“Nostalgia is remembering when you didn’t have to pay bills and attributing that feeling to Mario.” That’s what my head tells me, anyway. My heart, on the other hand, leaps and applauds every time the plumber embarks on a new adventure. Let’s not beat around the bush: Marvel Cosmic Invasion is a nostalgia play. Its best trick is briefly reminding you of when your life was someone else’s problem. It’s a lazy morning spent watching cartoons. It’s wasting a fistful of quarters on the X-Men machine at the arcade, barely beating the second stage, and not regretting a single moment. It’s one of the slickest, most fun beat ’em ups I’ve played in a while. Making the old-school, repetitive button-mashing formula feel this good and fresh again in 2025 is no small feat.
Out December 1, Marvel Cosmic Invasion pits Captain America, Spider-Man, Wolverine, and more against the Negative Zone’s Anihiilus and the alien insectoids’ latest attempt to take over the galaxy. The result is a sprawling cast of 15 playable characters, including back-benchers like Ghost Rider and Phyla-Vell, each with unique animations, moves, special abilities, and voiced dialogue, hopscotching through a greatest hits reel of Marvel locations, villains, and recent movie lore tie-ins. The story doesn’t go much deeper than Anihilius using his alien parasites to mind-control everyone from Master Mold to Galactus, but it doesn’t need to. We’re here to smash stuff, and it’s as good an excuse as any to have you trading blows with bad guys as well as heroes.
Disliked:
Some levels feel short and enemies get a bit same-y
Platforms:
Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PS5 (played), PS4, Switch, PC
Release date:
December 1, 2025
Played
10 hours. Five to finish the main campaign, another five on arcade mode and unlocking extras. Still have tons of challenges and achievements to complete.
The overall structure is very similar to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge, the last 2D arcade throwback Tribute Games (Flinthook, Mercenary Kings) made with Dotemu (Streets of Rage 4, Windjammers 2). There are 16 levels, each filled with small bits of environmental storytelling and gorgeous backgrounds. You fight a bunch of mobs, find some collectibles, complete extra challenges, and go up against a boss in a race to see whose health meter depletes first. It’s in the details, though, that Marvel Cosmic Invasion distinguishes itself. The most important is a hero-swapping mechanic that makes it feel as much a descendant of Marvel vs. Capcom as the original 1992 X-Men arcade beat ’em up.
A sprinkle of Marvel vs. Capcom and a touch of Diablo
Every hero has a punch, a dodge, or a block, and a special ability and ultimate that are both on cooldowns. Instead of just selecting one character to play as in each level, you can pick two and switch between them at will. You’ll want to do this because some characters can fly while others can’t. Black Panther is quick and deadly at close range, but struggles from far away or up in the air. Iron Man can pepper enemies like Mega Man or knee-stomp them from the air. Phoenix can use her telekinetic abilities to grab foes and fling them across the screen back at one another. Most importantly, you can call your second hero in to punch enemies with you or fire off a quick ultimate attack whenever you want.
Image: Tribute Games / Dotemu / Kotaku
This makes the moment-to-moment gameplay a lot quicker and more dense than your standard side-scrolling beat ’em up or even 2023’s Shredder’s Revenge. By the end of my initial playthrough, I was firing off all of Iron Man’s blasts, closing the distance with his down diagonal jump-kick attack, calling in Jean Grey for an extra pummeling, using my giant beam canon ultimate, and then swapping back to the X-Men to unload her cooldown attacks. The meter for your special attacks builds up over time instead of with each basic attack, letting you be a lot more choosy and strategic about how you engage in fights. It almost feels a bit like Diablo at times, except you’re much more likely to get punished the moment you try to go on autopilot.
Heroes level up to 10 and unlock small buffs along the way, but there’s no build-crafting to save you here, only your thumbs. Adding another dimension to combat is a dynamic health bar borrowed from Streets of Rage 4. Get attacked, and a chunk of the bar becomes discolored. Go long enough killing enemies without getting hit again, and you’ll be able to heal it back. On normal difficulty, Marvel Cosmic Invasion is rarely challenging enough to make you think hard about how this mechanic fits into the overall rhythm of combat, but it’s still an interesting wrinkle that gives the game a bit more flair than some lesser releases in the genre.
Marvel Cosmic Invasion has a CRT filter option (middle), including a curved display (far right). Image: Tribute Games / Dotemu / Kotaku)
I spent most of my time playing two-player couch co-op. Marvel Cosmic Invasion‘s big ultimates and onscreen enemy count made this feel just the right level of busy, even if sometimes it still veers into chaotic spectacle over precision action. It makes me wonder if four players, while still fun, might start to just feel like a big trash can of nachos: novel, tasty, and way too much. The only time I ever got slight framerate drops playing on PS5 was when several characters on the screen were performing flying animations at the same time. It’s not rated for Steam Deck yet, but it performed just fine on my Rog Xbox Ally X.
A dazzling adventure that ends too soon
Marvel Cosmic Invasion has some very cool levels, including an Asgard visit that has you fighting aliens across a technicolor Bifrost rainbow bridge. It also has some filler ones that left a very little impression. They just felt like long corridors filled with familiar foes. Enemy variety is decent, but rarely requires mixing up tactics too much. By the home stretch, I was definitely a bit disappointed to keep blasting the same sentinels, bugs, and symbiotes I’d been thrashing all game. The cast of heroes and their bespoke loadouts is so impressive that it can leave the rest of the game struggling to measure up. Give players an inventive toolbox box and they’ll start looking for problems that can’t be solved by pumping the same button over and over again for several hours.
Image: Tribute Games / Dotemu / Kotaku
This sameness remains an inextricable part of Marvel Cosmic Invasion‘s charm, though. It sets you up in cool cosplay, gives you wild powers, and unleashes you in a 2D candy shop whose aisles shatter and explode in the most satisfying ways. Every character has a distinct moveset. Rocket Raccoon can slide into enemies and place mines or throw grenades. Beta Ray Bill can smash the ground with his hammer or throw it and keep it suspended in mid-air, spinning as it keeps comboing enemies into the side of the screen. The only thing more impressive than the game’s roster is its dedication to making each one feel as fleshed out and lovingly crafted as any retro game’s main character.
Early brawlers were designed to test patience, eat wallets, and make players navigate the pitfalls of letting tedium lull them into an unwarranted sense of complacency. To completely give yourself over to the monotony of a beat ’em up, like letting your sleepy eyes glance shut on the highway, is to court existential danger. The game, like life, will punch back the moment you let your guard down. Marvel Cosmic Invasion adds a new layer of spectacle and moveset management to the fray that, at times, borders on the breadth and creative possibilities you’d more often find in a fighting game.
It’s over too soon and just one extra mode shy of what might feel like a more complete experience. If it follows the mold of Shredder’s Revenge, we’ll get a steady cadence of free updates and a paid DLC at some point. But for now, it does exactly what it needs to: add fresh tricks to a classic genre that makes it feel like you’re a ’90s Marvel action figure rampaging through a Saturday morning cartoon.
