Marvel fans are enjoying a great period in gaming, with the release of Spider-Man 2 in October being one of the most anticipated games of the year.
After years of being overshadowed by DC in the gaming department, Marvel is now picking up the slack and has some highly commendable games in their catalog, with more to come beyond Spider-Man 2 with games focusing on Wolverine, Black Panther, and more to come.
Unfortunately, there’s still a fairly long wait to go until Spider-Man 2 releases on Oct. 20th, but, thankfully, there’s plenty to whet your appetite on the Marvel front in the meantime.
Below you can find our pick of the best Marvel games you need to try, with the original Spider-Man from Insomniac Games and Miles Morales both excluded. If you haven’t played either of them yet, you definitely should.
Guardians of the Galaxy
Guardians of the Galaxy sees you leading the team as Star-Lord, including all your favorite members of the roster, and also puts significant focus on some lesser characters from the comics that deserve your attention.
A strictly single-player game with no microtransactions, 2021’s Guardians of the Galaxy fared much better critically than its older sibling, Square Enix’s Marvel’s Avengers, with the narrative particularly impressive.
Guardians of the Galaxy didn’t set the world alight but it is still a thoroughly enjoyable game that, if you haven’t played yet, you should definitely pick up.
Marvel Snap
Marvel Snap is a digital collectible card game playable on PC and handheld mobile devices, which places you in a head-to-head standoff against another real-world player. Games last six turns (though can be shortened or extended with particular effects), and each card has a set cost and power.
Each card has a unique ability that can help you in the game or hinder an opponent as you enter matches with a deck consisting of 12 cards. From here, you can double down to receive more rewards for a win or retreat to save face.
The best part of Marvel Snap is the artwork on the cards, all of which have variants as you see in the comic world to showcase different art styles, costumes, and more.
Midnight Suns
The tactical turn-based RPG Midnight Suns focused on the darker, supernatural side of the Marvel Universe to bring the likes of Ghost Rider, Nico Minoru, and Magik center stage, while also seeing you create a new character that plays an integral part in the story.
Midnight Suns has a different approach to combat than you might expect from a Marvel game, with each character having cards that are used to cast abilities, with different costs and effects. It sounds weird but you’ll quickly get used to it.
The story is gripping, the array of characters is extremely impressive, and balances things nicely with some of the lesser-known characters in Marvel history alongside the usual suspects like Spider-Man, Captain America, Hulk, and Deadpool.
Lego Marvel Superheroes
Now a decade old, Lego Marvel Superheroes may well just be the greatest Marvel game ever created, benefitting from an environment where an entirely blank slate was provided that allowed TT Games to incorporate the Avengers, Spider-Man, X-Men, and Fantastic Four without any issues.
Other Lego Marvel titles have included a massive roster but nothing comes close to the depth and variety that Lego Marvel Superheroes did, with 155 characters (not including DLC) featuring some of the more unique members of the Marvel Universe.
Gameplay, as you’d expect from a Lego game, is fantastic. The story is brilliant, bringing in members from all the different teams, and even some villains, to fight together against a much bigger threat. It’s everything a Marvel game should be.
Marvel’s Avengers
Square Enix’s much-maligned Avengers game had plenty of flaws, with the online aspects of the game extremely disappointing and limited, but the single-player campaign still stands as a decent effort.
It’s not particularly long, though it is padded out with hero and faction-specific missions, and it’s where the game shines. While the online functionality of the game is coming to a close, the single-player campaign will remain available.
Now available for a much, much cheaper price than its initial launch, it’s a great time to pick up the game and enjoy the single-player campaign which, in hindsight, should have been the main focus, rather than its sub-par online features.
