as strong a following as Ultimate Alliance and its sequel. A few of the games on this list draw obvious inspiration from these games, but none of them manage to be quite as good. Likely because multiplayer games are almost never as good as single player games.
Ultimate Alliance allows you to build a team of your favourite Marvel characters (with a roster of 140 characters including DLC and system exclusive characters) and set out to stop Doctor Doom and the Masters of Evil. The storyline is pretty standard for a superhero game, but the gameplay is where this title shines. It’d be a strong action RPG on its own, but with the addition of the Marvel universe it is a singularly awesome game.
Both it and it’s sequel have been recently remastered for newer platforms and PCs, so there’s never really been a better time to try out this fan favourite.
It’s not the prettiest game, but the characters and gameplay make it intensely replayable
Plus being able to make a team of whatever characters you think would be fun together, is pretty awesome honestly
9. Marvel Puzzle Quest
Marvel Puzzle Quest Gameplay
This is more like what you might expect from a mobile game. Marvel Puzzle Quest is the answer to the question you never knew you wanted to ask, “What would happen if Bejeweled has a little more Marvel in it.”
In Puzzle Quest you take a team of three characters against an opposing team in turn based battles where matching rows of coloured gems equates to damaging the enemy team.
I know what you’re thinking, you’re thinking that this is a ridiculous idea for a Marvel game. Well, I would tend to agree with you but I would also point out that the overall point of any game is to be fun, right? Well, despite this game being a really silly idea, it is (like many Bejeweled-style games) really rather addicting. You’ll likely sink hours into this, and still keep coming back. There’s something to say about games that elicit that type of a response.
As with many of the games on this list so far, Puzzle Quest is a free to play game. It features both multiplayer against other players, and single player against the games AI. It’s a quick download and doesn’t take much to get into, so if you are a fan of more casual gaming this one is likely the one for you.
It’s got a fairly solid roster of characters to choose from too, which is nice
The art style is suitably stylized to give a very hand-drawn sort of feel, which I admit I do kind of like
8. Marvel Contest of Champions
Marvel Contest of Champions Gameplay
This one’s another mobile game (What can I say, Marvel has been really active in their development of solid mobile games) which is in yet another genre of gaming. You’ve seen an action RPG, and you’ve seen a casual gem matching game, now it’s time for a fighting game.
In the game, you will take on the role of a “Summoner”, who has been given the job to collect teams of Marvel heroes and villains and pit them against each other for The Collector. It plays similarly to most recent fighting games like Mortal Kombat, but as it was designed for a touchscreen interface, it has a considerably simplified combat system that is used by stringing together three different attacks and power attacks that charge up when you take or deal damage.
You can play through the storyline and challenges on your own, or go head to head with other players for rewards. There is a tremendous amount of unlockables in this game, and the best way to get them is usually through playing against other Summoners.
Each of your characters can also be leveled up to make them increasingly more powerful, which makes it’s character progression very similar to Future Fight.
They also are pretty good about keeping up with movie and TV show versions of characters, though they count as separate characters rather than skins in Contest of Champions
Certain characters have abilities that keep things interesting too. Wolverine gradually regenerates health which makes him a great addition to any team
7. LEGO Marvel’s Avengers
LEGO Marvel’s Avengers Gameplay
We really couldn’t do a list of Marvel games without touching on the LEGO games, because honestly they are in some ways some of the best games in the Marvel franchise. They certainly offer a level of freedom to explore and see iconic scenes from the films that is not present in any other franchise.
LEGO Marvels’ Avengers does all these things and more in sparkling form.
First of all, don’t be fooled by the title, this game does not just focus on the Avengers films. In this game you get to play through the storyline from the first and second Avengers films, as well as smaller campaigns that cover Dark World, Winter Soldier, First Avenger, and Iron Man 3. You can also explore Asgard.
As for characters, any veteran of LEGO games will know that they have a name for allowing you to unlock a dizzying amount of characters, and this game is no different in that regard boasting an impressive 200 characters.
This game is infinitely replayable, and one of the best LEGO games to date. It’s a must play for any Marvel fan.
It’s also worth mentioning that this is a very pretty game, especially considering that it’s LEGO
It’s really entertaining see the films play out in LEGO fashion
6. LEGO Marvel Super Heroes
LEGO Marvel Super Heroes Gamplay
Marvel Super Heroes is fairly similar to Marvel Avengers, but there are some key differences. For starters, where Avengers focuses closely on the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Marvel Super Heroes focuses more on the comics with a lot of characters that never appear in films. It still has nods to the films of course, but it ends up feeling far less grounded to them. Which is largely a good thing.
The storyline is a lot more contained, not jumping all over the place like Avengers and it allows for a lot of characters to appear that wouldn’t have reason to in Avengers.
In Marvel Super Heroes you are trying to save the world, both from Doctor Doom’s evil plan that he has concocted with Loki, but there is more to this dastardly plan that it at first seems.
The storyline is pretty solid, and the writing is characteristically silly and fun as you would expect from a LEGO game. Really whether you get this or Avengers just depends how much of a film tie-in you would like.
For starters, this game has Carnage. Which I mean, is enough to sell me but I don’t know about you. Did I mention he juggles LEGO skulls as an idle animation?
