Marvel Rivals VS Overwatch: Which Game Is Better?

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For better or worse, Marvel Rivals and Overwatch are hero shooters that are often compared with each other. Each game has a large and colorful cast with uniquely designed abilities that make them stand out from the rest. By all accounts, both have had relatively successful launches, but do they still retain the appeal that once attracted fans in droves?

Hero shooters have always been my jam. While games like Paladins and the now-defunct Battleborn eluded me, I grew up playing Team Fortress 2, and transitioned to the first Overwatch when it first came out on Battle.net as a paid game, logging in at least 300 hours before quitting sometime when Echo came out in 2020.

As for Marvel Rivals, I have 200 hours and counting, and am on track to achieve Lord status on Doctor Strange, though I find myself playing Emma Frost a lot more these days.

You might have seen my guides on Marvel Rivals Heroes, and I don’t blame you for assuming that I have a bias towards Marvel Rivals.

To ensure that this comes out as unbiased as possible and that my rose-colored glasses remain off, I’ve reinstalled Overwatch and spent some time replaying a game that I once fell in love with back in 2016.

Overwatch

Any video game worth its salt needs decent sound design to serve as satisfying and immersive feedback based on the player’s actions, and this applies most especially with competitive PVP games like Marvel Rivals and Overwatch.

Whether it’s footsteps, gunshots, or the character barks uttered when you’re doing anything, sound effects punctuate the tone and ambiance in and out of combat. Without good sound design, the game would feel dead, no matter how vibrant the visuals are.

Overwatch wins this first round because of how clean and crisp the sound feels. Each shot from a gun or swing of a melee weapon feels weighty. Landing a critical hit also plays a satisfying ding, rewarding your brain with dopamine for accuracy.

10

Game Mode Variety

Overwatch

This is a tough one, and Overwatch won out mainly because of the sheer amount of content it has released since launch. From a suite of exciting objective-based modes like Quick Play and Competitive, to more casual arcade game modes like Lucioball, Junkenstein’s Revenge, and PvE missions, Overwatch has it all, and isn’t afraid of being a little goofy.

When I returned to Overwatch, I was expecting to be subjected to an absolute snoozefest, but Stadium changed my mind, which has buy-out periods and buildcrafting similar to that of Deadlock. Not only that, but returning and being able to check out all the available game modes keeps the experience fresh.

Overwatch has the significant advantage of being the older game between the two and a much larger repertoire of activities, and we still don’t know about all the other game modes that are going to come out in the future.

Still, with Marvel Rivals following in Overwatch’s footsteps by releasing a seasonal game mode every significant holiday (like Chinese New Year and Christmas), we’re sure to get more events and unique game modes just like Overwatch.

Marvel Rivals

The community is the lifeblood of any online game. Without a dedicated fan base, how will any game maintain relevancy in the fast-moving gaming industry?

Usually, comparing the communities and fandoms of two games is like comparing apples to oranges, but you can’t deny that both games appeal to a similar target audience.

Since its launch in 2016, Overwatch’s reputation in the gaming world has slowly declined due to executive decisions in the game that slowly but surely shaved away what makes the game fun. Public reception has only recently improved thanks to the inclusion of new game modes like Stadium and returning features like Loot Boxes.

Meanwhile, Marvel Rivals has quickly earned and maintained the trust of many players since its launch. Although Marvel Rivals is significantly younger than Overwatch, developer NetEase seems to be taking the right direction in listening to community feedback and adding or tweaking features that make their players happy.

The community is so tight-knit that players are willing to go on strike to protest the abuse support players have been getting, which is a whole different conversation about team balancing.

If we’re talking strictly numbers from Steam charts, then Marvel Rivals also wins with the sheer number of players, with a whopping 600k at its peak, while Overwatch 2 had around 75k. For now, Marvel Rivals has a much more robust community that loves this game, while Overwatch is still working to earn back the trust of its community.

