Tribute Games and Dotemu team up yet again to make yet another solid beat ‘em up game with Marvel Cosmic Invasion. With the success of past games, it is no surprise to me that Marvel Cosmic Invasion feels rather good, but my deeper feelings are rather complicated. I suggest you keep on reading.
The demo for Marvel Cosmic Invasion is available on Steam right now, so you could dive in and see how the game goes for yourself instead of listening to me. Honestly, I urge you to do exactly this. Because from a surface level, Marvel Cosmic Invasion does a great job at hitting all of Dotemu’s classic notes. The combat is tight, the characters are fantastic with their own mix of abilities, and even the soundtrack feels like an homage to the classic days. Honestly, there isn’t much to complain about.
As Sweet as Pie
With my time in the demo, there isn’t a whole lot of complexity here. Marvel Cosmic Invasion is as simple as apple pie. You know what you are getting when you cut into the crust to reveal the sweet caramelized fruit. What is great is how Dotemu has other flavors up their sleeve. You can get their other flavors under the guise of past themes. Chances are, if you liked their peach, cherry, or any other kind of pie, you’re going to like this one as well.
The demo had a slew of characters available to play as, and I am glad they aren’t as cookie-cutter as I was expecting. Games of the past tend to have four characters, and each one felt the same except for one or two things. Here, it is vastly different, a thing that Dotemu is great at.
Venom feels incredibly different from Wolverine, which I had queued up as my secondary character. Yes, you read that right. You can pick a second character which leaned more towards the history of Marvel games and having some sort of team contingency. If you ever want to swap, the left shoulder button inserts your replacement. In some instances, like combos and special moves, your secondary character performs an attack and swiftly disappears into the ether, eagerly awaiting the next tag in.
With the variety of characters and their abilities, making a perfect combo isn’t that difficult. The feeling of swapping from Captain America to Rocket Racoon was a bit jarring, but it felt right. Mixing the up-close and personal attack style with Rocket’s guns created a unique synergy that had me swapping between both of them quickly to fight off tons of enemies in quick succession.
Level design is exactly what we have come to expect out of games of this genre. All I can say is that the backgrounds and foregrounds both look excellent, and it tells me exactly where I am. It does its job at immersing me deeper into the game, providing me with enough details that made me utter, “Oh that’s cool,” several times.
Combative Nostalgia
It does have that sense of whimsy, sending me back into a time where things felt a bit easier, because I was a child with zero responsibilities. I know it is a time that we can never go back to, but with something like Marvel Cosmic Invasion, we have the chance to show others a more modern take on how we used to have fun. I feel comfortable playing this with my kid, even getting her involved if she ever felt so curious. Does it speak to the simplicity of Dotemu’s overall design philosophy? Perhaps. If the goal is to have fun and not think about things too much, Marvel Cosmic Invasion nails it.
