Marvel: Contest of Champions

Marvel Contest of Champions
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Developer(s)	Kabam
Publisher(s)	Kabam
Platforms	iOS, Android
Release date(s)	December 10, 2014
Genre(s)	Fighting
Mode(s)	Single-player, multiplayer

Marvel: Contest of Champions is a 2014 free-to-play mobile fighting game developed and published by Kabam. It was released on December 10, 2014 for iOS and Android. The fighting game is primarily set in the Marvel universe.

Gameplay

File:Marvel Contest Of Champions fighting arena (spidey vs cap).jpg

A gameplay screenshot of Marvel: Contest of Champions. Here, Spider-Man fights Captain America in the arena.

Gameplay of Marvel: Contest of Champions is similar to that of Injustice: Gods Among Us and Mortal Kombat X. The fighting arena is rendered in 3D, albeit with a 2D plane for the superheroes' movements and actions. Players begin with two champions, and can collect up to 58 characters (25 total characters at launch) with more soon being added. Players have access to classic Marvel characters like Iron Man, Spider-Man, Wolverine, Hulk, and villains, Magneto, Ultron, Rhino, each with their own classes, movements, traits, abilities and special moves.

The game features an energy system that limits the number of quest-based battles players can compete. The energy recharges automatically over time or players can refill their energy manually. Energy limit is increased by increasing the levels of summoner. Additional crystals and other items may be found in chests as players finishes battles. In addition to quests, users can battle against opponents in the game’s PVP mode. The players can choose their own username to identify them in the battle and can go against others in one-on-one quick matches or three-on-three limited time arenas. Opponents are A.I. controlled and are not actual players in real-time. This has caused some controversy due to the requirement of always being connected to the internet in order to play both single and multiplayer modes.

The controls are designed especially for touch, with no need for buttons or virtual joysticks. There are a variety of basic attacks including light, medium, and heavy, as well as block. You can shuffle back or sprint forward, and each hero has 3 of their own unique special attacks, as well as abilities and a signature ability. Synergy Bonuses reward you for combining characters who have a unique relationship. For example, combining Black Bolt and Cyclops rewards your entire team with a +10% block proficiency. As stated by Cuz Parry from Kabam, "There is also a combo system that rewards players for mixing up their moves and performing well-timed blocks. The higher the combo, the faster your special attacks regenerate." As you take damage and deal damage, you will fill up a special meter that powers your character’s unique moves. As you level up the heroes, more unique moves are possible, and these require you to save up for longer to use them.

Characters can be leveled up by using ISO-8, Gold and Catalysts, which are all gained when fighting in Story Quests and special events. Class specific ISO-8 and Catalysts provide heroes of the specified class a bonus. XP is gained via Story Quests, and as you gain more XP, it will unlock the ability to add more heroes to your roster, starting from the initial 2 up to 5 heroes and save more ISO-8, catalysts and objects in vault. The gameplay of Marvel Contest of Champions is very similar to those in the Japanese social RPG scene. The game is also viewed as a competitor to DC's Injustice mobile game. There is also an option to join alliances, where you can chat amongst each other, help your teammates to earn alliance points which earns its own type of crystal. There is also a global chat feature where you can ask other players to help or just for general banter.

Other quests

File:Contest2.png

In-game screenshot of Marvel: Contest of Champions showing the Ultron missions.

