Marvel Heroes was having such a great year. After a top-to-bottom reworking, the game launched on both PS4 and Xbox One, bringing the hit online action/RPG to two whole new audiences. Marvel Heroes Omega: Black Bolt Gameplay Trailer. The Inhumans member is on his way to Marvel Heroes Omega. Take a look at him in action. Download Video.

Marvel Heroes is a free-to-play PC game that plays like Diablo, but stars Captain America and his friends. Marvel Heroes Omega is the just-announced console version of that four-year-old game.

The former's fans are not happy about this latest development.

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Let me catch you up real quick. Marvel Heroes launched in 2013. It was conceived as a sort of spiritual successor to the Marvel Ultimate Alliance console games, but redesigned as an MMO.

It also came with a great pedigree: David Brevik, one of the creative leads on the original Diablo, was the CEO of Heroes studio Gazillion Entertainment during the game's development. He left in early 2016, but not before helping to sand down the early rough edges.

While it wasn't universally praised at launch, the sticky, loot-obsessed gameplay and Marvel Comics tie attracted a loyal following. Heroes improved over time, especially after a 2015 re-launch that merited a fresh round of reviews; the 2013 game that had launched with a lowly score of 58 on Metacritic suddenly climbed to 81 after its re-emergence.

This week, Gazillion announced Marvel Heroes Omega. It looks like a straight port of the PC game — though the specifics are unclear at this time — and it's coming to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One sometime in the next couple months. Here's a trailer:

So. What's with the drama?

The general consensus among many of Marvel Heroes' current players: they feel ignored. Gazillion made great strides when the game re-launched in 2015 and won praise where it hadn't before. A regular stream of updates followed for the next year, further fine-tuning the game and adding to the already-large roster of heroes.

Then, sometime around the middle of 2016, things slowed down. Gazillion's regular dialogue with the community tailed off and game updates became less regular. A community that had grown accustomed to lots of cool stuff on a regular basis started seeing less. It became a point of contention.

With most games, it's normal to see support start tailing off after a year or two. Marvel Heroes isn't most games, however. It's an MMO — a 'live,' constantly evolving online game — and that type of experience depends on a regular flow of new stuff. Without that support, community tends to wander off.

Jump ahead now to April 2017 and the Omega announcement. A console version of Marvel Heroes had already been rumored, but its official reveal seemed to confirm a growing worry within the community: Gazillion's focus had shifted. They felt like the PC version had become yesterday's news; Omega, which can reach the larger console audience, is all that matters now.

This is reflected already in Marvel Heroes' various community touchstones around the internet. An Omega Q&A on the game's official forums is currently at 21 pages and counting just 24 hours after it first posted.

The very first response, from forum poster Quelaan, sets the tone: 'So, no transfer to consoles AND consoles get their own items. Hilarious, really. What are the chances that console version will be the primary focus now? Quite high, I'd say.'

Another early response, from Tzeentch, speaks to the lack of communication from Gazilliion: 'I have a question that's not answered here - why hasn't one of the higher ups come down here to reassure the PC players and explain what the future is for the PC version of the game?'

This goes on for pages and pages, and it's not the only example. There are multipleotherposts that take a similarly combative stance toward Gazillion and its communications shortfalls, as well as a whole separate uproar on the Marvel Heroes subreddit.

Redditor SavingPrincess1 offers a concise summation of fan worries in a post bearing the title 'The sky isn't falling..'

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It's also worth noting: a lot of these concerns are echoed by one of my Mashable co-workers. He's a big fan of Marvel Heroes, with well more than 1,000 hours invested in the game, and he's not at all thrilled with the current state of the game.

To be clear: these are all entirely reasonable concerns. The disappointment over PC characters not being transferable and Omega having some exclusive content is understandable, but the root of the issue articulated in the above Reddit post — and, I think, in the general discontent among fans — is Gazillion's lack of communication.

In the end, a lot of this drama is going to sort itself out naturally. The smart move for Gazillion — and likely what will happen, in time — will be to make sure console players and PC players have access to the same basic content.

