Gaming Hosts Ryan and Josh are BACK BABY! We ended our break early because the world is abuzz about Marvel Rivals, and we're here to chat our thoughts on it. Marvel Rivals is taking the video game world by storm, but does it have legs or is it a gaming fad? Is it an Overwatch clone, or something a little more? We break it all down in another awesome video game review episode from your favorite gaming podcast! Thanks to our MYTHIC Supporters: Redletter, Ol’ Jake, Disratory and Gaius Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/videogamerspod Join our Gaming Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/videogamerspod/ Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/VideoGamersPod Subscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU12YOMnAQwqFZEdfXv9c3Q Visit us on the web: https://videogamerspod.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is Marvel Rivals and why are we discussing it?
Hello, fellow duelists. Well, let's be honest. No one plays strategists or vanguards. And welcome to the Video Gamers Podcast. We're supposed to be on break for the holidays, but we just can't help ourselves. So we're back early and we're going to be covering the new hotness that is Marvel Rivals. But first, some introductions are in order. I am your host, Josh.
And joining me, he Insta-locks Moon Knight, and he's been staring at more cake than a baker. It's Ryan. Oh, God.
Come on now. Come on now. I feel like Martha Stewart with all this cake going on. Oh, the cake shop is open. It is open for business. All are welcome.
They're superheroes, man. Of course they do squats. Absolutely. That's what they're here for. Yeah, exactly. This is just a realistic representation of fictional characters, man. God bless it. Oh, boy. Well, Ryan, here we are. Hopefully the listeners are like, wait a minute. I thought we weren't getting a new episode till 2025. Yeah, right.
Psych. This is just a prerecorded intro. We're going to start the rewind here now.
Yeah.
Just kidding.
No, we're back, dude. We have been playing Marvel Rivals. We know so many people that have been playing this game. It is taking the world by storm. You and I have been playing a good bit together, which has been a blast. We've been playing with Ace of Shame and some of the other listeners. And I mean, honestly, it's just one of those games that lends itself to...
If you want to play with us, come play with us. It's just a bunch of fun, man. But we were talking about it, and we said, man, it feels like it's been forever since we recorded a new episode. Yeah, yeah. And Christmas was yesterday. It was. So I think we're in the giving space. And we just said, man, we got to do a Marvel Rivals episode. We got to get on.
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Chapter 2: Is Marvel Rivals just an Overwatch clone?
Create something in their head. They're strategizing what they have to do to heal everyone. What if we call them healers?
No, no, no. I just said we can't call them healers. You said strategy?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Let's call them strategists.
Perfect. I love it.
I love it.
We did it, America. All right. We should be in a boardroom, man.
I was going to say, this is the board meeting that happened where they're like, we can't call them just tanks, healers, and DPS. We got to come up with these weird terms. I'll be honest. I had to look up the terms. I know the icons. Like in-game, where it's like the fist and it's the open hand. Yeah. And then I was like, I don't know what these things are called.
I still just call him tank dealer. He PS.
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Chapter 3: What unique gameplay mechanics does Marvel Rivals offer?
His Ankhs are like traps almost, right? I see them and they create an area of effect around them, but do they do anything if you're not shooting them? If I'm just standing in this field of an Ankh, nothing happens, right?
It just sits there. It's benign. It does nothing at all unless I throw my attack at it. then it will transfer it to whoever's in that kind of cone of damage. But they can damage them and break them, so they're gone. But other than that, they just kind of sit there and do absolutely nothing unless you're attacking them and people are in them.
What's funny is people don't pay attention to the aux very much. When I get a match like that... I played around last night. There was literally two of them on our cart. We're moving the payload, and there's just an enemy aux sitting there. And I'm like, does nobody see this thing?
so i turned around and shot it but i was just like come on well i was just this morning i was playing as jeff the healer you know and i see the onks on the cart and nobody's attacking i'm like what are you guys doing so as a healer i'm taking out extra things like and then trying to keep everybody healed so it's one of those things you kind of got to know what the characters do i knew because i play moon knight um but yeah it's just oh man it's it's i'm an instant lock unless i have to do something else
So grapple hook, the ability to float these AOE kind of ability skills. Every character has an old. So Moon Knight, you know, you can do a lot with him.
Yeah.
You know, as far as the getting around the battlefield, setting up these traps, you know, everybody just has a standard basic attack where, you know, you just shoot people and then that does a chunk of health and stuff like that, too. For me, I really enjoy playing a wide variety of characters until I find who I kind of land on as far as, oh, I had a really good match with that person.
