Shacknews Best Multiplayer Game of 2024 - Marvel Rivals

NetEase Games proves that the hero shooter genre still has some legs.

The hero shooter is a genre that can easily be considered old hat. Numerous publishers have tried their hand at it to the point that the field became increasingly saturated. On paper, there's no reason that Marvel Rivals should have worked as well as it did. However, NetEase Games had strong ideas in place, a robust roster ready to roll out, and a plan for the future. Plus, they just let people play. Those are the big reasons why Marvel Rivals felt like something special.

Marvel Rivals is easy to enough to jump into with friends. Crossplay across PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S can have teams ready to roll out within minutes, but it's also a game that's just as fun to play with strangers. The massive roster, featuring dozens of Marvel's most recognizable faces (and a few new ones), catered to multiple playstyles. Of course, simply making Duelist (DPS), Vanguard (tank), or Strategist (healer) characters isn't enough to make a shooter like this stand out. What made Marvel Rivals a leap above its contemporaries was the ability to combine certain characters to unlock Team-Up bonuses, giving friends incentive to master specific combinations to try and get a leg up on everybody else.

There aren't many maps to start with, but the ones that are out there are beautifully crafted, lovingly detailed, and feature destruction physics, which can change the trajectory of any match. Success in Marvel Rivals means knowing your surroundings, but also keeping an eye on how they change. A piece of the map can come crashing down or Galacta can show up and repair a broken piece of the world. This leads to competitive battles, the kinds that were king when the hero shooter was ruling the world.

The hero shooter wasn't entirely dead when Marvel Rivals showed up, but it was certainly an idea that felt like it was on life support. NetEase Games helped revive it, focusing on solid fundamentals, strong character design, and various ways to make playing with your buddies a little more fun. That's why we're happy to recognize it as Shacknews' Best Multiplayer Game of 2024.

Be sure to read over the rest of the Shacknews Awards in our Year of the Games: 2024 feature.