Marvel’s Midnight Suns won’t let you kiss Spider-Man—but it will let him team up with the X-Men
After years of watching the Marvel movies struggle with licensing issues, it's refreshing to see games team up the Avengers, the X-Men, and more
Games Features Spider-Man
Every Friday, A.V. Club staffers kick off our weekly open thread for the discussion of gaming plans and recent gaming glories, but of course, the real action is down in the comments, where we invite you to answer our eternal question: What Are You Playing This Weekend?
I’ve been playing Marvel’s Midnight Suns lately, and enjoying the hell out of my time with it—the adventure game/walk around and try to date Spider-Man portions are well-written and clever (even if they won’t let you date Spider-Man). And the core combat gameplay is tactically satisfying, leveraging the structure of a Slay The Spire-style card-based deckbuilding game to create a pleasantly deep superhero fighting experience. (Not a huge shock, given Firaxis’ semi-recent, highly successful revival of the XCOM franchise—Midnight Suns doesn’t truck with that sort of intense consequence-based combat, but it gets close enough to scratch the itch.)
What’s most interesting about the game, though, to my mind, is something that it shares with a whole bunch of Marvel’s recent games, from the recent Marvel’s Avengers, to Midnight Suns, and even extending to something like phone-based card game Marvel Snap. And that’s the fact that gaming has somehow become the only place—outside the comics themselves—where you can catch the full breadth of the Marvel universe all in one place. No IP restrictions, no worrying about who owns who: Just X-Men and Avengers and Runaways and Spider-Man all sharing screen time and, inevitably, quips. (Midnight Suns has a lot of quips; you just have to sort of get used to it.)
The various Marvel brands have been silo’d away from each other over in film and television for so long at this point that it’s started to feel like the norm; even as Disney has hoovered up enough of its wayward children to start introducing Professor X or Mister Fantastic back into the MCU, it’s only been in the form of tentative hints and one-offs. Meanwhile, I just had a battle where Doctor Strange blasted a Hydra goon halfway across the map so Wolverine and Blade could tear the poor fascist dimwit to shreds. Later, a birthday party for X-Men member Magik saw Ghost Rider and Captain America comment on the cake, while Tony Stark and Captain Marvel traded quips. (Lotta quips! Quips ahoy!)
The point is, there’s something incredibly refreshing about having all these characters exist alongside each other, with the game’s writers intent on finding all sorts of different dynamics between them. (Much of this is focused on the conflict between young rebels The Midnight Suns and the established Avengers, but the game finds lots of other avenues to explore—like a tech nerd club formed by Peter “Spider-Man” Parker and Robbie “Ghost Rider” Reyes, which then has to contend with their hero worship/worry of being co-opted when Very Famous Tech Man Tony Stark expresses an interest in their work.) Meanwhile, over in Snap, there’s something giddy about throwing out a setup that sees Squirrel Girl and Odin team up to take over a location, or crushing an opponent with Ben Grimm and Devil Dinosaur. (I like to imagine Ben riding on DD’s back, but you don’t have to, if you don’t want to, because you’re some kind of joy-hating weirdo.)
The Marvel Universe is big, it’s weird, and it’s wild—no matter how much its corporate overlords have tried to tame it over the years. I’m not claiming Midnight Suns or Snap represent some kind of anti-authoritarian pushback, mind you; these are still Corporate Content Delivery systems right down to their very bones. But by dint of their looser licensing issues, they nevertheless represent the kind of freedom that MCU fans have gotten only in tiny doses, the kind of shared universe where Spidey can knock a demon-processed Venom straight into Carol Danvers’ waiting fists while Nico Minoru uses the Staff Of One to buff them both. And if that’s not peak Marvel gaming, I don’t know what is. (At least, until my “Ben Grimm kicks Doctor Doom’s ass from the back of a big red dinosaur” game finally comes through.)
31 Comments
Looking forward to playing this. This weekend I’m hoping to finish up Cult of the Lamb which I’m loving and then I’ll do a little of the Splatoon 3 Big Run event.
So disappointing that this is a card based dealy rather than a new Ultimate Alliance style beat ‘em up.Give me She-Hulk: Ultimate Destruction!
It’s far better than any ultimate alliance game has ever been, especially the social aspects. Book club with Blade, and Caps America and Marvel? Work shop with Robbie and Peter? Spooky club with Nico, Magik and Strange?I also highly recommend unlocking all the off-duty outfits for everyone ASAP and turning on “Change outfits daily”, nothing like watching Dr. Strange arguing with Tony Stark while wearing his EMO KIDS shirt, and it really gives the feeling that everyone is kind of just living out of a backpack at the Abbey.
Also the voice work is surprisingly great, Nico is voiced by the actress who played her in the Runaways show, Blade is voiced by Michael Jai White, and Peter is voiced once again by Yuri Lowenthel (which means in my head canon these are all adventures before the first Insomniac game)
Beyond the fact that there’s no reason an Ultimate Alliance game couldn’t have the social stuff, none of that really appeals to me, especially the outfits. I just want to beat up bad guys with animated super hero dolls, not see them standing around shooting the shit or play dress up with them.
Do you actually know anything about the game? Everyone is in pretty much classic costumes and you have to unlock their Midnight Suns look, which are optional, there are tons of color swatches to unlock too, on top of that it’s a strategy game not a “card game”, this isn’t marvel Snap.People keep calling this a “card game” without knowing anything about it.
I mean yes I understand that it is not a TCG style game but a game where what happens is decided by cards, because I read this article and the other articles where that is explained. I’m not interested in a strategy game, I’m interested in a beat ‘em up like Ultimate Alliance or Ultimate Destruction.
The costumes and colors don’t interest me at all either.