8

Narrative and Lore

Overwatch

For most online multiplayer games, the lore and ongoing narrative are merely backdrops that justify the endless combat you see in-game.

Marvel Rivals, of course, takes everybody’s favorite spandex-wearing superheroes and pits them against each other in an eternal battle for the fate of the multiverse. But truth be told, the world and story of Marvel Rivals don’t feel as compelling, nor was it in the forefront enough to make fans want to invest their time understanding the lore.

Reasons may vary, but for me, already knowing the baseline of each Marvel hero made them somewhat less intriguing to read up on, and the seasonal story felt a little too peripheral, and there wasn’t a lot of buzz surrounding the story.

In contrast, Overwatch had something special with its lore. It was a completely fresh and unique take on heroes, set in a not-so-distant future where mankind is still recovering from the ashes of a near-apocalyptic war against the Omnics, which in turn flared up societal tensions between Omnics and their human creators alike.

During the early days, Overwatch had intricately crafted cinematics that came with every story beat and new character. Sombra’s reveal being from an ARG was certainly a highlight.

Overwatch wins this one because the heroic and inspirational vibes back in its early days were simply unmatched. Just watch any of their old cinematics, and you’ll see.

7

Live Service Experience

Marvel Rivals

Of course, an online multiplayer needs some sort of live service model to continually hook players back in after a while and keep things fresh, so how do Marvel Rivals and Overwatch fare against each other?

Unfortunately, this means that both games take advantage of the fear of missing out through their predatory monetization schemes. The gacha system of lootboxes is also still a controversial topic.

While paying for cosmetics is completely optional and has no impact on gameplay whatsoever, the cosmetics — especially the skins — are priced so that you’re just short of a few pieces of in-game currency before you have to buy them from the store.

Besides, even when you buy an enticing skin in Overwatch, you can only see your weapon and your hands occasionally via third-person emotes.

While we can go on and on about the ethics of microtransactions all day long, and that Marvel Rivals is also guilty of this (keep in mind this is NetEase we’re talking about), the latter’s advantage is that you can at least see your cosmetics more often through the consistent third-person camera, which makes them so much more worth getting than in Overwatch.

The battle passes in Marvel Rivals also never expire, even after you’ve purchased them months ago, as you can always return to them to buy any cosmetics you might have missed, which soothes that FOMO somewhat.

The in-game currencies you use to purchase cosmetics can also be earned if you grind out daily and weekly challenges, which makes Marvel Rivals the winner of this round by a large margin.

6

Visuals and Performance

Overwatch

Both Marvel Rivals and Overwatch have incredibly unique art styles that take advantage of their respective game engines.

While Overwatch has a much more polished, almost-Disney-Pixar-esque look, Marvel Rivals​​​​​​pays homage to its origins by making its characters and environments look as though they were ripped right off a comic book.

Visual performance is crucial in any competitive game, and smooth framerates are needed to give players an uninterrupted experience during combat.

But Marvel Rivals unfortunately suffers from its poor optimization, at least compared to Overwatch. With an RTX 2060 and a decent rig, I often have trouble running Marvel Rivals without frame stuttering, which is shocking considering how well Overwatch ran on the same computer and my less-than-ideal laptops in the past.

While one might assume that this is a user issue, this sentiment is widely noted within the community, citing the fact that Marvel Rivals runs on Unreal Engine 5 and the fact that the game is very hard to run on low-end PCs.

Meanwhile, Overwatch uses Blizzard’s proprietary game engine, which allows the game to run much more efficiently compared to Marvel Rivals. I still get some dips in framerate, but it’s less egregious and more of a user issue.

5

Environments and Maps

Overwatch

In terms of level design and variety in maps, both Marvel Rivals and Overwatch are pretty much tied with each other.

Again, this may be the fact that Overwatch is much older than Marvel Rivals, but the former has significantly more map variety that takes heavy inspiration from real-life cities. Their maps are also iconic; their layouts are so memorable that I still remember the location of each health pack. With that said, I think Overwatch takes the cake for this category.

