Marvel's Midnight Suns already offers great turn-based battles and killer bookshelf shopping
Marvel may be the name up top, but my first few hours with Midnight Suns has proved a brisk reminder of everything I love about Firaxis games – particularly the part of Firaxis that makes XCOM. For one thing, there’s tactical depth on the battlefield, which leaves you with plenty of options for getting out of jams, or accidentally getting into them. There are upgrade choices that leave you frowning as you pick and choose, not between what you desperately want, but between what you least care to be without. And then of course there’s a certain sense of wisdom in all things, and a belief that wisdom is in easy supply. This is a team that is not afraid to bust out a word like “commensurate” in a tool tip.
Marvel’s Midnight SunsPublisher: 2KDeveloper: FiraxisPlatform: Played on PCAvailability: Out on PC, Xbox X/S and Playstation 5 on 2nd December.
Something else too: XCOM games are surprisingly rich doll’s houses. You battle aliens, sure, but then you peg it back home and decide which rooms to build and where best to place your bedroom. Midnight Suns is an excellent doll’s house, by the looks of it. In the last hour I fought Hydra guards and chatted to Tony Stark. At one point, I actually punched a helicopter. But I also made it back home and spent a few happy moments deciding where to put a book case and picking out the best bedside table.
The reason for this doll’s house stuff is because ancient magic and evil has returned to the world in Midnight Suns, and a bunch of heroes have retreated to The Abbey, a rambling manor, where they can regroup, pick up new members, train up and all that sort of jazz. It’s the XCOM base, in a way: you get to choose what to spend resources on and what to research next. But it’s different too. You are asked to build up friendships with other heroes – a movie night here, an ice cream there. I am making up that last part, because so far I’ve only done the movie night. No matter: you build bonds to unlock new combat synergies between people.
You do this because while the house is riddled with famous Marvel names, and you get to control people like Iron Man and Captain Marvel on the battlefield, for the Abbey sections, and in the story generally, you play as a new Marvel hero, constructed just for this game. I keep forgetting their name, which is not the greatest sign – it’s The Hunter; just looked it up – but the promise is still very rich: kit out your own hero, from their face and haircut down to their powers and the colour of their hero boots. The story campaign even allows you to take them down a light or dark path, both, this being Firaxis, with their own rewards.
