MARVEL Rivals is one of the most anticipated live-service games, as thousands jumped into the beta test.
While we’re drowning in live-service games all begging for our attention, the addition of fan-favourite Marvel heroes meant that this one stood out.
Fans were thrilled to finally receive a release date for the arena shooter following the wildly popular beta test.
Marvel Rivals will launch on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam and Epic Games Store.
It will be released on December 6, 2024, which is sooner than anyone expected.
Not only this, but Marvel Rivals will be free-to-play, so everyone will be able to dive in and give it a try.
If you want to play, all you need to do is add the game to your library and you can go from there.
The release date was announced alongside a new trailer for the game which featured two new playable characters.
Captain America and The Winter Soldier will both be available to play at launch and gamers got a quick look at their gameplay.
It doesn’t announce what roles these characters will play, but from the gameplay trailer it seems that Soldier will be a duelist while Captain America looks to be more of a tank.
One of the biggest perks about Marvel Rivals is that the characters will be available to all players with none of the usual Battle Pass purchases.
Unlike Overwatch 2, you won’t need to buy a premium battle pass or play through challenges in order to unlock extra characters.
NetEase has not only promised free access to all characters on launch, but also free access to all future heroes as well.
These will be added to the game in future updates to make sure the game stays relevant.
Overwatch 2 saw a disastrous release as players complained about the price of the microtransactions and the lack of promised content.
Marvel Rivals wants to be a new take on the hero shooter genre, and promises to be more consumer friendly than other entries.
Only time will tell if it will actually stay true to those promises, but if the launch is truly free-to-play like it claims then it will likely earn good will with fans and have a successful release.
If you want to read more about Gamescom, check out the Borderlands 4 announcement.
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