Don’t get me wrong–Marvel Rivals has some amazingly designed maps (Tokyo 2099 is my favorite). Dynamic destruction is an incredibly unique and intriguing mechanic to include that can easily change the flow of battle and available paths based on player input. But something about their maps doesn’t exactly scream instantly recognizable.

But Route 66? Hollywood? Hell, even Dorado? These are some iconic maps that any veteran or returning Overwatch player will tell you that they’ve committed to their memory the best places to set up defenses, or the best routes to flank the enemy team.

I’m not afraid to admit that there’s a slight tinge of nostalgia behind this choice. While Marvel Rivals does have dynamic destruction as a bonus, it’s touch-and-go at times, and its maps aren’t the most memorable.

4

Gameplay

Marvel Rivals

Of course, we have to take a look at the gameplay mechanics of both games, and it’s important to note that Marvel Rivals and Overwatch share some similarities in objectives and game modes, but their core combat is surprisingly different.

Combat in Overwatch is a little heavier on neutral plays and much more reliant on the player’s accuracy. Ultimate abilities also recharge a little slower, which adds a lot of tension whenever they’re used.

The combat in Marvel Rivals is more frenetic, much like how you would imagine a cartoon brawl to look. With a balanced composition, both teams can stay in the fight almost indefinitely until someone pops their ult, which is where most of the real tension lies.

Ults build up relatively quickly in Marvel Rivals, and abilities stand out more in the forefront during combat. Not only that, but combat is much more varied, as there’s a rather balanced number of melee and ranged options for everybody to choose.

Marvel Rivals takes the win here. Not only is there a wide gradient of playstyles, but the game is comparatively more balanced than Overwatch. When everybody is OP, nobody is OP.

3

Teamplay and Roles

Marvel Rivals

Teamplay is crucial for both Marvel Rivals and Overwatch, and the best way to succeed in both is by having a balanced composition of tanks, damage-dealers, and support classes. Between the two, I think Marvel Rivals wins here, due to one big advantage that Overwatch doesn’t have.

Team-Up Abilities may feel like the game is forcing you to pick a certain kind of team composition, but it doesn’t penalize you for not adhering to it; instead, Team-Up Abilities incentivize you by giving you helpful abilities and buffs, which change once every season to shake up the meta to prevent stagnation.

They not only give huge benefits to a team that uses it, but they also make heretofore “weak” Heroes much more useful during any given season, giving the developers time and insights into what they should tweak in the future.

Both Marvel Rivals and Overwatch share the same basic three classes that divide up their characters (albeit with different names), and it’s natural to think that having two of each class would be ideal. Overwatch’s shift from 6v6 to 5v5 is still a highly controversial decision.

Combined with the restrictive requirements of role queue Overwatch’s heavy emphasis on competitive play can stifle creativity and potentially wild team comps, unlike Marvel Rivals, for better or worse.

2

Characters

Overwatch

As hero shooters, both games have a diverse cast of characters, and it’s important to have their silhouettes be instantly recognizable in the heat of combat.

Because Marvel Rivals draws from comic book heroes, you’d think that it would be a major advantage. In comparison, Overwatch has to build these characters from scratch, which certainly is a huge plus in the creative department.

Overwatch takes the win here, as the heroes in Marvel Rivals have received common critiques. Some believe that Ultimate abilities feel similar in that they can be reduced to big AOE attacks, or that the silhouettes and colors of certain blonde heroes look way too similar in terms of character design.

While Overwatch doesn’t release heroes as regularly as Marvel Rivals plans to, each hero feels carefully crafted to be unique enough to stand apart from the other, both in design and gameplay.

That’s not to say that Marvel Rivals has worse heroes–it’s just that Overwatch​​​​​​has the advantage of working with a completely original IP.

“}]] Which co-op hero shooter reigns supreme?  Read More