Marvel's Midnight Suns

Every now and then, a video game comes along that feels like home. I don't mean that playing a game feels similar to sitting around my house with my wife and kids. Rather, certain games exude a feeling of warmth and comfort, creating a welcoming space...

(Image credit: 2K)There’s no denying that Marvel’s Midnight Suns is rough around the edges, between its steep learning curve and uneven performance. But underneath its forgivable flaws, there’s a creative and unconventional superhero adventure, which...

Outside of battle, life in the Abbey is full of activities and social interaction with other super heroes that greatly flesh out its RPG elements. The dialogue trees aren’t the most in depth ever created, but they’re fleshed out enough where they help the world feel alive and worth saving from Lilith. The end result is a game that isn’t just a must play for superhero fans, but one that should be experienced by RPG fans in general.

The New And The Familiar Marvel's Midnight Suns has had a fairly strange path to publication. After an announcement, then a delay, then a partial reversal of the delay, some fans were wondering if the game was suffering from some unforeseen issues or...

With Marvel’s Midnight Suns, Firaxis has put itself in the league of RPG developers like BioWare, Obsidian, Bethesda, and Larian. Its innovative turn-based hero combat system takes a bit of time to get going, but once it does it makes excellent use of card game mechanics to keep battles fresh, evolving, and unpredictable over the course of an epic-length campaign – bashing enemies into things for increased damage is endlessly entertaining.

Like Nico, Midnight Suns wants to storm into your room and pull you by the arm into the party. Whether that's what every strategy head wants is to be determined. But if you can meet Firaxis on its own terms, you'll be dazzled.

I did not expect to be thinking about this stuff in a game that also encourages me to get the absolute most out of my battlefield resources, in a game that contains a spell which, if used correctly, allows you to rain enemy dogs down from the sky to their thudding detriment. But that's Marvel, I guess, with those flawed heroes whose powers are accompanied by vanities and vulnerabilities. And that's Firaxis, whose teams, when I once visited the studio, worked in little collegiate huddles in a selection of rooms that remind me of the dorms in the abbey, and who know that a good HQ is always more than just a fancy way of accessing a menu.

When Firaxis Games has anything in the hopper, I perk up. Hell, even 2013's now-defunct Haunted Hollow was fun. So when Marvel's Midnight Suns was announced, with no “co-developed” chicanery, I was in.What I got was a fun little romp that's very...