ILR – Pokemon + Final Fantasy Tactics + Farmville + Marvel = Avengers Alliance

You’ve probably noticed my output has been a little low of late. Well, I’m here to explain at least some of that. You see, a few weeks ago I stumbled across this incredibly addicting Facebook game, Avengers Alliance. And if my Raptr profile is to be believed, I’ve been playing it nearly 30 hours a week since then, and for that I apologize. But if you can control yourself (which I obviously cannot), and are looking for a fun little casual game to play on Facebook, I highly recommend you check this game out.

Now, I’m pretty late to the party with this game. Playdom (the studio behind Mobsters, and a division of Walt Disney Interactive) released the game almost a year ago on March 1, 2012. In fact, it was nominated for Best Social Game at the 2012 Spike Video Game Awards, but lost to You Don’t Know Jack. I found out about it through my Blu Ray copy of The Avengers. The story line is a sort of spin off from the Avengers movie. You are a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent stationed in New York after an event called “The Pulse”, in which a substance know as ISO-8 rained down. ISO-8 serves as the Macguffin of the story, as it gives people powers and everyone on both sides is after it. It’s somewhat hard to explain the exact mechanics behind the game. The best way to describe it is like the title to the article: a little bit of Pokemon, Final Fantasy Tactics, and Farmville, with the characters from Marvel Comics thrown in to boot.

Allow me to elaborate. I say this game is like Pokemon in that you need to build your team up, and each member you recruit has their own type, which is strong against one type, and weak against another (except for the generalist type, which has no strength or weakness). There are six types in Avengers Alliance, as described in the chart below. That makes it far less complex than Pokemon, with its dual typing and 17 different types, but it still leads to a lot of strategy and fun. Plus, there are currently 44 different heroes you can recruit to your team, and it’s an epic quest to “catch them all”. Also, certain heroes get bonuses when teamed together, such as if your team has two members of the Fantastic Four or two heroes with spider themes, so building the right team for the right situation based on types and bonuses can be very much like picking your six pokeballs to take on the Elite Four.

It’s kinda like Rock-Paper-Scissors-Lizard-Spock, but not quite.

Avengers Alliance is also like Final Fantasy Tactics in that it is turned based, and unlike Pokemon which is a 1 on 1 fight, here you get a team of 3 heroes (or your agent and 2 heroes more precisely) versus either two or three villains. Also, unlike Pokemon and more like Tactics, your villains tend to drop loot as you fight them, be it shards of ISO-8 you can use to augment your abilities (much like Materia in FF7) or a variety of items you can use in battle which would be analogous to healing and mana potions. Also more like a RPG, there is a variety of weapons and armors you can buy as you level up, which allow you to change your class as you progress, somewhat like the jobs system.

Being a Facebook game, it’s much like Farmville or any other social game. You have to recruit your friends to be neighbors that you can go visit for bonuses, you send each other gifts to help progress through the game, there are gating mechanisms that keep you from doing too much at once that regenerate over time, there are a variety of special currencies you only get a small amount of per day that you can buy with real money, etc. But one thing I’ve found in this compared to most other games is these social aspects don’t hit you over the head. Sure, there is some limited currency, but you get more than enough on a daily bases that if you have a decent number of friends playing, it shouldn’t be too much of a factor to get easily what you need, it just may take some grinding, far less than I’ve seen anywhere else. And I should know, I got to max level in Farmville right after it started, then stopped as there was nothing left to do. Also, unlike something like say Castle Ages, there aren’t massive constructs where you need an entire guild of people all focused on one objective to advance.

Now I’m only halfway though the story, but there seems like there is always something to do, be it grinding to get more points to buy a new hero, to trying to get a new piece of gear that only drops from one villain in particular, to a pretty fun PVP system (and as you know, I hate PVP, but I’m pretty good at it here). And they keep adding new limited time Special Operations missions with bonus loot and exclusive heroes to recruit. If you’re tired of running fake farms or cafes, and want the same kinda thing but comic related, I highly recommend checking out Avengers Alliance.

If you do decide to play, I highly recommend checking out the Avengers Alliance Wiki which has all kinds of details about heroes and strategy and how to make new neighbors. In particular, be sure to check out the free stuff entry to get yourself up to speed quickly from the start. Or be sure to friend me, and I’ll send you free stuff every day.

JohnScott is the proud owner of a life size replica Captain Kirk Chair. He is a hoarder of Comic Books, Transformers, and Star Trek action figures. He attended Space Camp as an adult. He has taken vacations to the closing of the Star Trek Experience and the final night Shuttle launch. He has been known to yell at his television when the kids can't put together the damn statue in the Shrine of the Silver Monkey. When not writing for InsufficientScotty, he is a Software Engineer for a major healthcare communications company. You can Email or follow on Twitter @NotEnoughScotty or Facebook