Maybe one platform or another will have an exclusive outfit, but Gazillion's goal should be to get all versions on the same page, in terms of who you can play as and the challenges you can tackle. It's better for the community, sure, but it's also easier on the studio side if work on one update applies to everyone.

That said, these gripes coming from the community are understandable. It's likely Gazillion slowed down on both the content drops and the communication because it was focused on Omega. That's a normal thing in game development; chatty content creators tend to start clamming up when a big reveal is on the horizon, usually because they're working on the thing.

But whether or not the silence was justified, the fact remains that Gazillion's active community of players felt like they'd been left in a lurch. Omega's announcement coming after that then amounted to a betrayal: after months of dwindling communications and content, there's now something to blame.

I can see both sides here, and I think both sides will have something to take away from this when all is said and done. Assuming Gazillion knows its business — and by all appearances, it does — many criticisms being leveled right now will turn out to be unfounded.

Yes, players still won't be able to transfer characters between platforms and they'll still gripe about console-exclusive costumes.. but those are minor features, and the kind of gripes that many games face on a regular basis. The bigger issue — the sense that the PC version of Marvel Heroes is functionally 'dead' now — should dissipate once Omega is running and the content spigot switches back on.

As for Gazillion, there's a harsh lesson here: switching over to stealth mode when you have an active, passionate community is a perilous choice. It's an understandable stumble, but one the studio would do well to learn from as it maps out the future of Marvel Heroes.

With additional reporting from Ben Fullon.

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PS4 Review - 'Marvel Heroes Omega'

by Chris 'Atom' DeAngelus on July 10, 2017 @ 1:00 a.m. PDT

Download Marvel Heroes Omega

In Marvel Heroes Omega, the malicious Dr. Doom has gotten his dastardly clutches on a Cosmic Cube, and he's using it to break space-time into pieces. The result is that every villain in the Marvel universe is out to be a pain, and heroes from across space and time have gathered together to beat the living daylights out of those villains. In short, it's a giant summer crossover event in video game form.

The plot in Omega is a thin excuse to have a who's-who of heroes and villains smashing in to one another. If you're expecting anything more than Dr. Doom being Dr. Doom, you might be disappointed. If you're expecting a ton of references, cameos and other cool bonuses for Marvel fans, you're in for a treat. Note that Omega is primarily concerned with the comics, so while there is no shortage of references to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it's going to reference events both new and obscure from the comics. The game even includes in-game overviews and summaries of famous comic events.

To put it bluntly, the core gameplay in Omega is Diablo. Aside from a few minor mechanical differences, it's about as straightforward of a Diablo clone as you can get. It's an action-RPG where you beat up tons of enemies to get precious loot, and you do it again on harder difficulties with greater kinds of loot. What sets it apart is the Marvel license and the huge amount of playable comic characters.

Much like Diablo 3,Omega shows that a controller isn't a detriment to the gameplay, even if it began as a PC game. The core controls and mechanics are a breeze to pick up. Performing actions is as simple as pressing a button, and the PC-built mechanics translate almost perfectly to a console. At no point did I feel like something didn't work properly, and in a lot of ways, it seems designed for a controller rather than a mouse and keyboard. In particular, the quick dodge movements feel wonderfully natural. Most moves are bound to the face buttons or a face button and a button modifier, which gives you instant access to a lot of moves.

The core gameplay is pretty much what you'd expect from a Diablo clone. You go to a dungeon full of bad guys and beat them up, pausing occasionally to take down sub-bosses or bosses. Some dungeons have minor gimmicks, but there's nothing complex to get in the way of the baddie-smashing fun. The game supports couch co-op and multiplayer. Nothing is quite so fun as hopping in as two heroes and beating your way through a Hydra goon squad. The game is entirely playable in single-player mode, but it doesn't do well with pausing, since it's an online game.

Omega is just fun. It's not particularly complex, and at anything below the highest-tier gameplay, you're probably playing it more like Dynasty Warriors than anything else, but that isn't bad. There's something undeniably fun and satisfying about stomping through a crowd of nasties and getting the delightful satisfaction of loot drops, level dings, and cool bonuses. There's a reason Diablo is one of the most popular and successful games of all time, so it's a benefit to add a tasty Marvel chocolate coating.

