Marvel Rivals’ New Zombie Mode is a Fantastic Seasonal Event

Marvel Rivals released its cooperative zombies game mode back on October 23. The limited time event won’t end for another twoish weeks, so there’s still plenty of time to check it out if you haven’t yet. After putting a few hours into it and playing most of what it has to offer, it’s a pretty fun time.

The mode is divided up into seven different difficulties, which each difficulty unlocking after you clear the subsequent one. Normal, Hard, and Extreme are all relatively similar and definitely serve as introductions for the harder modes. The mode itself is a small mission that is divided into nine sections. Each section has you traverse the Midtown map, fight off a horde of zombies, and defeat a zombified Namor and Scarlet Witch. It’s fun. It’s very linear, but it can be a bit confusing and overwhelming at first. The first three difficulties all apply to the base mission and add in more enemies, more specialized zombies, and give the enemies more damage and health. Of course, your characters are also made stronger, and I’ll touch on that in a moment.

The other four difficulties consist of Nightmare I, II, III, and IV. I’ve personally beaten I-III and have given IV a few attempts. I do plan to beat it before the event is over, but as of my writing this, I have yet to do so. Starting with Nightmare I, you no longer progress through the map with a little story going on in the background. Instead, you start in the final area and have to survive for ten rounds as a horde of zombies comes after you. During round five you fight the Namor boss and round ten has the Scarlet Witch fight. Again, they have more health and do more damage and have a bunch of zombies helping them out instead of just being alone like they were in the other difficulties. Nightmare II and III go up to fifteen rounds, and the fifteenth round consists of fighting both bosses at the same time.

You can choose from a roster of five characters: Punisher, Thor, Jeff, Magik, and Blade. I have not played as every character, but I imagine that if played correctly, they can all be viable and a lot of fun. I’ve put the majority of my time on Blade, with a few rounds of Punisher here and there to try him out. These characters can all be upgraded outside of the mission, enhancing their stats and changing their abilities. In the mission, you spend a currency you get every round to buy upgrades and buffs for your character, which in turn can advance a skill tree and unlock new abilities during that specific run. The end result is a lot of fun, and it can get absolutely ridiculous out there in the game between the sheer volume of enemies you have to contend with, and the efficiency with which you carve through them. You also don’t heal like normal, so a support like Jeff isn’t necessary. As a result, Blade really distinguishes himself because of the life steal inherent in his kit. As the difficulties rise, you get more of the currency needed to purchase buffs, and more interesting buffs begin to appear. If the early difficulties feel like a slog, don’t worry because it does get better and more fun. You can also buy random buffs, which truth be told is never worth it.

In terms of difficulty, the event can be brutally hard. Your first runs until you win might be pretty tough. I know it took me a few tries before I beat Normal mode because the final boss has a final stand wipe timer that will end your run if you don’t defeat her before it runs out. It can really catch you off-guard if you aren’t prepared, and weaker teams are going to struggle, especially at first. Now that I know what to expect from the game, however, most of the difficulties are actually pretty manageable. And with knowledge and comfortability comes the fun as you atomize an entire screen full of zombies in two seconds because the game just lets you do that. Every difficulty, save one, really isn’t that difficult if you competently (at least to some extent) build your character with the right amount and types of buffs.

Unfortunately, all of that falls apart at Nightmare IV. Nightmare IV is hard. If the other difficulties can be described as challenging but fair, Nightmare IV is genuinely a hard test that forces you to abandon some strategies in favor of hyper specific ones. For example, one of my favorite things to do in Nightmare II or III was spamming the Blade ultimate ability to just wipe the screen of basic zombies. If I even thought about attempting that in Nightmare IV, I would die. I died more in two games of Nightmare IV than I did in however many other runs I’ve done throughout the rest of the event period. Enemies will one-shot you from different area codes. They will spam abilities and coat the ground in toxic puddles that instakill you. You will get swarmed by a hundred exploders and they will detonate before you can get away because you’re stuck on them. I think that the difficulty jump from Nightmare III to IV is the same as the jump from Normal to Nightmare III. Nightmare IV is genuinely that hard, to the point that it kind of stops being fun because you have to build your characters is very, very specific ways or else you just won’t be able to compete. While I don’t think Nightmare IV should be a cakewalk by any means, I don’t think that it should be the step-up in difficulty that it is, especially because in doing so, it becomes unfair for no real reason. For example, the time between rounds that you use to buy upgrades goes from thirty seconds or a minute like in the other difficulties to under ten seconds. That’s right, you get ten seconds to buy like three upgrades before the next round starts. While you do get more time to prepare at the beginning and around boss rounds, if you’re not prepared, you will pay the price for it, and I don’t really know why a change like this was necessary, especially with the zombies hitting so hard and having such crazy stats. Nightmare IV is a challenge, but in my opinion it’s not a great one. Oh it also consists of twenty rounds and the last round is a duo fight against two Scarlet Witches (or so I’ve heard).

Turning to the zombies themselves, they come in a few varieties. There are normal zombies that simply run at you and are the most basic enemies. A slight variation is the grenadier, which throws grenades from a distance. They can be tough and catch you off-guard, but they’re manageable enough. The green zombies throw puddles of goo on the ground. In every difficulty other than Nightmare IV, they’re frustrating at most. Their puddles can get you if you aren’t careful or mess up your positioning, but on Nightmare IV they can straight-up one-shot you. They almost singlehandedly make Nightmare IV as hard as it is. Next are the orange zombies, who explode. Again, if you’re not careful, they will mess you up. Last up are the enforcers. They’re big melee brutes who like to charge you, deal a lot of damage, and have even more health.

Overall, the zombies mode is a lot of fun. It can be super casual if you want it to be, but it can also offer one crazy challenge for those looking for one. The story itself, while largely in the background, is still interesting. It’s also a lot of fun playing as characters who I don’t normally play as. If this is what we can expect from future cooperative PvE modes in Marvel Rivals, I’m very excited.