Marvel’s Avengers War for Wakanda expansion launches in August

By Otto Kratky Published July 29, 2021

After being shown multiple times without a release date, Square Enix quietly announced a release date for Marvel’s Avengers War for Wakanda expansion. The DLC, which adds Black Panther to the game’s burgeoning roster of superheroes, is set to launch on August 17.

Having been shown a few times already, we know a decent bit about War for Wakanda before it officially releases. Besides adding Black Panther as a playable character, the expansion will add new modes, events, and costumes. According to a press release announcing the expansion’s release date, War for Wakanda will add upwards of 25 hours of single-player content.

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A Marvel’s Avengers War Table stream will take place on August 16, which will reveal more of what players can expect in the expansion.

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The War for Wakanda expansion primarily revolves around Wakanda’s Black Panther as he fends off his arch-villain Klaw, who threatens to destroy the nation. A second, unnamed villain will also be present in the DLC, along with a new explorable environment, enemies, and additional drop zone and threat sector missions. War for Wakanda will be a free expansion for all Marvel’s Avengers players.

If you don’t have Marvel’s Avengers or are curious about trying the game out, now’s the time. An all-access weekend for the game is starting today and runs through August 1. To try the game out, players just have to find it on their platform’s digital storefront and download it. Marvel’s Avengers can also be purchased for 40% off this weekend, and those that buy it will be able to carry their progress over from the all-access weekend to the full version of the game.

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Former Digital Trends Contributor

Otto Kratky is a freelance writer with many homes. You can find his work at Digital Trends, GameSpot, and Gamepur. If he's…

Gaming

Marvel Snap is the first game to nail MCU movie tie-ins

Key art for Marvel Snap's Into the Quantum Realm season.

Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania hit theaters this weekend, and you will know that’s the case even if your only connection to comic books is through Marvel Snap. Throughout February, Marvel Snap is in its “Into the Quantum Realm” season. It’s all centered around content themed on that microscopic world from the new Marvel movie. It introduces cards based on Ant-Man movie characters like M.O.D.O.K., Ghost, Stature, and Kang the Conqueror, as well as new locations based on places that have been in Marvel Cinematic Universe movies like the Quantum Realm, Quantum Tunnel, Camp Lehigh, and the Sacred Timeline.
Into the Quantum Realm Season | Developer Update | February 2023
Developer Second Dinner made similar tie-in seasons for Thor: Love and Thunder and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever last year. As a fan of both Marvel movies and Marvel video games, these Marvel Snap seasons have done a fantastic job thus far integrating the two. Marvel’s film and gaming efforts have mostly remained separate, often intentionally, since a couple of terrible tie-in games during the MCU's Phase 1.
Often, it feels like comic book games have to be either direct tie-ins or wholly disconnected from the films in theaters at the time. However, Marvel Snap shows that any comic book game can still feel relevant to what’s happening in theaters in subtle but satisfying ways.
A seamless crossover
With each new Season of Marvel Snap, I love keeping an eye out for what's new in the card game. Because of how wildly different each round can be, new cards and locations can impact games differently every time they appear. M.O.D.O.K., in particular, opens up some interesting strategies as it can discard your entire hand upon its reveal. Before I know it, I find that I'm using new cards and looking up information on the characters and locations I am playing with.
One of the unspoken strengths of Marvel Snap is how casually it can introduce or reexpose its players to a vast amount of characters and locales from the Marvel universe. Not only is that approach good for shedding light on less popular corners of the universe, like The Savage Land, but it also makes it a good marketing and crossover tool for the latest Marvel movie.
M.O.D.O.K., Ant-Man, and the Quantum Realm are on the top of my mind right now, as Marvel Snap is one of the games I play the most. Now, I find myself a bit more excited to see Quantumania than I was based on the trailers, even after mixed reviews. That's just effective marketing.
This is technically not a direct crossover event or a brand-new tie-in game; it’s just exposing me to the right Marvel content to supplement what I’m seeing in the cultural zeitgeist. Then, once Quantumania being in theaters isn’t as relevant, Marvel Snap can move on and continue exploring new parts of the Marvel universe with future seasons.
Finding success
This seasonal tie-in approach Marvel Snap takes is an effective and clever piece of marketing that keeps me engaged with both the game and MCU films. In fact, no superhero game before has been able to tie into movies quite like this. Marvel Strike Force and Contest of Champions character cameos feel a little too ham-fisted, while Sega’s licensed Marvel games from the late 2010s were too much of a mixed bag to ever work. Marvel’s Avengers, a live service game featuring many characters getting new movies and shows, was also never able to get this cadence right.
Marvel Studios’ Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania | New Trailer
While Marvel’s Avengers would get costumes based on the MCU, it rarely ever felt in line with what the MCU released at the time. Occasionally, additions like the Red Room and Jane Foster’s Mighty Thor would line up correctly, but those felt like exceptions rather than the rule when the game didn’t have a consistent seasonal structure. Even though its narrative purposefully wasn’t connected to the MCU, Marvel’s Avengers' post-launch support could have attracted more attention and even bolstered the movies had it lined things up as well as Marvel Snap has.
As Marvel’s Avengers loses support later this year, its failure to capitalize upon and enhance the game with MCU tie-ins in compelling ways can be seen as one of its many failures. It also raises questions on how future D.C. games will connect to their universe. James Gunn’s current plan seems to incorporate video games heavily, having them filling gaps in his narrative’s story rather than directly tying into a specific film or just serving as supplementary hype material like Marvel Snap.
Admittedly, the resources and effort required for a new game are very different from what’s needed for a new Marvel Snap season. Still, Second Dinner has shown how comic book movies and video games can nicely tie together without stepping on each other’s feet. Simply getting players in the correct headspace and theming for whatever’s in theaters is enough, especially if the game in question is a live service title with a seasonal structure.

