didn't expect that at the end of the year, there were still masters in the hero shooter track.

Last Friday, NetEase's "Marvel Brawl" was launched globally, and it was launched at the speed of light only four months after getting the version number in August, which shows that NetEase is full of confidence in this. The confidence of "Marvel Brawl" is not difficult to understand, on the one hand, it holds the top Marvel IP, Iron Man, Hulk, Team America, Magneto, Wolverine, Venom all appeared, and on the other hand, with the mature gameplay that has been verified by the market, so that the game has a lower limit and a higher upper limit.

No, the popularity of "Marvel Brawl" exploded in the international market, and the game won the first place on Steam's global best-selling list on the first day, and NetEase officially announced on X that "the number of players exceeded 10 million within 72 hours of the game was launched", and at the same time, according to SteamDB data, the number of people in the first 4 hours of "Marvel Brawl" has exceeded 440,000, second only to "CS 2".

As an evergreen in the overseas market, shooting games have always attracted a large number of players with their fierce confrontation and exciting experience. In the subdivision of hero shooting, it has entered the stage of white-hot competition. As one of NetEase's many Marvel IP works, "Marvel Brawl" has entered the overseas market this time, which is undoubtedly another step towards NetEase's goal of "pillar-type products".

One of the most supermodel episodes

From the perspective of the lowest level of gameplay structure, "Marvel Brawl" adopts a 6V6 plus cart, point capture, and point grabbing mode, and the hero roles in the game are also divided into three positions: defender (tank), duelist (output) and strategist (support), each with different responsibilities.

At first glance, these may seem like familiar gameplay, but let's not rush to define Marvel Brawl yet. Since it is a hero shooter, the most important thing is to see how the "superheroes" of various superheroes in "Marvel Brawl" are.

In "Marvel Brawl", one of the major features of the hero skill design idea is to put the two concepts of "high interaction" and "high reduction" in the first place.

In the case of individual heroes, many of their skills can be linked with other heroes to create buffs or interfere with restraints. For example, Jeff and Raccoco can ride on Groot's shoulder, and Jeff and Raccoon will get a certain amount of damage reduction. Loki's ultimate can be turned into another superhero, and Team America's shield can rebound Iron Man's ultimate, returning the favor with the other; When Magneto unleashes his ultimate, it will attract nearby projectiles (such as enemy bullets).

One of the things that amazed me the most was Doctor Strange's Portal (Farella Five-Star Array) skill, which allows all characters to travel freely, which can produce a lot of magical little tricks with show effects - you can start the game by jumping the cliff door at the exit of the opposite spawn point, and the enemy jumps without squeaking.

You can even release two portals vertically, and if the character doesn't have the ability to fly, they will drop indefinitely for the time the portal is in effect, paying homage to the legendary Fall-resistant King Loki.

The famous scene of "Thor 3".

Along the same lines, the game also introduced a combo mechanism, "Marvel Brawl" heroes can produce bonds to play combo skills, Spider-Man, Venom, and Penny Parker can produce symbiote bonds, so that Spider-Man has one more skill that can bounce off enemies; Rocket Raccoon provides the Punisher with an infinite bullet buff; Another example is that Magneto and Scarlet Witch have a father-daughter relationship in the comics, and in the game, the bond allows Magneto to attack with a magic greatsword.

At the previous meeting of the main planner, the official also revealed a news: the combo skills will be increased and adjusted according to the season. To further keep players fresh, it also gives players more options and expectations when building their lineups.

In addition to the coolness brought by the strength of the skill, another coolness of "Marvel Brawl" also comes from the high mobility of the characters, and high-mobility characters have always had a high degree of popularity, such as Genji in "Overwatch"; Yasuo of League of Legends; Apex also stands out among other shooters for its character's overall high mobility. Marvel Brawl clearly knows what players like to play, so it's the game's agility stretched to the extreme.

It is no exaggeration to say that nearly half of the heroes in the game focus on a "I lose when I land", Spider-Man's "spider silk swing" is restored in the game, Black Panther can climb walls, and Iron Man can fly all the way. Even the front-row tanks have good mobility, for example, the Hulk can jump close, Venom can eject when swinging, "the meat is still very long at the same time", which also makes the T position have a high selection rate, in the game, in cooperation with teammates to play "double T linkage" or even "3T linkage" operations will be very frequent, many players call "back to that summer".

It is precisely because of the high mobility of the character that "Marvel Brawl" chose to use the third-person over-the-shoulder perspective to solve the problem of high-speed perspective pulling, otherwise if a character like Spider-Man is made in the first person, the player is afraid that he will also have the superpower of "spider sense" after playing.

