New Free to Play- Marvel Puzzle Quest: Dark Reign

Remember that one time Thor, Iron Man and Spider-Man rearranged jewels to defeat villains?

To start, I would like to say this is not a review.  As a free-to-play game, Marvel Puzzle Quest: Dark Reign is pretty fun.  It's major downfall is that, well, it's free to play...requiring micro-transactions and laughably high amounts of money for its DLC content.

If you're not familiar with Puzzle Quest, the concept is rather simple.  Puzzle Quest fuses classic RPG elements, such leveling up and acquiring better skills, with Bejewled-style gameplay, in which 3 or more jewels have to be rearranged on a grid to inflict damage against your enemy.  The Marvel entry changes a few things, including the ability to collect comic book covers to not only unlock characters, but unlock their skills as well.  Many of these are randomly obtained, and some "rarer" items can only be acquired with pure luck; for example I unlocked a level 6 Ms. Marvel moments into the game, making the earlier missions a breeze.

There are minor plot structures in each fight, usually prompting you toward a singular goal of defeating a particular villain, such as Juggernaut or Dr. Doom.  Sometimes during these fights, you are required to use a certain version of a certain character, let's say a level 3 Black Widow for example, because she is already there as part of the plot's structure.  This is both cool yet infuriating at the same time; sometimes, you'll get a high-powered character, other times you'll already have a version of that character which is better in your deck, only to have him/her be replaced with one that is far inferior for the fight.

A large majority of the game revolves around luck.  You can grind to your hearts content on earlier fights to attempt to obtain better gear or money, but this won't help if you stumble upon a fight you're advancing into where you get beaten multiple times in a row.  Death comes with a cost in this game, literally, since every time a character dies, in between fights you will either have to wait for a very long cool down for them to revive, replace them with a different character, or use a med-kit to revive them.  Character health regenerates at a very slow rate, as do the med-kits, mirroring elements of other free-to-play games where there is lengthy cool-down to continue with the game's progression.

The weirdest thing about this game is the leveling up system.  You have to spend a version of the in-game currency to level up your character.  However, before doing so, you need to obtain the characters skills, or higher levels of the skills, by obtaining the covers, which are randomized drops, either as a reward from a fight, or from a purchase.  This does not occur often enough, and you will be stuck with many low level characters, while having a select few who are at the level they should be, which is an odd circumstance to be involved with.

It doesn't hurt to try the game.  It's free on Steam right now, so go ahead and download it.  While it's not revolutionary by any means, and it seems like there's no "end-game" so to speak, its a great time waster, and the excitement of getting a good character emulates the experience of getting a super rare card in a pack of trading cards, a joyous feeling that brings out one's inner-child.  Speaking of children, if you have a kid planning on playing this, make sure there is not a credit card attached to the Steam account; there is currently a DLC floating around on Steam that costs $99.99.  For real.