Marvel Rivals

Play it on: PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Windows (Steam Deck YMMV)
Current goal: Fill the hole left in my heart by Overwatch 2

Marvel Rivals has been out for less than 24 hours as of this writing, and I already feel like I’m having more fun with it than I’ve had with Overwatch 2 in over a year. To be clear, I don’t think it’s a better game than Blizzard’s shooter, but the newness of it has drawn in several of my friends who don’t play Overwatch anymore, and it’s been a while since I had a game that I played with more than one friend at a time. A lot of my friends gravitate toward more traditional shooters, survival games, and other multiplayer games that don’t interest me as much, so I tend to play games solo most of the time. It’s only when playing fighting games and now Marvel Rivals that I overlap with some of these nerds, and even if I am still working through my feelings on the game itself, having something the group chat rallies around is a feeling like no other. — Kenneth Shepard