Did You Know Gaming? Shows Us ‘The Avengers’ FPS That Almost Was
Did You Know Gaming? is one of my favorite lunch break time-killers at work. Their 5-10 minute videos have unveiled the making and secrets of nearly a hundred prolific games, franchises, and consoles and it’s my favorite way to occupy my attention while I eat a pastrami. They’ve recently introduced a new series, “Unseen64” which delves into the doomed productions of cancelled video games. Their newest video reveals an amazing what-could-have been: Marvel’s The Avengers, which would have been a first-person action game with a story written by veteran comic scribe Brian Michael Bendis.
I’m really stunned by how well the FP aspects would have worked without the “S” part. None of the Avengers (except maybe Iron Man) would have shooting mechanics, but based on the footage from early builds it actually looks like it would have been a ton of fun. Each of the playable Avengers — Captain America, Thor, Hulk, and Iron Man primarily, with Black Widow, Hawkeye, and Ms. Marvel being unlockable — essentially fulfill a class not unlike *Team Fortress 2*, with everyone relying on each other’s strengths to make up for their own shortcomings. That’s teamwork! Which should be at the heart of most comic book games (Batman excluded).
Also notable is how the game isn’t based on the film, but The Avengers property with designs inspired by Joss Whedon’s movie and an original story riffing on Bendis’ Secret Invasion storyline. The tie-in video game quietly died a few years ago and none of us really noticed.
One thing that never ceases to amaze me about cancelled video games is how invincible they should have been. You’d think that a video game tied to one of the most lucrative films in history would have been cancellation-proof, but THQ’s financial woes were ultimately what killed the project. A more recent example is P.T., aka Silent Hills which its ingredients should have allowed it to survive: genre auteur Guillermo del Toro, Metal Gear Solid mastermind Hideo Kojima, and Norman Reedus, the breakout star of the world’s most popular cable series The Walking Dead. How on Earth do these things just fall through the cracks?