Another advantage brought by the third-person perspective is that shooting accuracy is no longer the only focus of the player's attention, but more of a test of skill release and cooperation between teams, you can meet some heroes in the game who have the ability to "self-aim", such as Star-Lord has a crosshair correction after opening the "Legendary Debut" skill, and one of Scarlet Witch's basic attacks has a slight absorption. As for the milk position and T position, most of the minor skills have an AOE effect, just throw the skill in the general direction.

It can be seen that although "Marvel Brawl" is a TPS game with the title of "shooting", "Marvel Brawl" gives players a relatively high error tolerance rate, and it is actually more relaxed and fast-paced than other games, suitable for different types of player groups.

Also in order to match the character's superpower and visual effects performance, "Marvel Brawl" also put a lot of effort into the architectural destruction design. Previously, "The Finals" has won unanimous praise from players for its realistic building destruction effects, and "Rainbow Six" also has rich indoor destruction effects, both of which provide tactical value to players' games.

Given Marvel's Brawl's unique track design and gameplay positioning, its architectural destruction elements, while adding tactical value to the game to a certain extent, are more importantly closely integrated with the characters' superpower backgrounds. Like the new Wakanda-City of Gold added in this open beta, you can find a large number of "vibranium" buildings and statues in the map, of course, you can also use the superheroes to "open and close" superpowers to destroy the scene, and feel the strong visual impact of tearing the battlefield.

From the matrix's point of view, "Marvel Brawl" is in a unique "ecological niche" on the hero shooting track, with a brighter rhythm and more direct feedback to players. The game is currently only available in the PC version, and the team said that they will not make compromises to cater to the market trend, but the first results also show that they did not make a mistake, that is, they must select a specific group of people, and then stumble hard in the direction of high quality, so that it is possible to achieve a breakthrough.

With IP as a springboard, NetEase has found a new continent

Since the birth of Marvel Comics, this IP has a glorious history of 85 years, during which countless heroes have been created, and it has become a superhero mecca in the hearts of fans. It is precisely because of the huge influence of Marvel IP that NetEase's "Marvel Brawl" has undoubtedly become the focus of attention of fans at home and abroad.

As early as during the previous overseas test, "Marvel Brawl" accumulated a lot of popularity on live broadcast and social platforms such as Twitch, X, and YouTube. Top streamers like XQC and Game Donkey have attracted traffic to the game platform. Judging from the response, the familiar superheroes and the refreshing gameplay made many foreigners say "like home" at the first glance of the game.

XQC Live Finishes Role Intensity Table

By the time it was officially launched, the game's audience on Twitch led Apex, VALORANT, Fortnite, CS and other big DAU shooters. In the overseas post bar Reddit, its plate also increased by 800,000 followers in 3 days; The influx of tens of millions of players into Marvel Brawl has led former Blizzard producer Mark Kern to call it a "loser" and praise "Asian games have exploded Western masterpieces this year".

Of course, domestic players' feelings about Marvel IP are not as fanatical and direct as foreigners, and the more practical significance is that after NetEase wins the entire IP license, it can make full use of the existing characters and content reserves to do game output, and use this part of the surplus production capacity to better polish products in art, hero balance, operation, etc., which is common to all players.

"Marvel Brawl" debuted with 33 heroes this time, and the official promise is that all heroes are free to use, so players don't have to worry about the high entry threshold, and they don't have to bother to go to the liver Krypton heroes. In addition to the well-known superheroes, there are also comic heroes such as Ice Moon Flower Snow and Jeff Jeff, and the first online team also created a new hero "Iron Fist" with national style characteristics. The production team has mentioned that they invited senior screenwriters and artists from Marvel to deeply participate in the creation, hoping to make "Marvel Brawl" a way for players to understand the Marvel Universe.

In terms of art, the resources given by NetEase this time are also full, and in-game performances, promotional PV, business cards, emoji poses, and even animations at the beginning and end of the game have been designed. These designs are more than just audio-visual presentations, but also pay homage to the classic comics, movies, and other works of art that are deeply rooted in the Marvel system.

Finally, commercialization, the official issued a document the day before the launch to reveal the commercialization system of the game, mainly based on passes and sales appearance, no numerical values, no P2W. This may be commonplace for domestic players, but for foreigners, it is actually very lethal, after all, a well-made, high-level free IP-oriented game is very easy to win their respect and favor.

After years of development, the hero shooting category is no longer a "one super and many strong" pattern in the world, and the popularity of "Marvel Brawl" after its launch proves to everyone the new idea of IP adaptation + hero shooting, which has successfully made a "good start", but on the other hand, there are still more uncertainties in this track, and how to use its own advantages to expand its influence and let more players experience the charm of Marvel IP and shooting games is still the next topic that the team needs to continue to discuss.

This article is from Xinzhi self-media and does not represent the views and positions of Business Xinzhi.If there is any suspicion of infringement, please contact the administrator of the Business News Platform.Contact: system@shangyexinzhi.com