For a well-made beat ‘em up featuring a healthy mix of well-known and underrated MARVEL characters, Cyclops and the Thing are great additions to the roster. They fit well without being dramatically overpowered, they synergize well, and they are just plain fun. I wish they had a greater presence in Cosmic Invasion, but their addition makes an already replayable game even more so. For four bucks, you can easily get several hours of fun out of these two new characters.
Tribute Games and Dotemu’s MARVEL Cosmic Invasion is merely five months old and already receiving updates. Back in February we got some character palette collaborations as a free update, giving players some new skins (er…palettes) based on MARVEL Rivals, Snap, Strike Force, Contest of Champions, and more. Today, two new characters join Cosmic Invasion’s roster: X-Men’s Cyclops and the Fantastic Four’s The Thing! We had a chance to play them this week when they launched, and we’re thrilled to share that they’re fantastic. No pun intended.
Scott Summers, better known as Cyclops, has been grossly overlooked until recently thanks to his addition to Rivals. If this year is the year of Cyclops’ emergence in modern Marvel titles, then sign me up! Cyclops is absolutely slick in Cosmic Invasion, with his entire kit focused on his lasers. Even his dodge has him laser the ground and deal damage to nearby enemies. He came in especially handy in the Hive levels; he can shoot his lasers upwards to take down flying enemies with ease. If you were a fan of Iron Man’s laser-forward gameplay, Cyclops will feel similar albeit without flight.
Surprisingly, The Thing plays highly unlike a traditional tank character. Tanks can be unsatisfying in some situations because they’re slow to accommodate for their massive size. I expected The Thing to play like a juggernaut character with ramping momentum and tankiness, as I’ve come to expect that from his iterations in other games. In Marvel Ultimate Alliance, he has some movement abilities that offset his slow yet steady playstyle. Yet, in newer games like Marvel Rivals, The Thing plays like a giant wrecking ball that masquerades as a vanguard. In Cosmic Invasion, The Thing is built around the latter archetype and is very fun. His dash attack makes him bounce around the stage while his attacks drive home the clobber fantasy of beating enemies to a pulp. Where She-Hulk brings the slam and throws enemies around, The Thing throws himself around willy-nilly.
The Thing and Cyclops are playable right from the start, thankfully. I didn’t have to spend hours grinding to have them available on the player select screen for my next ARCADE run. While I appreciated them being fully voiced, I was disappointed that they felt relatively disconnected from the rest of the game along with its well-voiced and fully realized cast. There’s no mention of them in the campaign (which I guess is to be expected), there’s no mission in the campaign where they can be used for completing a character-specific achievement, and the rest of the cast doesn’t really react to them. I would have rather them having more of a presence in the base game for the sake of parity with the rest of the cast.
I get it, though, this is a character DLC pack only, and it’s a pack that adds good fun and flavor to Cosmic Invasion’s cast without breaking the game’s balance. The developers have mentioned that there’s a paid expansion coming up later this year, so I’m hoping that this upcoming expansion features some more immersion.
For a well-made beat ‘em up featuring a healthy mix of well-known and underrated MARVEL characters, Cyclops and the Thing are great additions to the roster. They fit well without being dramatically overpowered, they synergize well, and they are just plain fun. I wish they had a greater presence in Cosmic Invasion, but their addition makes an already replayable game even more so. For four bucks, you can easily get several hours of fun out of these two new characters.
