As a kid, there was never a trip to a movie theater or bowling alley where I didn’t sink at least a handful of quarters into whatever beat-em-up arcade game was on site. I was enamored with The Simpsons arcade game and bewitched by TMNT, but the one that ate the vast majority of my quarters (okay, my parents’ quarters) was the X-Men arcade game. Even looking at a screenshot of those majestic pixel-art graphics gives me phantosmia of slightly burnt popcorn and hot pretzels.
I never had the skill or quarters necessary to get beyond one or two stages in those games, but that never diminished my love for beat-em-ups. I still like checking out new entries when I can, but love watching combo videos even more. Seeing one or two people work in perfect harmony with the game’s mechanics to juggle, bounce, and style on those poor NPC enemies is an art form that I never thought I’d be able to participate in.
That was until this week when I got to play the first two stages of Marvel Cosmic Invasion.
Be your own sidekick
Coming from developer Tribute Games and Dotemu to PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Switch, Switch 2, and PC, Marvel Cosmic Invasion is more than just a love letter to the old arcade beat-em-up genre — it is the culmination of everything I want it to be. If you’ve played a beat-em-up before, you will recognize the core systems here. You pick your favorite superhero from a final roster that will consist of 15 heroes to brawl through sidescrolling stages against waves of enemies and a boss at the end. Your bread and butter buttons are a standard combo, special move, and ultimate ability to pull out in a pinch, but it is the layers Marvel Cosmic Invasion puts on top of the core formula that made me feel more like a pro on my first shot than I ever did in other games in the genre.
My demo only featured two stages and a roster of 9 out of the final 15 heroes, but that was more than enough to give me a taste of the possibilities this game has. I knew one of the core features of Marvel Cosmic Invasion was the Cosmic Swap system, which would let me swap between two different heroes rather than be stuck as just one for the entire game. I assumed that would be a cool way to keep the game from feeling stale, but not be as transformative and integral to the moment-to-moment flow of combat as it ended up being.
I chose Wolverine and Phyla-Vell as my initial pairing as a way to try something familiar and something new. Wolverine is the raw ball of fury I expected, rushing in with claws, leaping onto enemies to stab them, and charging up a big cross slash. Besides my default combo, I instinctively found a launcher by hitting attack and jump at the same time, as well as the aforementioned charge attack by holding attack. There was no tutorial or explanation on how to play in my demo beyond the control layout in the menu, so hopefully that is included in the full game to explain some of the less-obvious moves to those who aren’t familiar with the language of beat-em-ups.
That was all standard stuff. It felt and looked amazing, but didn’t show its hand until I messed with the Cosmic Swap system. This isn’t just a button I press to swap characters when I get tired of Wolverine’s moves, though it could be used that way. This is more akin to the tag system in a fighting game like Marvel Vs. Capcom, where I can hold the assist button plus press one of my attacks to summon my backup character to inject one of their moves into my combo with or without swapping to them depending on the button. This cracked open the combat system in a way I’d never been able to even approach before. I found myself pulling off complex and extended combos almost on instinct by calling out an assist move when I left myself unable to continue juggling an enemy with my primary character.
By pure accident, I was pulling off the types of combos I had only seen in clips online.
I want to stress that I’ve never been able to do more than some basic combos before, but on the first stage in this Marvel Cosmic Invasion demo I managed to rack up a combo of over 200 purely by experimenting with all the moves. I can only imagine what two or more people, each controlling multiple characters, will be able to pull off.
But the tag system didn’t just make me feel like a pro because it let me dominate enemies that, for the most part, are there to be styled on. It also removes the most aggravating part of beat-em-ups, which is when I end up on the wrong side of a combo. Marvel Cosmic Invasion doesn’t tone down the frustratingly long amount of time I am stunned when I do find myself getting hit, but instead of forcing me to grit my teeth and bear it, the tag system gives me an out. If I find myself getting hit, I can call in my assist to interrupt my attacker long enough to break out of the stun and strike back. Or, I can completely swap out to my second character to bypass the hitstun. Once I had ingrained that lesson into my toolkit, I always felt like I had an option in every scenario to turn things around.
I would say the Cosmic Assist system is a little overpowered, but I think that’s the point. It does come at a cost — a meter that drains as I use it but refills upon hitting an enemy. But unless I spammed it, that meter would stay replenished without having to think much about it. There were only two bosses in my demo, and even fighting them I never came close to death. Who knows how the difficulty will ramp up later, but I don’t think Marvel Cosmic Invasion leaning on the easier side is by any means a bad thing. It lets average players like me feel like I’m making the most of the combat systems. Every time I experimented, even when I wasn’t sure what attack my assist was going to do, I was almost always rewarded for it.
Marvel Cosmic Invasion launches later this year.
