After spending 90 minutes with Marvel’s Avengers first big expansion, War for Wakanda, I’m left feeling hopeful about Black Panther’s imminent introduction. He plays extremely well, seems to be part of an engaging cast and story, and there are even hints at some much-needed variety in Avengers’ often repetitive core gameplay loop. Whether it will be enough to turn the whole game’s ship around is an unanswerable question, but for now at least, it looks set to add a few more hours of enjoyable content to the game.
Let’s start with how T’Challa feels to play as. If you’re familiar with Avengers then you’ll find he fits somewhere in between Black Widow and Captain America, combining the agile movement of Natasha with the heavy combo-based melee attacks of Steve. His ranged option is a great-feeling throwable dagger that’s not too dissimilar from Batman’s batarangs in the Arkham series. These blades lower an enemy’s defense as well as inflicting damage, and so it’s always good to get a few of them into an opponent before choosing to move in close. This offers a tactical edge to combat that Avengers’ button-bashing nature has rarely provided with its existing roster.
Following up these daggers with a pounce attack – unleashing T’Challa’s claws as an enemy is restrained on the ground – is an effective series of blows that repeatedly served me well during my hands-on. Black Panther’s marriage of both agility and raw power instantly made me want to level him all the way up to power level 150 – and that’s before I had even tried out his Heroic abilities.
Kimoyo Beads are Black Panther’s Signature attack; a trademark piece of Wakandan technology which seeks out enemies and deals a heavy amount of stun damage. I found these to be particularly effective once I’d upgraded them with the ability to also scour the battlefield for health orbs, which got me out of more than one sticky situation. His Assault Heroic, meanwhile, is one of the more satisfying attacks in the whole game. Titled “King’s Mercy”, it’s a vibranium spear that inflicts heavy damage while also being able to pin up to three enemies that get in its path. As a Thor main, this gave me glorious flashbacks to pinning many hundreds of AIM soldiers against laboratory walls with Mjolnir. Finally, there’s his Ultimate, which summons the power of the panther goddess, Bast. The visual effect of the attack itself looks very cool, as a giant purple-tinted panther is projected from your body, but its buffs are ones we’ve seen elsewhere before; a simple increase in damage dealt and reduction in damage taken.
Black Panther is a blast to play with, but just as importantly he’s also a great character to spend time with. This is in no small part to the performance of Christopher Judge. He sounds unrecognisable as T’Challa – especially when compared to his previous role as Kratos – but fills the shoes of this Wakandan king perfectly. That’s no mean feat, considering the last person to walk in them was the outstanding Chadwick Boseman. Judge’s interactions with both Okoye (Debra Wilson) and Shuri (Erica Luttrell) provide a charming, and often funny, back and forth as you leap around the jungle.
The jungle is where you’ll be spending most of your time, aside from when visiting the expansion’s new outpost, located in a beautiful depiction of the city of Birnin Zana. With giant panther statues guarding shiny, modern skyscrapers, it’s a very different location to the SHIELD dens we’ve visited before. Beyond its borders, the jungle playspace provides a welcome new biome to Avengers, and everything from loot chests to resource pods have been re-skinned to reinforce that ‘Wakandan feel’.
It’s clear from the outset that Crystal Dynamics feels at home in the jungle, giving it a chance to flex its dormant Tomb Raider muscles. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the expansion’s first mission, which has you enter a cave system that houses a trial to overcome and a symbol-based puzzle to solve. It’s not a far cry from somewhere you’d find Lara Croft. This is an encouraging sign that the developer has bolstered the variety of gameplay, going beyond just throwing wave after wave of robots at you. That’s not to say that there isn’t plenty of that going on as well; this is still Marvel’s Avengers, after all. You’ll still be completing a lot of similar objectives such as capturing control points and defending areas throughout the expansion.
During my hands-on session I played through the first two story missions, which were both surprisingly lengthy, clocking in at around 30 minutes each. The opener is an attention grabber, as you’re thrust straight into the action amid an assault by Klaw on Wakanda. It includes the aforementioned puzzle sequence alongside a very welcome boss battle. One of my main criticisms of Avengers has been its reluctance to unleash members of Marvel’s rogues gallery into the action, so it was a pleasant surprise to see it waste no time in throwing Crossbones into the equation. His fight isn’t revolutionary, but does shake things up a little by making you split your time between attacking him and a sonic cannon he’s protecting before it breaks through the Wakandan perimeter shield.
From this point on the story picks up pace nicely and does a great job at bringing the rest of the Avengers into T’Challa’s world. A second mission initiates the team-up and serves as a great introduction to Klaw and his motives. My only concern so far would be just how much new content there truly is here. While the missions were chunky enough in length, it did look as if I were almost halfway through the mission chain after just two, and so I’d estimate a rather brief campaign. Nevertheless, this may well be a great Black Panther story regardless of its eventual length – and as close to a solo game as we’re getting anytime soon. Whether T’Challa is Marvel’s Avengers’ saviour, though, still remains the big unanswered question.
Simon Cardy can't wait to level Black Panther all the way up to 150 and has all the polychoron in the world waiting. Find him over on Twitter at @CardySimon.