The best Marvel games of all time

Here’s a game that does require much more skill — Marvel vs. Capcom 2: A New Age of Heroes. It’s not the newest in the series, but it’s certainly one of the most beloved. Even though it’s over 20 years old at this point, it’s easy to see why it’s so special thanks to its timeless cel-shaded art style and some of the best crossover fighting gameplay out there. In this tag-team fighting game, players compile a team of three characters across the Marvel and Capcom universes with the goal of being the last squad standing. Critics loved its responsive gameplay and memorable cast, along with the online functionality of the newer versions. There’s a reason Marvel vs. Capcom 2 is regarded as one of the best 2D fighting games of all time. Unfortunately, finding a physical copy has become increasingly more difficult, and it’s not available on digital storefronts anymore either, making this one hard to track down.

The following year after Spider-Man 2 launched, Radical Entertainment and Vivendi Universal Games released The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction. In many ways, Spider-Man 2 laid down the framework for what would become Ultimate Destruction, giving us an open-world Hulk game with fully destructible buildings and environments (as its name suggests). It’s quite remarkable what this game was able to accomplish on the PS2 and Xbox, offering a compelling story (with voice acting!) and some of the best level traversal we’ve seen from a superhero game. Ultimate Destruction is a game that did Hulk justice, and it’s a shame we haven’t gotten another game of equal quality since then.

Sure, this list is full of Spider-Man games, but we’d be remiss if we skipped out on one of the very best — Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales. Serving as a follow-up to 2018’s Marvel’s Spider-Man, this game sends you on a journey as Miles Morales instead of Peter Parker. That makes it one of the most refreshing and inclusive games in recent memory, as it doubles down on emphasizing people of color in such a tasteful way. You can tell research was done to ensure the cultural inclusion was done right, making it feel much more authentic with its portrayal of Black, Latino, and Asian characters. But aside from setting a benchmark for inclusivity, Miles Morales is a healthy mix of new and old, blending the beloved gameplay from the first game with a few added twists. Since Miles has different powers than Peter, it’s a blast learning all of the new moves — one of which is invisibility, which makes for lots of fun sequences. Along with that, Miles Morales has one of the best video game stories ever, giving you tons of laughs and just as many tears. This is not one to skip out on, even if it’s smaller in scope than its predecessor.