Anybody who knows me knows I have beef with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I hatewhat it’s done to the film industry,how Marvel treats its staff, andthe trends it’s normalised in blockbusters. I see the movies as being primarily made for profit instead of quality, with few exceptions.
To be fair, I’m ride or die for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. I think it’s the most structurally interesting of all the Marvel movies, especially in how it plays with B-movie horror aesthetics.
That said, the games are very different from the movies. I like that they’re not locked into the same universe, allowing studios more creative freedom and avenues to explore what’s great about these characters and their stories. Games likeInsomniac’sSpider-Manare beloved by many, while games likeMidnight SunsandGuardians of the Galaxyare consideredseverely underrated gemsthat somehow slipped under the radar despite their connection to a wildly popular franchise.
I bought both of the latter games in sales at the end of 2023, and hopefully I get a chance to play them in between all the massive releases slated for 2024. I’m keen on being able to extol the virtues of interesting Marvel games from first-hand experience and compare it to future Marvel games, becauseMarvel 1943: Rise of Hydra is slated for 2025and it looks exactly up my alley.
The newly released trailer has me more excited than I thought possible. While it’s still keeping its cards close to its chest – as good trailers often do – we see Captain America and Black Panther in conflict, with Captain America being pretty peeved about Black Panther being in Paris at the same time as him. Presumably they team up against their common enemy at the end (they mention another supersoldier, likely Red Skull), but I’m more interested in how different their playstyles seem to be.
Cap and Panther will both be playable characters at different points in the narrative, as are the other two characters depicted, the soldier Gabriel Jones and Wakandan spy Nanali. This opens up the potential for very different kinds of gameplay at different junctions. Black Panther’s stealthiness and parkour skills reminds me of the original Assassin’s Creed games, while Captain America appears to have more of a hand-to-hand combat, brute force style of gameplay. That diversity of gameplay could indicate a real winner. And of course, it’s a plus that we’ll get to punch Nazis.
I have to caveat that this isn’t a gameplay trailer. In fact, we haven’t seen any real gameplay at all, so there’s no saying for sure what actually playing will look like. I doubt this will be aSpider-Man 2situation where you can switch between characters at will, but I’m very down for a linear narrative where we see different perspectives of the same timeline a laThe Last of Us 2. I’m tired of huge open worlds, and being able to just experience a story with varying and interesting gameplay sounds great right now.
There’s a lot of really cool things that can be done with characters with such different skill sets, physicalities, and motivations, and I’m very interested to see how the game handles the evolution of Cap and Panther’s relationship over the course of the story. There are so many inherent differences between them, including politically, and there’s so much potential for a thematically and narratively interesting story here that explores more than just superheroes kicking bad guy butt. We’ll have to wait and see more, but I’m cautiously optimistic.
Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra
Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra is a 2025 action-adventure game from Amy Hennig and the team at Skydance New Media. Set in the height of World War 2, you’ll play as four characters, including Captain America.
