Crystal Dynamics details its sizeable Marvel's Avengers beta, coming in August
And Hawkeye's the first post-launch hero.
Crystal Dynamics has shared details of its substantial Marvel's Avengers beta - which will be playable across three weekends next month, starting on 7th August - and has offered a glimpse of the game's first post-launch hero, Hawkeye, in its latest developer video.
There looks to be a lot for players to sink their teeth into come August's beta, starting with the Golden Gate demo sequence shown previously. This 25-minute chunk of gameplay serves as an introduction to combat and traversal - giving players a chance to test out various hero-specific combos, heroics, and moves - and culminates with a boss battle against Taskmaster.
With that out the way, the beta will then open up to offer two single-player Hero stages, and, later, a selection of missions that can be played either solo or co-operatively. One Hero mission sees Kamala Khan (AKA Ms. Marvel) and Hulk travelling to the dense forests of the American Pacific North-West, where players get a taste of Hulk's destructive capabilities, and the second unfolds in the frozen Russian tundra, where an encounter with Abomination awaits.
Once those are complete, players will be granted free access to four different heroes - Kamala Khan, Iron Man, Hulk, and Black Widow - for use in a selection co-op missions for up to four players. There are HARM (Holographic Augmented Reality Machine) room challenges, set in a virtual training simulator where players confront waves of increasingly difficult enemies, plus a number of online War Zone missions and their brisker Drop Zone counterparts.
Crystal Dynamics notes that it'll be possible to earn gear and XP during the beta, the latter of which can be used to upgrade a portion of each hero's skill tree, and there's also a special nameplate up for grabs that can be carried over to the main game.
As announced earlier this month, the Avengers' beta season will be spread across three weekends, starting on 7th August. The first weekend, running from 7th-9th August, will be exclusive to those that pre-order the game on PS4, while the second (from 14th-16th August) is for those that have pre-ordered on PC and Xbox One. The final beta weekend, to be held from 21st-23rd August, is open to everyone on all platforms.
August's beta is said to feature more than twenty single-player and co-op missions in total, and a handful are showcased in Crystal Dynamics' latest developer video above. There's also a brief glimpse of Hawkeye, the first new hero coming to the game post-launch, who'll arrive with his own story mission chain that can be played either co-operatively or solo.