Hela to me is my girl. She is so simple in theory, but she is so effective if you can aim. Yes. So Hela is a DPS character. If you've ever played Zenyatta in Overwatch, that is basically like her attack, right? It's like Zen throwing the orbs, which I'm terrible at Zenyatta in Overwatch. But for some reason, Hela just throws these swords and they...
wreck people so much damage wreck people if you can hit them or if you hit a headshot so she is a kind of mid tier to even longer range character and I just sit back and I throw these swords at people and I have decent aim and I think that pays off in this game because I don't tell yourself sure you got good aim dude come on I've been obliterating people as hella and and it's just been so glorious and then on top of that
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Chapter 4: How do different characters function in Marvel Rivals?
And I don't remember if it was Ace or who it was, but had Jeff. But Jeff was wearing a fuzzy pink dolphin costume.
Yes.
And I went, what is that? And then everybody started laughing. It's like, oh, it's a dolphin costume. And I went, why is he dressed up like a dolphin? He's a shark. And they said, yeah, he doesn't want to scare people. So he dresses up like a dolphin instead. And I'm an old grizzled dude, man. And I literally just went, oh, that's the cutest thing I've ever seen in my life.
And he does all those things too. He like rolls on his back like a dog, like a little like happy puppy. And that's Jeff. Like, you know, and he's just got a good heart. That's all he wants to do. He just wants to go around and heal everybody.
Little tongues hanging out half the time. And oh my goodness. This is, listen, this is an indicator of a good video game and good character design because some characters you instantly love and then some characters you instantly hate. Like Iron Fist. Screw that guy. Yeah. Anybody that plays Iron Fist, man, you don't deserve to play this game, okay? Because everybody hates you.
Yes. I will purposely avoid the point if I see an Iron Fist and I'll save my Ankh and I'll go after him. Because that's the one thing. Moon Knight can do crazy damage with your Ankhs. You have to hit every shot if you don't have one. But if you do, you can bait them in and they'll come into your little kind of cone of death and I'll just melt them. And it just makes me so happy.
It brings so much satisfaction once you get one.
Yeah. So this is where it's masterful because if the other enemy team has a Spider-Man, you are looking up in the sky and you know he's zipping around and he's going to try to land on one of your healers and punch them in the face. Uh, you know, giant Hulk, you know, Hulk's going to jump into your team and try to punch somebody.
Uh, you know, Hella sitting in the back and just shooting swords at people, man. You can't just leave her alone. Hawkeye, Hawkeye, just sniping everybody.
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Chapter 5: What roles do characters play in Marvel Rivals?
There's one that I've seen going around on Reels where Venom and Groot are there, and Groot just keeps saying, I am Groot. And Venom's like, I think I'm going to go to a plant-based diet. Yeah. And I'm like, what? That's great. Like to come up with this kind of stuff is just hilarious. And they have them for like every character.
So you can tell they really put a lot of time and thought into not only like the design and the kind of playability, but the interaction between all these characters too. So it was just, it was awesome.
All right, before we move on, because this wasn't actually something that we thought we were going to talk about, but you mentioned the interaction. So let's touch on the team up mechanics real quick. Yes. Because this is one of those things that I think is phenomenal. Yes. And I remember the first time we heard about this game,
I remember talking and saying, dude, if you can throw Thor's hammer against Captain America's shield and it emits a shockwave or something, that would be the coolest thing ever. Or Iron Man deflecting his beam off of Cap's shield or something like that. The possibilities are endless. And then lo and behold, the devs are not dumb because they absolutely came up with these team-up abilities.
Now, maybe it's not something as glorious as ricocheting Iron Man's beam off of Cap's shield. But there's equally glorious stuff. Like if you're Hulk, you can pick up Wolverine and shuck him like a missile at people, man.
It's so good.
If you're Rocket Raccoon, you can ride Groot and just stay on Groot's shoulder and shoot people, man. Like there's so many of these interactions. And sometimes maybe they're not as flashy as chucking Wolverine like he's a rocket somebody. But it's little things like when you're Moon Knight, who does Moon Knight team up with where you get to go invis? I can't remember the character.
Cloak and Dagger.
Cloak and Dagger. So I was playing Cloak and Dagger. And because they have this team up ability, you can now go invisible. Yes. Because I am playing Cloak and Dagger, you can trigger the team up ability that lets you go invis for a little while. And this exists in every character in the game. Now, not every character interacts with every other character, but...
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