To tie in with the release of Avengers: Age of Ultron, a range of Marvel games have been updated in late April to include Ultron-centric events and characters. Due to Marvel's movie and gaming divisions being so close (i.e. literally down the hall), this has enabled early and easy access to content. The other games involved in this Ultron tie in include Marvel Heroes, Marvel Puzzle Quest, Marvel: Avengers Alliance and Marvel Pinball. To assist in the Ultron missions, all Summoners (i.e. players) receive a 2 star Black Widow, The Vision, and Hulkbuster character. The quest, called Ultron's Assault, was a limited time story quest that has lots of small quests in it and as you do it you get rewards (also called an event quest). After Ultron's Assault ended, Mystery in the Microrealms began to tie in to Ant-Man. When the character Magneto Marvel Now was added, a quest called Polar Opposites began. Before Polar Opposites was over, a quest revolving around Moon Knight called Waning Moon began. A new quest began before Waning Moon ended. It revolves around Venom and Guillotine and is called Blood and Venom. This was the first time when a person can choose between 3 difficulty levels - Beginner, Normal and Heroic. Each having same opponents and story but different difficulty in battles, with Normal and Heroic awarding the coveted Alpha Catalyst if certain requirements are met. After this, another event quest revolving around the Marvel character Luke Cage, with the same difficulty levels as the 'Blood and Venom' quest. The following was the event quest revolving around the character Miles Morales, with 3 chapters consisting of 2 quests in each. The event following this quest revolves around the character Deadpool wanting to create an event better than the story quest and comes up with Deapoolooza which introduces new characters such as She-Hulk and Venompool. The next event quest introduced a new character Ms. Marvel (Kamala Khan). The other characters added in this event quest are Agent Venom and X-23. The current event quest, MODOK MO'PROBLEMS, involves the antagonist M.O.D.O.K. and his collection of 'castaway' characters - some of which are combinations of various characters from the Marvel Universe. Star-Kang, for example, is a formidable combination of Star-Lord and Kang. This also marks the entry of Red Hulk to the contest. The new update from the game comes with a new timer method having two updates for the player or the summoner to choose sides. The new update is related closely to the events of the comics and film Civil War, creating a break in the long time ally and friends Captain America and Iron Man leading their army into a Cosmic Civil War. Captain America suggests on attacking a weakened Collector for escaping out of the Battlerealm along with everyone in the Marvel Universe. While Iron Man leads to attack the Collector for the Iso Sphere and learn about its origins and rule the Battlerealm with everyone. The game let's the user to select the faction, the Blue Faction headed by Captain America and the Iron Faction led by Iron Man with each faction having certain amount of boosts. The timer is set for 16 days and at the end the user can select the same faction or a different faction for the rewards. The game also marks the entry one of Captain America's foe Crossbones.

Alliances

Alliances are the groups or parties of the game. These hold up to 30 players, can be private or open, and allows the player to get alliance crystals by helping others, as well access alliance quests. These alliances can be created with 10000 battle chips or 100 units. Alliance events are events that an alliance take part in, such as "rank up" or "crystal rush" or "summoner advancement", these events give the player rewards. Members of an alliance can help each other out in quests. Each alliance member is ranked, in comparison with the rest. The leader chooses if the members stay as members or become officers who can kick members out of the alliance.

Arenas

There are a number of different arenas where the fights take place. These include the Avengers' Tower, Dr. Strange's Dimension, Asteroid M, Asgard Throne Room, Asgard Vault, Dr. Strange's Sanctorum, The Kyln, Asgard Power Station, Hell's Kitchen and Knowhere.

Playable characters

Marvel: Contest of Champions currently features 66 playable characters. Playable characters can come in one of five tiers, signified by 1 through 5 stars. Not all characters are available in every tier, and while some can be obtained through various Crystals others can only be obtained via the Versus arenas. Each character is assigned to one of six classes: Cosmic, Tech, Mutant, Skill, Science and Mystic. In some quests you can use the character classes to unlock paths. There are relationships between the classes and certain classes have a type advantage over others, use this to your advantage and use various types so you can win against the opponents easily. The classes link in the order stated before. For example, Cosmic has power over Tech, Tech has power over Mutant and so on.

Characters with type advantage against the opponents gains increased damage at a certain percent while the opponents loses damage at a certain percent. Three star heroes and Four star heroes gains higher percentage of damage compared to Two star heroes. When the player completes quests, events or quests, the player earns experience to allow their character to level up.

Development

Kabam creative director Cuz Parry describes the game as a "one vs. one, arcade-style fighting game with multiplayer as well as role-playing game elements with a quest/story mode where you're pitted against a wide range of heroes and villains from the Marvel Universe".

Expansion to China

On 28 April 2015, Kabam and Longtu Games announced that Marvel: Contest of Champions will be published in China, in late 2015. Some elements will be changed for the Chinese market.

Comic book adaptation

In June 2015, it was announced that Marvel would be publishing a comic book adaptation of the game, taking place in the mainstream Marvel universe. The comic will introduce new heroes who will eventually appear in the game, such as White Fox, a heroine from South Korea, and Guillotine, a French heroine with a mystical sword. The Maestro will be featured as an antagonist.

Reception

Reception
Aggregate scores Aggregator Score GameRankings (iOS) 75.00% Metacritic (iOS) 76/100

Marvel: Contest of Champions has received generally positive reviews. Upon release in December 2014, the game was named Editors' Choice on the App Store. It has more than 40 million downloads.