Last year, NetEase skyrocketed into the mainstream (at least in the West) with free-to-play hero shooterMarvel Rivals. Ever since then, I’ve been associating the mobile game giant with the pile of Marvel slop clogging up the app store. It turns out I’ve been blaming the wrong studio all along. While NetEase has developed a couple of Marvel games before (Marvel Super War, Marvel Duel), they were never been released globally. Don’t mistake the Netmarbles for NetEase: there’s a scourge of low-quality Marvel mobile games out there, but NetEase has nothing to do with it.
Marvel Mystic Mayhem, a new team-based real-time tactics RPG, is the company’s first worldwide Marvel mobile game. I was eager to see how NetEase would follow up the success of Marvel Rivals, and after spending a few days grinding Mystic Mayhem, I was happy, and a little bit surprised, to discover that, for a Marvel mobile gacha game, it’s punching way above its weight.
Occult Avengers And Secret Defenders
As you may have guessed, Mystic Mayhem is set in the magical side of the Marvel Universe. The fear lord Nightmare is waging war against the Marvel heroes in the Dreamscape, a metaphysical plane where their darkest dreams are made reality. Naturally, Doctor Strange has assembled a team to rescue the heroes from the dreamscape and defy Nightmare’s plan to bend reality to his will.
From the moment the opening cutscene started, I could tell Mystic Mayhem was on a different level from the typical Marvel mobile game. There’s a level of polish and production value in the mobile games NetEase develops and publishes that’s surprisingly uncommon, given the ungodly amounts of money mobile games make, but that investment makes a huge difference. Games like Knives Out and Naraka: Bladepoint aren’t just some of the most popular mobile games in the world; they also blur the line between mobile games and real games.
Mystic Mayhem has many of the same quality markers. While its squad-based gameplay and gacha mechanics make it obvious it’s a mobile game, it has a triple-A aesthetic. The art style, a unique mix of cell-shaded comics and JRPG character designs reminiscent of Final Fantasy, Hades, and Marvel Rivals, is wallpaper-worthy. The narrative unfolds in cutscenes woven between missions, which are a mix of animation and motion comics that are fully voiced. It has the scope of a major Marvel crossover event, with a main storyline (the stem) and ancillary side stories (the branch) that tell an interconnected story about the demons that lurk in a hero’s psyche. This isn’t just Clash of Clans with a Marvel skin; NetEase has a clear artistic vision and a fresh story to tell in Mystic Mayhem.
Getting Weird In The Marvel Universe
Mystic Mayhem is heavily reminiscent of my all-time favorite Marvel game,Midnight Suns. Both games tell stories about the occult and feature tactical combat with teams of three heroes, but where Midnight Suns played it safe with a roster made largely of MCU favorites, Mystic Mayhem isn’t afraid to go obscure.
The tutorial features Doctor Strange, Scarlet Witch, and a magic-imbued Hulk smashing and zapping they’re way through the Dreamscape, so I thought I knew what to expect. But once those heroes fell to Nightmare, I discovered just how niche the Mystic Mayhem’s roster really is.
The first three characters I unlocked were Sleepwalker, Misty Knight, and Angela; three characters you probably haven’t heard of unless you’re a huge comic book fan or a Marvel Snap player, and even then, you’d only know two out of the three (Sleepwalker card when?). After that, I unlocked Psylocke, Lady Bullseye, Man-Thing, and Moon Girl & Devil Dino. Of course, you can find the likes of Iron Man, Spider-Man, and Thor, but the A-list heroes are the exception here, not the rule.
You can also add the villains of the story to your team. So far, I’ve collected Mister Negative, Thread, and Spider-Doppleganger. Doppleganger is so obscure that even as a huge Spider-Man fan, I had to look up his appearances. In 33 years, the character has only appeared 41 times, and often only in the background.
Filling the meager roster with D-listers communicates that NetEase has a lot of confidence in Mystic Mayhem. At launch, there are 26 characters, and only nine of them have ever appeared in the MCU. Instead of choosing heroes that will sell pulls and battle passes, NetEase picked the ones that fit into its world and the story it wants to tell. That makes me infinitely more interested in playing Mystic Mayhem because I know it isn’t just another mobile game cash grab.
It’s likely still plenty evil in the way most mobile games are, and I’ll admit I’ve already succumbed to the pressure of a well-placed ad, but at least I’m getting a high-quality experience for my money. If I’m going to get trapped in a casino, I’d rather it be the Bellagio than Circus Circus. Or in this case, whatever the spooky, demon-filled version of the Bellagio is. I think you know which one I’m thinking of.
