I’m a lifelong Marvel fan and have been playing Overwatch regularly since it launched in 2016, so I hope you can imagine how excited I was when I finally got my Marvel Rivals beta key. It’s a colorful team-based hero shooter featuring all of my favorite Marvel characters, so what could possibly go wrong?

I've been playing NetEase's answer to Overwatch for nearly two weeks and have thoroughly enjoyed it, but Marvel Rivals might be the most daring derivative game I've ever played.

It aspires to achieve the same things as Overwatch 2, but does those things far worse than the game it so shamelessly copies. And yet, thanks to the sheer heft of the Marvel IP, I’m confident that Marvel Rivals will not only succeed – it will be a mainstay in the hero-shooter space for years to come.

There’s no doubt in my mind that Marvel Rivals wouldn’t exist without Overwatch . Everything from the UI and menus to the characters and maps feels like it’s been lifted straight from Blizzard’s FPS. The pre-game jokes from the heroes even sound familiar. Sure, it’s a third-person shooter and the aesthetic leans more towards Marvel’s comic-book art style, but beneath the surface the core systems are nearly identical.