Literally forgot about Ultimate Alliance.. Those were actually awesome lol. I haven’t even really looked at Midnight Suns, didn’t know it was a card game.
What a shame.. Maybe I’ll still give it a shot?
Too bad the UA PC ports were such hot garbage 🙁
It’s less card based dealt and more XCOM with cards. Way up my alley but maybe not everyone’s cup of tea
Yeah ‘XCOM except with cards’ just doesn’t sound appealing to me.
After Ultimate Alliance 3 was a buggy grind, I’m happy for something different.
I’ve been playing MUA3 on my Switch again recently and it’s so much damn fun. The Spider-characters in particular have really cool power sets and can zip around the screen like the Dickens. The only downside of that game for me is the camera, which wants you to die more than any supervillain.
“Marvel’s Midnight Suns won’t let you kiss Spider-Man”Oh, this is a good time to unveil my new game!Peter Parker Make Out Simulator 2020 (COVID delays, am I right?)In this one, I chose to use the likeness of Bully Maguire, aka the hottest Peter Parker, and I did all the motion capture myself.Just make sure you have some really good malware protection before installing it. I had to use a cheap Russian shovelware developer.
Marvel Nemesis for PS2 or GTFO.
I have a tendency to play my comfort game The Binding of Isaac, rather than starting on anything in my backlog, when I come home stressed-out from work, but last week’s WAYPTW gave me the kick in the ass I needed to try out Pentiment…and I’m glad I did.Fair warning, if you are looking for an actual murder-mystery, you might come away from it a bit disappointed, beacuse as far as I know, there is no one true solution to the murders that take place through the story*; you just have to make the best case you can, with no assurance that you haven’t just sent a innocent to death by execution. Without spoiling anything, there is a resolution to the overarching conspiracy that hangs over everything, but your character will still be haunted by his role in things.One little detail in the game that really worked for me was how dialogue would appear in different scripts depending on who was speaking. Peasants generally spoke with a handwritten script, urban intellectuals have a unadorned typeface, and the denizens of the abbey use an ornate, decorated script. This detail agve me one “a-ha!” moment pretty early in the story when my character, an artist from Nuremburg, was walking with a baron from the town to the nearby abbey. When the baron was in town, he spoke in the peasant script, but as we left the town and he started talking with me about my time at university and my academic interests, his script changes to the urban intellectual one. Effectively, he was code-switching and the game was using its own design to subtly let me know.Having finished that, I did just start up playing Citizen Sleeper. The way it allows you to resolve the day’s events using a dice pool (you get a new random pool at the start of each day) was a neat little wrinkle. It reminds me a bit of the games of Failbetter Games (Fallen London, Sunless Sea) or Cult Simulator. It does, however, leave me with a slightly unsatisfied, transactional vibe, like I’m making down-payments on a narrative rather than organically progressing it. Still, it’s intriguiging enough that I will continue with it for the time being.
Well what is even the point then!
“After years of watching the Marvel movies struggle with licensing issues”I’m sorry, did the MCU struggle at some point in the last decade and a half?
Ohhh so this is why they’re putting out that not-very good Midnight Sons comic. I picked it up and I was like “why are these characters in this?” “why would wolverine be in a Midnight Sons comic?” “why is this so bad?”It’s because it was just a long ad for a video game.
I’m fairly certain Wolverine is not one person but an army of short angry kings that show up everywhere in Marvel comics. The guy has no work life balance
Same thing with Batman
Thats all well and good but can we recreate Spiderman and his Amazing Friends?
Yes but its going to be Ghostrider/Magik/Nico instead of Firestar/Iceman.
Sadly no, Firestar and Iceman are not in the game.
I always figured that Peter Parker was a mutant anyway.His mutant ability was to adapt the abilities of radioactive insects and arachnids upon blood-based contact with their venom or other secretions.Those without the ability would simply be poisoned by such interactions.
This weekend its Castlevania: SOTN, then maybe RE 7. I need to finish South Park: TFBW and get cracking on Pathfinder: Kingmaker so I can get the sequel. ANNNNNNND Monster Boy is on sale!!
I finally started Midnight Suns last night, so I’m still very much in the “this is too easy” phase of the game. Curious to see if some of the tertiary characters (Magik, Nico Minoru, etc.) have interesting card mechanics, since the early characters I’ve seen are fairly straight-forward.Admittedly haven’t been playing much, since grinding out the “end” of the battle pass in Overwatch 2 was a serious time crunch. As it turns out, you can continue to level the pass after Lv. 200….but there are no additional rewards. (Thank God! …as spending the better part of the day doing nothing but solo-queueing quick play was a serious drain.)Now I get to do it all over again for Season 2! …except that I can just keep my “Cyberdemon” title from Season 1, so I can stop at Level 80 – or wherever I get from doing my dailies / weeklies – like an almost-normal person.
I’m really enjoying this game, but positioning to knockback and environmental assets is INCREDIBLY frustrating. Is there some trick to this? I stand face to face with an enemy and the knockback isn’t straight backwards – it shows as a 90 degree angle (or close to it). Takes me out of the game for sure.
The more I play Midnight Suns the more I suspect that kissing Spider-man(or someone else) may have been a planned option that eventually got cut. Maybe Marvel said no. Some of the conversations you have with other characters during the “hang outs” do seem like flirting.
Vampire Survivors got released for mobile so I’ll just be playing that until I literally can’t. I’m a sad, broken man.
Also more fun than they have a right to be for the same reason: the Lego Marvel games.
Forget about teaming up with the X-Men … will this game allow Spider-Man to beat up the entire team of X-Men, as he has done multiple times in the comics, even in their own book, or in only 13 panels in Secret Wars #3?