Of course no Marvel story would be complete without Loki being a bad seed
5. Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3
Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 Gameplay
Crossovers are always fun when they are done right, and this series is one of the oldest continuously running games of its kind.
Basically the concept is fairly simple, you take a team of three of your favourite Marvel heroes and villains, or your favourite Capcom characters and you duke it out with other teams of three until finally you work your way through the storyline and fight off Galactus. Apart from its three character team dynamic, it’s fairly standard for a fighting game but the ability to have Dormammu punch Wesker in the face is not to be undervalued.
One of the things that really sells this game is its art style though. I’ll be the first to admit, I have a serious weakness for all things cell-shaded; I love it. Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 uses this art style to beautiful effect.
Just make sure when you pick up this beauty that you grab Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, and not Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two worlds. They are nearly identical games, but the Ultimate version has 11 characters you can’t get in the original and the two DLC characters, along with some minor gameplay tweaks. It was originally intended to all be DLC but the 2011 Earthquake and Tsunami that hit Japan set back the development for a fairly long time and they chose to just release it all as a standalone version instead.
Plus you can play as the coolest Resident Evil villain to date, Nemesis
Just look at that shading though …
4. X-Men Origins: Wolverine
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Now, going into this I know a lot of you have strong feelings on the film this is based on. I want to say right now, that you should try to judge this game separate from its film because it really does manage to shine on its own.
Wolverine is a third-person hack n slash game that really explores what an R-rated X-men story would look like. With the release of Logan we’ve all seen what that actually looks like, but this was a fair bit earlier. Basically it’s as bloody and gory as you’d expect from a game about a man with long blades on his hands that he uses against people. Limbs will fly, heads will roll and you will get to see a lot of lovingly rendered holes being blown into the protagonist and healing up.
Despite its age, this is a really pretty game in a brutal sort of way. Add to that, that Hugh Jackman actually voices the character through the game and this is really one of the better X-Men games out there.
The story draws some inspiration from the film, so you will see some of the film in this game but the vast majority of the storyline is an original plot based on the comics.
This is one of the best Marvel games out in recent years, and with it being a little older now you can likely pick it up fairly affordably. It’s a must play game for any fan of Wolverine.
I’m pretty sure it’s in Jackman’s contract that even if he’s being animated, he has to be shirtless
And a crap-tonne of gore, as promised
3. Ultimate Spider-Man
Ultimate Spider-Man Gameplay
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again; this is without a doubt my favourite Spider-man game of all time.
It has beautiful art, the cell shading really makes it feel like a comic book, and it lets you play as Venom and generally leap around the city being bad and eating people. Sure, they changed Venom’s origin story (he’s an experimental suit in this rather than an alien) but I can let that slide for just how amazingly good this game is.
You’ll see all the usual Spider-man villains, (including a slightly ridiculous version of Rhino that somehow managed to predict the slightly ridiculous version of rhino in the second Amazing Spider-Man film) and you will be hooked from start to finish.
There’s of course all the things you’d expect from a Spidey game: costumes to find and unlock (including a Dark Spider-man costume), collectibles to find and random street crimes to stop, along with a whole lot of but to kick.
If you try nothing else on this list, try this game. It’s not super easy to find anymore but it’s nothing short of a masterpiece.
I mean, you’ve got to admit that’s somewhat close
Venom is comically bigger than Spidey, but it manages to work pretty well with the art style
2. Deadpool
Deadpool Gameplay
If you try to imagine what a Deadpool game might look like, this is pretty close to what you will imagine. It’s overflowing with violence, offensiveness and fourth-wall breaks. Basically, it’s genius.
It’s probably good to mention that this is in no way connected to the film though, as it came out sometime before. It was rereleased onto next-gen consoles to coincide with the film’s release but they weren’t connected.
The game follows Deadpool as he works to foil the plans of Doctor Sinister, whose plans will result in the destruction of the world. He has some help along the way from some of the X-men, though largely they are there for dialogue and not to actually help.
Throughout the game it’s made clear that this is Deadpool’s idea for a game about himself, and not an actual real story. Which is about what you might expect.
It’s an insane chaotic mess of a game, but that’s what makes it a great Deadpool game.
And of course, there’s a fair amount of dismemberment in this game
The continued fourth-wall breaks really make this game unique and continuously hilarious
1. Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite
Marvel vs.Capcom: Infinite Gameplay
Release Date: September 19th, 2017
This is probably the most exciting Marvel game currently on the horizon. It takes the well-loved crossover and brings in elements from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, namely the Infinity Stones. In Infinite, the infinity stones will grant characters powers to do special powerful attacks.
With Ultron and Sigma becoming one being to wipe out all organic life, it falls to the heroes and villains of both dimensions to band together to face this great threat.
The game will have a good mix of new and returning characters from both universes, and will feature a new two vs two gameplay mechanic replacing the 3 vs 3 of the previous game.
It’s coming out in a couple months, and I’m sure we will continue to learn more about it in the coming months.
Thanos using the reality stone
They seem to have largely done away with the cell shading in favour of a more realistic art style. It’s pretty, though I do miss the aesthetic
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