Marvel Rivals’ “Blood Hunt” Is a Major Evolution of Its PvE Formula

Marvel Rivals dropped its new “Blood Hunt” PvE mode. In terms of gameplay, it’s similar to the previous “Zombies” mode where you can expect to battle through a horde of enemies, racking up thousands of kills. It’s fun. It feels like an evolution of the previous mode that fixes some problems, but it also may introduce some new ones.

The story is pretty barebones. Kingpin tasks heroes with invading Dracula’s castle and defeating him to recover Kingpin’s Norn Stone. There are three difficulties: Normal, Hard, and Extreme. Each difficulty progresses through the linear story, but they all stop at different points. Normal mode ends on round five with a battle against Capwolf. Hard mode ends on round nine with a battle against corrupted Ratatoskr. Extreme mode concludes on round thirteen or fourteen depending on if you successfully complete not-so-secret objectives during the run. The final boss of Extreme is Dracula if you only reach wave thirteen, and Kingpin if you reach wave fourteen. The story mode is fine. Runs aren’t too long, and it basically exists to introduce the enemies and prepare you for the endgame. That being said, the bosses can be tough, namely Dracula and Kingpin. Capwolf and Ratatoskr don’t have much complexity going for them aside from dodging attacks. Dracula has ways to heal, and he can quickly flood the room with hazards. Kingpin hits really hard, has some command grabs with slightly janky hitboxes, and an attack that’s a DPS check. It isn’t as bad as zombie Wanda in the last event because you can revive yourself after failing it, but in some ways it is worse since he can use that attack multiple times.

The endgame is the revamped Nightmare mode. Before I get too deep into my discussion, I want to say that I have not beaten most of Nightmare. I have cleared Nightmare 15. The highest Nightmare level I’ve seen is 160. There’s a lot here. A few things that I really like about the new Nightmare modes is that the areas you fight in change. Just like in the previous PvE event, you have to stay in a single map and fight off waves of enemies. This time, however, the location you fight in can change, and that already adds in a lot of variation. The boss you fight at the end is also random. That does mean that if you’re struggling against one boss in particular, you can keep grinding away until you get other ones that are more manageable. Each run is also only five waves, which makes clearing it so much easier and faster. One of my big gripes with the previous Nightmare system was how it got tedious fighting through so many waves of the same things. However, the new system isn’t perfect either. As I’ve mentioned, there are 160 different Nightmare difficulties, but there’s no incentive to play most of them. The in-game missions and achievements rewards you for clearing levels in increments of five or ten, with the last reward being for level 120. That means that there’s no reason to ever play Nightmare 43, or even Nightmare 143. So why does it exist? It feels kind of superfluous with how many different difficulties there are versus how many of them actually matter and need to be completed for rewards.

Returning to the gameplay, there are six playable characters this time around, and building them is very different from before. The characters include Blade, Thor, Moon Knight (he can finally get his money back from Dracula), Jeff, Punisher, and Squirrel Girl. A lot of features return from the previous mode, like Jeff leaving behind fire AoE damage over time puddles. However, building is very different from before. Every character is leveled up individually. There is an account-wide meta-progression track, but in order to level up and unlock new abilities for a given character, that has to be done separately on a per character basis. Characters have a max level of 60, and a wealth of upgrades you need to choose between. You cannot spec into everything, so you will need to choose what upgrades you do and don’t prioritize. And like before, characters generally have two different ways that you can build them (i.e. shotgun vs. assault rifle Punisher, hide and seek vs. water gun Jeff, melee vs. ranged Moon Knight, melee vs. ranged Blade, etc.). The other main way you build characters is through collecting gear. Each character has four pieces of gear that can be slotted, and it ranges in level and quality along your classic white, green, blue, purple, orange progression. I have a few critiques of the gear system. First, it’s hard restricted by levels. Gear drops at levels 1, 8, 16, 24, 32, 40, 50, and 60. That’s it. Why? I know that it’s a limited time side mode, but it seems so bizarre to me that gear has set levels, so you can never get level 37 armor. The gear is also very limited. Characters have two weapons to choose from, a single piece of armor, a single accessory, and then two more exclusives to choose from. That’s only six actual pieces of gear, and it’s all largely the same between characters. It just feels kind of underdeveloped and like a needless level of complexity. You acquire gear by just playing the game and getting it to drop. It also has passives that buff your character. Since I’m still leveling my characters, I haven’t bothered really getting into the weeds of min-maxing gear. Lastly, there are upgrade cards you can get after each round, but you’re limited to a single card per round aside from boss waves, and there are only eleven total to choose from. They feel much less important and impactful when compared with the last event.

One change in this mode that I like is how you build your character outside of the actual game. One frustrating aspect of the “Zombies” mode was how you could get the most abysmal luck imaginable with character building. I remember runs where I would spend more time between rounds refreshing the blessing shop and buying ancillary upgrades than I did actually getting the upgrades my character needed. Upgrading your characters outside of the actual matches is a nice change, even if it feels kind of arbitrary sometimes. I also really like that there’s a designated heal ability for all characters. That’s a great change that helps mitigate some of the unfairness of enemies dogpiling you. And while I may critique it, I do like that you aren’t required to beat the most ridiculous difficulties to get everything. From my understanding, the higher difficulties get ROUGH. That doesn’t surprise me, but it does make me feel better knowing I don’t need to solo Nightmare 160 with every character to get rewards.

Overall, I do like the new “Blood Hunt” event. It’s also free, so I definitely can’t complain there. I’m a big fan of the Marvel Rivals content model, and I think that “Blood Hunt” is another excellent release from them. It has a surprising amount of depth for being a limited time mode, and it’s a lot of fun to just mindlessly play with friends. It’s not perfect by any means, but it doesn’t need to be. I’m having fun with it, and I look forward to getting deeper into it over the next three months it’s available.