Marvel Heroes

It's not perfect, it is 'overly designed' but it's the best super hero game I've played. Yeah, that's right Barnes, the best. It's got great, prepainted figures and packs one hell of a punch in its combat system. It's probably my favorite combat system out of any game. I wish more adventure games would mirror it in their designs.

Also, it plays in two hours or less and plays great with 2-3 players (it plays up to 4 but I've never played a 4-player game).

It's got its detractors. I don't think it was the super hero game everybody was looking for, but it's one of my favorites.

I was weary about playing this game, I've read so much about it's clunky mechanics and how this game wasn't worth it. Guess what? It's not true.

I've just played this game, managed to get a game in 2,5 hours, had a blast playing and didn't encountered any problems with the rules. I think that because it's italian it gest bad rap, just don't buy into it. This is an adventure game that gives you strategic options and a fun combat system.

It might be already late as this is OOP, but if you see it just buy it. Excelsior!

MH is a disappointingly dry exercise that doesn't live up to the flashy theme and cool minis. It's not even that great a strategy game because the complicated rules and awkward language (threat, trouble, troubleshooting... *snore*) keep the gameplay from becoming second nature and allowing the strategy and/or theme to take center stage. Perhaps it gets a lot smoother once it becomes more intuitive, but I don't have the interest to slog through it and get to that point.

I also think the designers did a poor job of implementing any kind of narrative structure to the game. The combat is thematic, but the stories, headlines, and scenarios have pretty much no flavour to them. The worst offender is the victory points. What are these supposed to represent? I'd be into this game so much more if the end goal was defeating the arch nemesis. THAT'S what super hero comics are all about and THAT'S how a player should win the game.

The downtime while other players are troubleshooting and going through combat can be really, really boring. I watched a combat between Kingpin and Dr. Strange go for five rounds of combat (which is a loooong time -- that's 30 dice rolls plus all the other considerations that go into that combat, plus the troubleshooting stage to get to this point), but it was never tense, or fun, or interesting. It was just long. This is probably best with 2 players so that you're always involved.

Despite my complaints, it's a game I'm willing to occasionally play because I'm a comic nerd and I do enjoy building a hand of villain and ally cards.