Marvel’s new free to play mobile brawler, which they originally announced at Comic-Con in July and soft-launched in October, is now officially available worldwide. Called Marvel Contest of Champions (Free), the game puts a large cast of Marvel characters, both heroes and villains, at your disposal as you use them to battle in the Contest of Champions. There is a full single-player portion of the game that sees you beating specific quests and unlocking bits of storyline. There’s also online multiplayer, though it’s against other players’ ghost teams and not actually real-time fighting. It’s still fun though, and playing versus lets you win Battle Chips which can be used to enter special Arena events where you can earn high-powered characters and other rewards. Finally there are several daily events to play through which also offer special rewards for winning and unique play parameters.
I’ve actually been playing Marvel Contest of Champions since its soft-launch a couple months back, and honestly I really, really like about 90% of it while the other 10% frustrates the heck out of me. The core fighting mechanics are great, pared down from a full-blown fighting game but still offering strategic and satisfying play. It’s pretty similar to the Injustice (Free) mobile game, focusing on tap and swipe gestures to perform basic attacks and combos, with the larger goal of filling up a special meter to unleash a devastating attack on your opponent. However, Marvel’s game gives you a bit more freedom of movement which adds another layer on top of the simplified fighting and makes the game feel less button-mashy.
I also love how much content Contest of Champions has. The single-player quests are fun and challenging and it looks like there will be more of them coming in the future. The daily events give you something fun and new to do with your stable of characters every day, and of course there’s always multiplayer which offers infinite replayability. Finally, I want to point out that I love the art style of Contest of Champions. It’s not super realistic, and it’s not super cartoony, it sits right in the middle of the two. The character designs and environments are top-notch, and capture the feeling of an epic battle happening in a comic universe.
So, that 10% that I don’t like? Well, for one the game requires an internet connection. Not a major deal to me, but it will be to some people, and it also messes with the flow of the game when it pauses constantly to reestablish a connection or talk to the server. My bigger issue is with the way you collect and upgrade characters. This is something that’s nice and straightforward in Injustice, but is overly complex in Contest of Champions. You obtain new characters by random through a sort of slot machine mechanic, so if you’re gunning for a particular character, well, good luck. Then there’s the whole upgrading characters part, which given the amount of in-game currencies and items to do so can be incredibly confusing. It’s nice that there’s some depth to the character upgrading, but often I feel I’m spending more time fiddling with my inventory and roster than actually fighting. The whole system can be intimidating and confusing to new users, which may put them off completely.
Anyway, even with those negatives I’ve pointed out, I’m still having a great time with Marvel Contest of Champions. It’s a seriously well-made fighting game that feels appropriate for mobile devices and touchscreens. And, much like Injustice I can see myself playing this in the extreme long term, unlocking and upgrading new characters and playing new events as they come for months and months to come. If you aren’t immediately turned off by typical free to play shenanigans and you like fighting games and/or Marvel, then I highly suggest downloading Marvel Contest of Champions for free and checking it out, and then jumping in to the conversation in our forums.
No Boobs? No buy!
What a crazy world... We can kill as much as we want, but nudity is censored. It's really sad.
The point is it's up for debate regarding whether or not it even actually was censored and if it would've been allowed on the App Store if the developer thought said nudity was important to the game.
I understand. I would not probably notice the censored parts without this article, and i will probably appreciate the game as much as if i would play with the uncensored version. But why censoring nudity? I feel like if i was in prison. Why nudity is not accepted, when much more horrible things are allowed all the time in videogames? In a game like this, i think nudity can't be compared to pornography, except if you live alone on an island since a hundred years. If it was in the first version, i would like to play that one, and not another one influenced by apple's morality.
Anyway, it's not very important. I can live without nudity in this game. I'm just disappointed, one more time, with apple's philosophy.
(Sorry for my english, i'm belgian.)