As with any good Diablo clone, the goal of the game is to get loot, and there is a ton of it! The game hemorrhages loot, most of which is character-exclusive, which in turn gives you a reason to get more loot. I was pretty pleased with the character customization options. While loot drops are semi-random, there are a lot of ways to customize your character to fit your play style. I spent a lot of time as Spider-Man, who can be focused in different ways. You can go for a high-mobility style, which centers around dodging, or you can focus on your webshooters to be a ranged combatant who avoids melee. The omnipotently powerful Squirrel Girl can be built as a tanky character, a melee scrapper, or someone who focuses on overwhelming enemies with summoned squirrel pets.

A good number of characters function on traditional energy bars or ammo systems, but each character feels distinctive. Spider-Man has a webbing meter, which drains when using some moves. That means you need to balance webbing usage with non-webbing moves, so you can constantly attack and have the resources you need. In comparison, Hulk is all about building up rage to unleash more powerful attacks and special moves. Dr. Strange and the Punisher play very differently, as they should.

There is a bit of frustration, though it's minor, due to character balance being all over the place. There's no character that I tried who was actively bad, but the amount of effort necessary to smash large groups of enemies can vary wildly, especially once you start getting more moves. With so many different characters and multiple builds, it's no surprise that not everything hits the perfect balance. That probably won't satisfy someone who dished out currency to play as their favorite character, only to find the play style lags behind an army of smashing Hulks, no matter how accurate that might be to the comic canon.

The biggest flaw in Omega is that it's not great at explaining things. It seems to assume an amount of Diablo knowledge, when the licensed game is targeting newcomers who are more interested in Wolverine than Necromancers. The tutorial does a decent job of showing you the core mechanics, but a lot of the underpinnings aren't explained well, especially when it comes to shops, crafting and other gear-focused mechanics. When you first reach Avenger's Tower, it can be overwhelming to be thrown into a location with a lot of stuff that only makes sense if you connect it to Diablo gameplay mechanics. A casual player whose experience with the genre begins with Omega will likely feel overwhelmed.

Unfortunately, this also carries over to the fact that the interface wasn't designed with a controller in mind. The gameplay translates fine, but the menu-searching feels awkward, frustrating and slow. This issue is compounded by the fact that the default inventory size is minuscule, and you're expected to spend to upgrade your inventory space. You can get by with the default if you're willing to prune regularly, but considering the loot-heavy nature of the game, that can get tiresome pretty quickly. If there's one thing that makes me feel driven to spend money on Omega, it would be the inventory.

Omega is a good example of free-to-play gameplay. Just booting up the game gives you a handful of heroes that you can play for free through various promotions, and you get enough currency to pick up a favorite. If all you're looking to do is play your one favorite character, then you'll have an easy time getting into Omega. The amount of currencies and unlockables can get a little overwhelming, and the further you get, the more it becomes necessary. The for-pay loot boxes remain one of the best ways to get anything in the game, and in some cases, it's mandatory. You can play Omega pretty easily without spending cash as long as you're willing to grind a lot or focus on a small roster of characters, but if you want to constantly switch or try new characters, be prepared to spend some money.

Omega is an decent-looking game. The character models are nice enough and have some great little touches, but they're fairly basic. Similarly, the environments do their job well enough but, they're not going to blow your mind. What elevates the game is the voice work. There's a lot of excellent voice acting from both longtime character voices and newbies and a lot of great incidental dialogue. I was particularly fond of Spider-Gwen yelling at the Green Goblin for what he did to her alternate-dimension counterpart during the boss fight against him.

All in all, Marvel Heroes Omega is a great example a free-to-play game done right. It's a shameless homage to Diablo with some great Marvel flair. The core gameplay is fun, and the free-to-play mechanics are largely unobtrusive. Some annoyances with the user interface and introduction to general mechanics drag down the game, but they're nothing too serious. Marvel fans or those looking for a fun action-RPG will be hard-pressed to find a better experience than Omega.

Score: 8.0/10