Marvel: Contest of Champions

Marvel Contest of Champions
Developer(s) Kabam
Publisher(s) Kabam
Platform(s) iOS, Android
Release date(s) December 10, 2014
Genre(s) Fighting
Mode(s) Single-player, multiplayer

Marvel: Contest of Champions is a 2014 free-to-play mobile fighting game[1] developed and published by Kabam. It was released on December 10, 2014 for iOS and Android.[2] The fighting game is primarily set in the Marvel universe.[3]

Gameplay

A gameplay screenshot of Marvel: Contest of Champions. Here, Spider-Man fights Captain America in the arena.

Gameplay of Marvel: Contest of Champions is similar to that of Injustice: Gods Among Us and Mortal Kombat X. The fighting arena is rendered in 3D with a 2D plane for the superheroes' movements and actions. Players begin with two champions and can collect many more, they also have access to classic Marvel heroes like Iron Man, Spider-Man, Wolverine, Hulk, and villains like Magneto, Ultron, Loki, Rhino.They each have their own classes, movements, traits, abilities, and special moves.

The game features an energy system that limits the number of quest-based battles that players can compete. The energy recharges automatically over time or players can refill their energy manually. Energy limit is increased by increasing the levels of summoner. Additional crystals and other items may be found in chests as players finish battles. In addition to quests, users can battle against opponents in the game's "Versus" mode. Here, the players can choose their own username to identify them in the battle and they can play against other players' champions in one-on-one quick matches or three-on-three limited time arenas. Opponents are A.I.-controlled so therefore they are not actual real-time players. This has caused some controversy due to the requirement of always being connected to the Internet in order to play both single and multiplayer modes.

The controls are designed especially for touch, with no need for buttons or virtual joysticks. There are a variety of basic attacks including light, medium, and heavy, as well as block. The player can shuffle back or sprint forward, and each hero has three of their own unique special attacks, as well as abilities and a signature ability. Synergy Bonuses reward the player for combining characters who have a unique relationship. For example, combining Black Bolt and Cyclops rewards the entire team with a +10% block proficiency. As stated by Cuz Parry from Kabam, "There is also a combo system that rewards players for mixing up their moves and performing well-timed blocks. The higher the combo, the faster your special attacks regenerate." [4] As characters take damage and deal damage, a special meter powering his or her unique moves fills up. As one levels up the heroes, more unique moves are possible, and these require saving for longer to use them.[5]

Characters can be leveled up by using ISO-8, Gold and Catalysts, which are all gained when fighting in Story Quests and special events. Class specific ISO-8 and Catalysts provide heroes of the specified class a bonus. XP is gained via Story Quests, and as you gain more XP, it will unlock the ability to add more heroes to your roster, starting from the initial 2 up to 5 heroes and save more ISO-8, catalysts and objects in vault.[6] The gameplay of Marvel Contest of Champions is very similar to those in the Japanese social RPG scene. The game is also viewed as a competitor to DC's Injustice mobile game. There is also an option to join alliances, where you can chat amongst each other, help your teammates to earn alliance points which earns its own type of crystal. There is also a global chat feature where you can ask other players to help or just for general banter.

Other quests

In-game screenshot of Marvel: Contest of Champions showing the Ultron missions.

To tie in with the release of Avengers: Age of Ultron, a range of Marvel games were updated in late April to include Ultron-centric events and characters. Due to Marvel's movie and gaming divisions being so close (i.e. literally down the hall), this has enabled early and easy access to content. The other games involved in this Ultron tie in included Marvel Heroes, Marvel Puzzle Quest, Marvel: Avengers Alliance, and Marvel Pinball.[7] To assist in the Ultron missions, all Summoners (i.e. players) received a 2 star Black Widow, The Vision, and Hulkbuster characters. The quest, called Ultron's Assault, was a limited time story quest that had lots of small quests in it and as you played it you got rewards (also called an event quest or story event). Many limited-time quests just like Ultron's Assault have been introduced over the lifetime of the game. They each last for a month or so before making way for another quest.

Alliances

Alliances are the groups or parties of the game. These hold up to 30 players, can be private or open, and allow the player to get alliance crystals by helping others, as well as access alliance quests. These alliances can be created with 10,000 battle chips or 100 units. Alliance Events are events that an alliance take part in, such as "Rank Up" or "Duel Skirmish" or "Summoner Advancement;" these events give the player rewards. Members of an alliance can help each other out in quests. Each alliance member is ranked in comparison with the rest. The leader chooses if the members stay as members or become officers who can kick members out of the alliance. Recently added are Alliance Wars, where two alliances can go head-to-head. A soon-to-come feature is Bases, where an Alliance can fight to defend a part of the Battlerealm they claim as their own.

Arenas

There are a number of different arenas where the fights take place. These include the Avengers' Tower, Dr. Strange's Dimension, Asteroid M, Asgard Throne Room, Asgard Vault, Dr. Strange's Sanctorum, The Kyln, Asgard Power Station, Hell's Kitchen, Knowhere, the Savage Lands, Tricarrier, Sokovia, and Oscorp Lab.

Characters

Marvel: Contest of Champions features many playable heroes and villains. Playable fighters can come in one of five tiers, signified by 1 through 5 stars. Not all characters are available in every tier, and while some can be obtained through various crystals, others can only be obtained via the Versus arenas. Each character is assigned to one of six classes: Cosmic, Tech, Mutant, Skill, Science, and Mystic. In some quests you can use the character classes to unlock paths. There are also relationships between the classes and certain classes have an advantage over others. The classes relate in the aforelisted order--for example, Cosmic has power over Tech, Tech has power over Mutant, and so on.

Characters with a class advantage against their opponent gain increased damage at a certain percent, while their opponent loses damage at a certain percent. Three star heroes and four star heroes gain higher percentage of damage compared to two star heroes. When the player completes quests or events, they earn experience to allow their character to level up.

Champions:

NP denotes a non-playable character. U denotes an upcoming character.

Development

Kabam creative director Cuz Parry describes the game as a "one vs. one, arcade-style fighting game with multiplayer as well as role-playing game elements with a quest/story mode where you're pitted against a wide range of heroes and villains from the Marvel Universe".

Expansion to China

On 28 April 2015, Kabam and Longtu Games announced that Marvel: Contest of Champions will be published in China, in late 2015. Some elements will be changed for the Chinese market.[8]

Comic book adaptation

In June 2015, it was announced that Marvel would be publishing a comic book adaptation of the game, taking place in the mainstream Marvel universe. The comic will introduce new heroes who will eventually appear in the game, such as White Fox, a heroine from South Korea, and Guillotine, a French heroine with a mystical sword. The Maestro will be featured as an antagonist.[9]

Reception

Reception
Aggregate scores
AggregatorScore
GameRankings(iOS) 75.00%[10]
Metacritic(iOS) 76/100[11]

Marvel: Contest of Champions has received generally positive response. Upon release in December 2014, the game was named Editors' Choice on the App Store. It has more than 40 million downloads.[12]

References

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 12/2/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.