I started (re)playing Multiversus a couple of days ago. And then yesterday Kuromochiii joined me. First we played against each other (PvP or Player vs Player) on the couch. After that we did coop PVE (Player vs Environment) missions where he played on his PC and I on the PS5.
Since we were playing cross platform, we couldn't talk to each other via gamechat (if that exists), so we called each other via Discord. I felt very modern and very old at the same time. I connected to Discord for several games (to follow updates etc.), but I never have gotten the hang of it. Which is weird, because it seems to be based on chatrooms and forums and I grew up with those. I even hosted several in my twenties.
Anyway, it was fun to play with Kuromochiii, we didn't do that for a long time, because we like different kind of games usually. But this one we both liked. The game is a kind of similar to Super Smash Bros. or Brawhalla (both games which I never played myself), but then with characters from Warner Bros. It has characters from DC (Superman, Batman, Wonderwoman, Black Adam, Joker and Harley Quinn), Rick and Morty, Adventure Time, Scooby Doo, Gremlins, Steven Universe, Game of Thrones and more. It's a confusing line-up, because it has Jason from Friday the 13th next to Tom & Jerry.
When you start the game ... for the first time (I'll come back to that later), you start with Finn (Adventure Time), Wonder Woman (DC), LeBron James (NBA player) and Bugs Bunny (Looney Tunes). You can play with these characters, but you do not own them. You have to BUY them to unlock them. Basically the only character you own at the start is Shaggy (Scooby Doo), who you unlock via the tutorial. Every other character you have to BUY (95% of the characters) or earn by doing missions (5%). By logging into the game several days in a row you earn Banana Guard (Adventure Time). If you BUY the Battlepass, you unlock the Jason (Friday the 13th) character and you can earn a lot of skins for characters you don't have, by doing missions to earn Battlepass points (some which are only doable with characters you don't own and thus can't play with). You can buy most characters for 1000 Gleamium. Gleamium is one of the types (yes, there are more) of in-game currency and 1000 of it costs 10 euro in the stores. So for 10 euro you can be the proud owner of one of the 26 current characters in the game (except for Joker, his price is double, because he's new). There are ways in game to earn in-game currency, but most of it is for upgrading crystals or some stuff like that and you can't buy characters or skins for that. You either need Gleamium, Figther coins or points or whatever (from which you need 3000 to buy a character) and Prestige points (which you get by buying other cosmetics). It takes a long time to earn stuff. Usually the daily, weekly and special missions run out pretty quickly.
The gameplay is okay. Fun with friends ... if you have any. I usually play solo. If you want to finish any mission completely, you have to 'bring a friend'. Fuck people without friends ... I guess. It's so easy to write about this game and land in negativity. I want to say positive stuff about it, but then I think about another aspect and get annoyed. The game is made by Player First Games and their name is really misleading. Because the whole game is about making money for Warner Bros and getting the player to spent as much money as possible because of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out). Maybe their initial drive is to do so, but they probably have to earn all the licensing costs back.
As I said, it's the second time I started this game. Last time was about a year ago, when the game was in Beta. On the website of Player First games it still says their first game will come in 2022, which is now two-and-a-half years ago. Because I played the Beta, I also got some free stuff, like the Battlepass (including Jason) and some characters I bought then (Harley Quinn and Wonderwoman). But yeah, new players have so little options. Although there are a lot of concurrent players (people who play at the same time), a lot of negativity is going around about the game.
Which brings me to two other games that I play regularly, which also have a lot of negativity surrounding them and which also have multiverse and some overlap of characters. I'm talking about Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice league and Fortnite. Multiversus and Suicide Squad both are owned by Warner Bros, are live service games (which WB wants to focus on) utilize the characters of DC comics and have a lot of overpriced unlockable characters and in-game stuff. Both games have Twitch campaigns where you can get free in-game items by watching a streamer play the game (or just turn the stream on and go do something fun). Fortnite is basically the same, but not owned by Warner Bros. They are owned by Epic Games and they give free stuff a way on a more regular basis.
All three games have Harley Quinn and the Joker. In Suicide Squad and Multiversus these are playable characters with their own voicelines. In Multiversus the Joker is voiced by Luke Skywalker-actor Mark Hamill, who also did the voicework for the Joker in the Arkhamverse games in which Suicide Squad is set. Buttt... because the Joker in Suicide Squad is from another dimension, they have another actor for him (J.P. Karliak). I didn't really look forward to the Joker in SS;KtJL (the first addition of the season pass), but he's a lot of fun to play and his voicelines are pretty good. Harley Quinn is in both games (and a lot of animated movies and other games) voiced by Tara Strong. In Fortnite ... well, in Fortnite your 'characters' are just skins and they don't have voices.
Batman is voiced in both games by Kevin Conroy, a loved voiceactor who has done voicework for Batman in games and movies for many many years, but sadly passed away in 2022. Multiversus and Suicide Squad were his last projects. A lot of controversy was surrounding killing the Justice Lague (including Batman) and the fact that Batman was bad. It would soil the legacy of Conroy (even though he worked on the game himself).
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League (which could use a shorter title if you mention it 26 times in your blog) is also a game that might or might not survive for a long time. Unlike many, I've been having fun with the game itself, even if it's been a bit repeating. I stopped playing it regularly recently when I finished the season pass, so now I'm waiting for the second season (and hoping they will continue with it.
Okay that's it for now, I'm going to play a bit ... probably Fortnite.
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