Play Marvel Cosmic Invasion at Vocari Hub

The next meeting will take place on December 6th at Vocari Hub. There was conflict booking the room this time so the party starts much later than normal. It starts at 7 PM and ends at 11:30 PM but you don’t have to stay the whole time and can come and go as you please. Originally the meeting was going to take place two weeks later, but another group bumped us from that date, so I had to renegotiate the reservation and pushed for December 6th since Marvel Cosmic Invasion comes out on December First. However yet another group has a party at 3 PM the same day, so the options were either have a very short meeting before the other group arrives, have a decent length party after the other group leaves, or wait until January for a full day party like normal. So I hope the weird scheduling and short notice of this meeting won’t be too much of an inconvenience for guests, regulars and any friends of mine. The featured game is Marvel Cosmic Invasion which is a four player 2D brawler like Final Fight, Streets of Rage, Double Dragon or the classic Ninja Turtles arcade games. Marvel Cosmic Invasion has a demo of the PC version on Steam if you want to try it ahead of time, but at the event we will probably play the Nintendo Switch, or PlayStation 5 version of the game. I will provide four pizzas, cola and bottled water for guests to eat during the party. I also wanted to mention that originally that the new Toxic Crusaders was going to release te same week and was going to be the second featured game at this party but it was delayed indefinitely, although it still has a demo on Steam if you want to try it out.

Marvel Cosmic Invasion is the follow up to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Shredder's Revenge and the total number of players has been reduced to four, but now everyone picks two characters and can switch throughout the levels. Every character has a punch, range attack, block or dodge and a screen clearing super move. The character lineup is pretty good featuring Spider-Man, Captain America, Iron Man, Wolverine, Storm, Phoenix, Silver Surfer, Black Panther, She-Hulk, Venom and Rocket Raccoon. It is strange that popular characters like Cyclops, Gambit, Rogue, Deadpool, Hulk, Thor, Black Widow, Scarlet Witch, Punisher, Daredevil, Dr Strange, Ghost Rider, or any of the Fantastic Four aren't playable but maybe some of them will be added as DLC later on.

The plot of the game has the obscure Fantastic Four villain Annihilus attacks New York and then Nova recruits the Earth heroes to travel to space and help him fight back his army of insect controlled villains. I’m not sure how many levels are in the final game, but pictures of the map screen reveal at least twelve so maybe even twenty levels could be possible. 2D brawlers typically have short stages that are five to ten minutes a piece but surely most of them will have bosses and they’ve even shown huge screen filling ones like Master Mold. When I played the demo on Steam it seemed like there were both close range melee attack characters like Wolverine or Venom and long range projectile characters like Storm or Rocket Raccoon. I also had a lot of trouble hitting enemies in the air with jump kicks so bringing more flying characters on any team seems like a good idea.