No pixel tits? :(
Does it really matter whether there's nudity in it or not? Toucharcade even pointed out that it has absolutely no effect on gameplay. If it effects nothing, does it really matter?
The nudity seen in a body scanner is intrusive and offensive and fits neatly with a dystopian story while also commenting on similar tech we have and use today. Real body scanners don't show solid black underwear. Nudity (even if pixellated) makes the experience of being scanned much more disturbing, and the act of doing the scan (as in this game) much more disturbing too.
You're right that gameplay mechanics are not affected. But gameplay mechanics are not all that make up a game.
If games were not allowed to show enemies dying--if the policy were that every defeated enemy had to simply blink away without any particles or explosion--that would certainly not affect "gameplay." But is it respecting the artist who designed the game?
You can ask whether it matters enough to be worth talking about (I say yes), but it certainly does matter some.
And what GOOD is achieved by this censorship? There are already content ratings, which can protect children as needed.
The concern worth spending time thinking about is less this specific instance, but more the issues it represents:
- Should apps be censored on iTunes but not movies, TV and music?
- Is constant bloody violence OK while very simple nudity with a serious message (remember, real-world body scanners DO look through underwear) is not?
- Could the app rejection process be made more mistake-proof than it now is? Is correcting mistakes after the fact as good as having a better system in place to begin with?
- Should apps with adult content be content-rated (and thus limited by Parental Controls) rather than banned?
- If the developer is willing to restrict their own art, does that necessarily make it OK? It a "practical" decision just as good as an "artistic" one when it comes to art?
- Are there are other instances of this policy?
- Can it impact the decisions of future developers (self-censorship)?
- Can games be art? (Once upon a time, photos, movies, and plays would not have been considered art.)
- Can nudity, swearing, violence, etc. have artistic reasons? Can they support a message or affect a mood?
The censorship issue isn't necessarily one of Apple picking apart this particular game, or its content. The developer's decision to not press the matter is theirs, and I have to respect that. However, jumping through hoops and getting your game approved are two different realities. One makes you money, the other leaves you scrambling. Which do you think is more preferable? The fact that the developer was more concerned about the political implications before any of the nudity issues is clearly a red flag that Apple's capricious and heavy handed approach in the past has precluded any discussion on the matter. All this for a petty, prudish, and shortsighted 'cause' of questionable motives and uneven results.
Eli, nobody can say you don't care now since you did a whole article on it! Well done.
Thank you for putting up a more extended discussion on this issue, Eli.
The thing that stands out to me most is that the developer was actually more concerned that the game would be rejected due to the nature of its message being too political rather than the presence of nudity. Far from alleviating my personal concerns on this issue, this probably bothers me more.
What some read as "much ado about nothing", I see a developer who was already worried about approval being possible at all due to the game's attempt at serious social commentary. If games can ever be widely considered to be art, they must be free to make statements.
Sure it got it's approval, but there was already the concern in the developer's head... like he rolled the dice and took a chance on porting it at all. Personally, I'm not feeling all that lucky that we got one this time... more worried at all the devs who will see this as one more reason not to take risks. Call it a "conservative first pass" all you like, but here is the effect that first pass is having.
I certainly agree that Apple has every right to decide what it sells on it's own stores. However, since it does sell quite a bit of questionable content elsewhere (in product areas like music and film where consumers could easily get the content elsewhere) yet does take a bit of a heavy handed approach to app content (where consumers, due to the closed nature of the ecosystem perhaps CANNOT get that content elsewhere), I find this issue far from resolved.
You are one deep cat my man... I could not agree more with the posts you made on this.... People who can see the bigger picture like you are few and far between, sad truth is if the dev wanted to fight it he could of, and maybe got a small win against those who hold the cards. But i guess his priority was just getting the game out there, if everyone felt like you did we could defo make alot more changes for the better within the apple censorship rules.
This just in: update with nudity due next week.
(Still personally worried about dev self-censorship and the chilling effect the approval process can have... but a win is a win)