MARVEL Future Revolution is an open world action RPG for mobile devices that allows players to play as one of eight heroes such as Marvel's Spider-Man, Storm, and Captain America. This ambitious entry to the mobile space is being developed by Netmarble, which has also teamed up with veteran Marvel writer Marc Sumerak to pen the story. So far, MARVEL Future Revolution shows a lot of potential for greatness but still has some challenges to overcome.
The standout features of MARVEL Future Revolution are its graphics and voice acting. The game utilizes Unreal Engine to create incredibly detailed character models that really aren’t far off from the graphics that players expect from AAA games. The vocal performances are generally quite great, with Spider-Man standing out as particularly fitting for the character. This can’t be said for every hero however, as some dialogue feels stilted and the choice to try making Iron Man sound like Robert Downey Jr. can be distracting at times.
Unfortunately, the gameplay is the weakest part of the game's experience so far. Future Revolution uses a control layout that’s better suited for controllers than it is a phone screen, since parts of the screen are dedicated to specific inputs and it’s easy to get turned around or do something that wasn’t intended. The heroes also move slowly, camera controls need improvement, and it’s almost impossible to tell when a hero is taking damage - all of which make for a frustrating gameplay loop.
Since players can’t easily get away from or quickly navigate combat encounters when swarmed, the hero will often be pelted with bullets or energy blasts and a tiny line of text will flash saying “dodged,” but it’s small and easy to miss. To attack, players have multiple buttons with pre-determined specials and combos that look impressive and powerful in their animations but feel weak to perform.
The story is quite good but the player integration isn’t as seamless as it could be. It seems to be drawing inspiration from the New Avengers series, in which the multiverse began to smash together in what was called the Convergence and the heroes of Earth 616 tried to find a way to stop their world from smashing another Earths. Like both storylines, they are successful but at the cost of blending the pieces of multiple Earths together and creating a new world filled with alternate versions of heroes and villains.
The opening of Future Revolution shows the Convergence and the heroes working together to avoid mutual destruction. All the playable heroes are aware of the aftermath of the Convergence and the establishment of the game's stand in for Marvel's Avengers, the “Omega Flight” - except the hero that players choose, who somehow forget everything that happened. The dissonance is quite jarring and before players can adjust, a ton of information about the game’s features, loot boxes, and microtransactions are dumped on them, which feels overwhelming.
MARVEL Future Revolution falls into the same pitfalls as most high-budget mobile titles; That being the limitation of controls without the use of third-party accessories and overwhelming presence of microtransactions. That aside, there is a lot of promise here and the quality of the game shines because, despite some clunky dialogue and a rocky beginning, it runs exceptionally well and offers a ton for players to do.
MARVEL Future Revolution releases for iOS and Android on August 25, 2021. Screen Rant was provided with access to a preview build on iOS for the purposes of this preview.