Beat ‘em ups have been on the rise over the past few years, with Streets of Rage 4 and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge(and more recently, Absolum) being the prime examples of how to capture the look and feel of old school games while bringing in modern elements in order to make them more palatable to today’s audience. The latest title to come out of Tribute Games is Marvel Cosmic Invasion, which by all standards should be an even bigger hit than their previous game, Shredder’s Revenge, with the fact that it is quite fun in multiplayer being its biggest strength.
First off, Marvel Cosmic Invasion is simply beautiful when it comes to its sprite work. It’s what you’ll probably notice as soon as you start playing it, with chunky, well animated characters doing what they do best, wreaking havoc all over the screen, regardless if they’re heroes, villains, or anything in between. And what’s best, it’s full of cameos that even those who aren’t into games per se but love the source material are sure to get a kick out of its Marvel universe-trotting campaign involving Annihilus taking over some of its biggest – quite literally, when it comes to Galactus – figures.
Speaking of the comics, the character roster takes some surprisingly deep cuts into Marvel’s stock, with folks like Beta Ray Bill and Phyla-Vell, fighting off some more recent in terms of continuity villains such as Knull, who came into play during Venom’s solo run a few years ago. For a casual fan like myself of the books who’s been following game releases for decades and loving brawlers like Konami’s X-Men, it’s a real treat seeing the wide variety of heroes that were picked for Cosmic Invasion.
And for what it’s worth, they all play differently. There’s archetypes going on, with a split between those who can fly like Storm, Iron Man, and Nova, to name a few, more nimble melee ones in the vein of Wolverine and Spider-Man, and the most fun of the bunch, grapplers, headlined by She-Hulk and Venom. If you’ve played any of the Streets of Rage or Final Fight games, you’ll know what to expect here. Thankfully, each of them is also equipped with a host of skills you can pull off easily, and while not nearly as deep as what was seen in Streets of Rage 4, they help set heroes apart.
Frankly, not all of the characters were my cup of tea when playing Marvel Cosmic Invaders and I only played them during their specific stages, where the game suggests who you should go with in order to fill out what little that there is of the story during interstitial scenes at the beginning and closing of those levels. For as awesome as it is to have Black Panther in a game, he just didn’t click with me gameplay-wise, for instance, but it goes to show that there’s something for everyone here as he seems to be very popular on online multiplayer.
And that’s really the best way to play Marvel Cosmic Invasion, since there’s not much to write home about when it comes to level design, as it’s a little rote and repetitive to tackle by yourself. As with Shredder’s Revenge, it’s during the on-screen mayhem of having multiple characters tearing it up simultaneously that this game shines, especially so when all the special powers are put to use in the form of co-op moves.
Replayability is surprisingly high in Cosmic Invasion as a brawler. Each stage has three challenges that can be completed in subsequent runs and rewards you have to keep an eye out for, which in turn unlock new character color schemes, bios, and even special arcade mode toggles. The cosmetics are especially cool, serving as homages to some heroes’ comic runs and even their appearances in other games, like Venom’s baby blue Marvel vs. Capcom 2 getup. Plus, after beating story mode for the first time, a new and harder difficulty setting is unlocked, if you – unlike me – think that the base one is too easy.
Beat ‘em ups by design used to be some of the top coin-munchers during the heyday of arcade, with games like Double Dragon being notoriously cheap when it came to enemy patterns and outright cheating the player of their money, so nowadays it’s something else seeing some of those mechanics making their way into modern releases. Marvel Cosmic Invasion is much more forgiving, even if there are some moments when it relies on tried-and-true frustrating bits such as stun-locking you infinitely right on top of a trap if you’re not careful.
But outside of my complaints about the general lack of inventiveness in its stage layout and bosses, Marvel Cosmic Invasion’s presentation and potential for fun with friends or randos through crossplay between all platforms help tip the scale in its favor. It’s certainly not as tight of a package as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge, but what is, honestly? I loved that one back in 2022 and Cosmic Invasion sadly did not hit as hard, I’m afraid.