Gaming

Marvel Snap’s Friendly Battles set a new bar for its post-launch support

marvel snap friendly battle mode impressions key art

I’ve been hooked on Marvel Snap ever since I gained access to its beta in May 2022. The core, fast-paced gameplay has allowed the card game to sustain itself on just one match type and very few game-changing updates outside of the Token Shop. That feeling probably won’t last forever, though. If Second Dinner wants to keep the Marvel game relevant after a strong launch period, it needs to keep expanding and spicing it up in exciting new ways. The new Friendly Battle is a solid first step for that.
MARVEL SNAP's NEWEST Feature | BATTLE MODE | Play With Friends Now!
Marvel Snap’s developers teased a Friendly Battle mode that allows players to create private games with friends for a long time. The mode finally arrived on January 31 and lived up to expectations. In fact, playing it whetted my appetite for the future of Marvel Snap as I think about how the game could expand and improve with more social systems and modes to keep players coming back for years to come.
The strengths of Friendly Battle mode
Marvel Snap’s Friendly Battle mode utilizes the same six turn, location, and card ability-based formula Digital Trends has praised thoroughly. What’s different is the length of the fights and who you can compete against. Typically, matchmaking is random, but Friendly Battle allows players to Create and Join matches via a generated Match Code. This means there is finally an easy way to play Marvel Snap with your friends, showing off your deck or testing new strategies with them.
These aren’t just one-and-done matches like normal, though. Instead, each player takes one of their decks into a round-based battle where they start with 10 health. Whoever loses each round will also lose health equal to the Cube Value. This keeps going until one player runs out of health, with higher Cube Value stakes from Round Five and onwards, ensuring that Friendly Battle retains the speediness of the default game mode. The health-based setup is an enjoyable variation of Marvel Snap’s core formula.
It gives another purpose to snapping during a match outside of account progression. Meanwhile, the round-based setup allows players to stretch their strategic muscles as they adapt to each new round, finding the opposing deck’s weaknesses and trying to avoid their own. Plus, even when I was joining games using codes players posted on Marvel Snap’s Discord, there was a greater sense of community in discovering what decks other players were using and communicating with my opponent more via the in-game messages and emotes.

Seeing the strengths of Friendly Battle mode, it has become evident what elements of the game the developers need to focus on and expand going forward.
Setting a precedent
Looking at games like Magic: The Gathering and Hearthstone, their communities are what have allowed those card games to stand the test of time. Marvel Snap may be just as good as those from a gameplay standpoint, but it needs interested players to continue supporting it over the long term if it wants to be more than the mobile gaming fad. With players getting increasingly mad at its microtransactions and progression, it is a critical time to renew interest.
Friendly Battle is an excellent first step for that. This new mode finally gives Marvel Snap players a more direct way to connect and potentially set up tournaments that can keep the competitive scene alive. Second Dinner still needs to add more social features in-game, though. Second Dinner teased that it considering the addition of Player Guilds last year, and being able to join a Guild or at least Friend another player’s account would encourage players to stick around and play and socialize with their friends more.
Being able to trade cards with other players is a feature I’d like to see because of how odd Marvel Snap’s progression is. For something like that to work, though, Guilds or an account friending system are necessary prior additions. The necessity of a dedicated social community of players also means that the developers must add more new modes so veterans have a reason to stick around and new players have new reasons to join.

Gaming

Marvel’s Avengers to be delisted in September as support winds down

marvels avengers character guide best builds build kamala kahn

Crystal Dynamics has confirmed that it will stop working on Marvel's Avengers, with the final significant update coming March 31 before official customer support ends on September 30.
In a blog post on the game's website, Crystal Dynamics says that the "decision was made in conjunction with our partners that now was the right time to make this change," and that "no new stories, features, or Heroes will be added to the game" going forward. It added that Spider-Man will remain a PlayStation exclusive character. Thankfully, the post also confirms that both single-player and multiplayer will still be available to play in Marvel's Avengers after September 30. Update 2.8, which releases on March 31, will disable the purchase of Credits and convert remaining Credit balances into in-game resources for players alongside some other balance updates. There will be no refunds to players who have spent money on the game, though.

As is to be expected with an update like this, the developers are also making content previously only available behind a paywall free to players. That means all Marketplace, Challenge Card, and Shipment cosmetics will be free for players to redeem after March 31. If you haven't picked Marvel's Avengers up yet, you'll need to do so by September 30, as it will be removed from digital storefronts then.
Marvel's Avengers was just never able to find its footing despite its use of a great IP. Hyped up as the next great live service game ahead of its release, the game was plagued with problems upon its launch in September 2020, and post-launch support has been slow and delay-filled. Rumors suggest that the team working on this game has only gotten smaller and smaller as Crystal Dynamics has moved on to projects like Tomb Raider and Perfect Dark, so the game never really had a chance to come back from a rocky launch like Destiny or No Man's Sky did.
Ironically, even this closure announcement didn't go smoothly, as the entire website for Marvel's Avengers went down when Crystal Dynamics tweeted a link to the news at 5:30 p.m. ET today. A follow-up tweet from the game's account says "high traffic" caused those issues.
Marvel's Avengers is available now for PC, PlayStation 4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.

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