Avengers Wars: Heroes VS Zombies Review

MARVEL Zombie Apocalypse

After defeating Thanos, the world was safe, thanks to Earth’s heroes. Suddenly Ebony Maw, a former follower of Thanos, covers the Earth in a zombie virus! Now on a ruined Earth, heroes like Black Widow team up with the remaining humans to defeat the zombies. Strangely, Ebony Maw never appears again. A strategy game from ZEUS GAMES, Avengers Wars: Heroes VS Zombies ultimately delivers an underwhelming experience.

Build Your Base

I was initially excited about Avengers Wars. You are a commander in the fight against zombies, teamed up with heroes from the MCU. With Black Widow to guide you, fortify your base and train your soldiers. Of course, you need more than just headquarters and defensive walls. You’ll need farms and quarries to earn resources-food and stone-necessary to make other buildings. Your troops come from the barracks, motor club and range, and they’re all different types. For example, soldiers from the range include hunters and shooters. Soldiers from the barracks have armed civilians and skirmishers. The more troops you have, the stronger you’ll be. Other important buildings are military tents, hospitals, and the research center. Military tents increase how many troops you can have while hospitals tend to the wounded. The research center helps to improve your base, such as troop strength and wall defense.

Other notable buildings are the equipment factory and the hangar. Go to the equipment factory to forge pieces of hero outfits and equip them to make you stronger. Outfits include Spider-Man and Star-Lord, among others. The hangar houses your Mecha, a giant robot suit reminiscent of the ones in Pacific Rim. Not only is it tall, it connects to Transformers. When upgrading your Mecha’s skills, the Autobot symbol is the center of the skill tree. Additionally, Sparks, the hearts of Transformers, power the Mecha. Also, near your base is a Cybertron mine (Cybertron referencing the Transformers’ home planet). In the mine you attack other players to win red crystals, used to buy resources and Mecha EXP. Though Marvel and Transformers have crossed over in comics before, it was a surprise to see them here. As a Transformers fan, I enjoyed the inclusion.

MARVEL-ous Rewards

As is common with these military vs. zombies’ games, there are multiple ways to earn various rewards. One of the obvious ways is to complete quests. Avengers Wars has growth quests and daily active quests. Growth quests divide into main and side quests. Main growth quests have you upgrading different buildings to earn resources and commander EXP. The more commander EXP earned, the more your character levels up, and the more power they gain. Zombies and other players are defeated more easily afterwords. Side quests, such as liking the game’s Facebook page, earn gold. Gold increases building and soldier marching times. Gold can be bought with real money and earned when your character levels up. You quickly accumulate enough so that purchasing more isn’t necessary. Always a positive in my book.

Daily active quests involve several different tasks. For example, training your troops 20 times, or upgrading buildings 20 times. Complete enough to unlock reward boxes. Each contain rewards like resources and commander EXP. Reward boxes have milestones, starting at 50, increasing to 100, 150, and so on. The bigger the milestone, the more rewards earned. Other ways to earn rewards are through airdrops and tributes. Airdrops occur when a helicopter flies over and drops a box in an area of your base. Each box carries a different reward, like EXP. You hear the helicopter, but it’s sometimes hard to find the dropped box. Your base is rather large. If you can’t find a box after a certain amount of time, it annoyingly disappears. Tributes also offer random rewards and are on the defensive wall. These rewards appear after two, five, or even ten minutes, with no rhyme or reason.

Lastly, rewards are earned after killing zombies and sending your troops away from your base. Zombies will occasionally appear outside of your base, stumbling around. Be they normal, cut-in-half, mutated or dogs, they announce themselves with a moan and an exclamation mark. They get shot from a turret on the defensive wall once you tap them. Normal and cut-in-half zombies take two shots. Mutated and dog zombies take three. You earn rewards after they die. Earlier, I briefly mentioned marching. Troops gather food and stone along with killing unique zombies. Gathering resources gives you EXP and such in addition to the resources themselves. Unique zombies have different names and appearances, such as Siren, Butcher, and Devil King Kong. They range in levels of difficulty, and the higher the level, the more reward potential. If the fights had been animated, they could have been more fun.

Copy & Paste

Avengers Wars is a game brimming with content. So, why is it a disappointment? Because it’s a carbon copy of several others. I feel like I’ve played this game before. It reminds me of tap4fun’s Invasion: Zombie Empire and Zombies War: Last Ark from Grand Strategy FUNGAME STUDIO. Considering Avengers Wars is based on the MCU, I was expecting to see more heroes. Sadly, beyond Black Widow occasionally offering tips, this is just another generic zombie war game. Same candy. Different wrapper. The game would have stood out more if heroes got to fight alongside the civilians. Instead, you’re training average Joes with average weapons. There aren’t even any zombie Marvel villains, like Red Skull. Remember when I said the zombies happened because of Ebony Maw? After the beginning, he’s never seen again! Why include him at all if he barely makes an appearance?

This whole game feels like a massive missed opportunity. It would have been more interesting if it included content from the Marvel Zombies comic series. Goodness knows there’s enough content. Imagine if this game had you fighting against and/or with zombified Avengers. Or the X-Men! Instead, it’s just another zombie apocalypse game with the Marvel logo slapped on it. There’s no imagination or creativity here. It’s as obvious as it is embarrassing. I expected a whole lot more from a superhero company that’s been around since 1939.

Super Zero

Avengers Wars: Heroes VS Zombies is an idle strategy game based on the MCU. There are a lot of interesting elements, such as the Transformers references. Unfortunately, the game quickly turns generic with a lack of actual hero content and obvious copy-paste gameplay. Considering Avengers Wars is under the Marvel brand, the game could have gone in a more interesting direction.