Here’s what Marvel’s Avengers gameplay looks like

Coming out of the Electronic Entertainment Expo trade show in June, Marvel’s Avengers was still a pretty big question mark for a lot of people. Publisher Square Enix did a big reveal for the game, but it focused on the story and cutscenes. It saved the gameplay for behind-closed-doors meetings. Now, however, the publisher has uploaded a video that provides a peek at action from the game’s prologue. And it looks a super-hero action game … surprise!

In the prologue, you control the primary cast of the Avengers super team. The camera jumps between Thor, Iron Man, Hulk, Captain America, and Black Widow. And the action for each hero switches up to emphasize their strengths. Thor has plenty of enemies to throw his hammer at. Iron Man has some flying enemies to chase. Hulk has hordes to smash. Cap has an enemy stronghold to infiltrate. And Black Widow has a specific enemy that she can parkour onto for a one-on-one battle.

And yeah — everything looks like you would expect. Iron Man plays like an action shooter with some on-rails segments, and Cap looks like a character-action game.

These segments of Marvel’s Avengers will likely live and die on how satisfying it is to play as each hero. While Insomniac Games (Sony’s latest acquisition) made Spider-Man work for the first time in more than 15 years. Square Enix and developer Crystal Dynamics face a much tougher challenge in making Hulk, Black Widow, and Cap all equally exciting to play.

Marve’s Avengers gameplay is still a big question mark

This prologue action still maintains the mystery about the structure of the rest of Avengers. We know it is going to have some online multiplayer aspects, and it is a loot game at its core like Destiny or Diablo.

But it’s unlikely that the rest of the game is going to have you bouncing between characters as much if the point is to upgrade gear for your characters. After all, if I’m trying to deck out my Tony Stark, let me play as Tony Stark.

Square Enix is also promising separate single-player and online multiplayer modes. And it’s still not obvious how those will interact.

We’ll likely learn a lot more about Marvel’s Avengers as its May 15 release day approaches. For now, we’ll have to take what Square Enix gives us.