Marvel Cosmic Invasion review for Nintendo Switch 2 and Switch

System: Switch 2 / Switch
Release date: December 1, 2025
Developer: Tribute Games
Publisher: Dotemu

Dotemu and Tribute Games have assembled once again to deliver a brand new beat ’em up, this time around delivering a unique Marvel super heroes beat ’em up game that takes you from the streets of NYC to Asgard and beyond. With the two sides hot off the heels of their well received 2022 title TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge, many fans including myself were very excited to see what they could cook up with the vast Marvel library to pull from. The gameplay in TMNT was widely praised for how smooth the movesets for each character was and how good the control felt, which is key for a beat ’em up game. With a strong IP like Marvel to create a story around, what did the team come up with?

Supervillain Annihilus has launched an assault with his bug army at a universe-wide scale, and it falls upon Marvel heroes from across earth and beyond to save the day. Popular Avengers Iron Man and Captain America, X-Men Wolverine and Storm, Rocket Raccoon of the Guardians of the Galaxy, Nova of the Nova Corps, Spider-Man and more team-up to fight Annihilus’ critter forces and save the universe. Other villains from across the Marvel pantheon stand with Annihilus, both voluntarily and involuntarily, including Taskmaster, Hela, Thanos and others. As you progress through the story, some heroes will be held captive by Annihilus’ control, and after defeating them in a boss fight, they will be added to the roster as you work towards the final boss.

It’s a straightforward story, but it really pops thanks to the excellent voice work from the cast and the excellent stage intro and outro artwork from the artists. The script is also really fun with unique lines of dialogue for each hero in each stage, even if they are not the ‘main’ two heroes that the stage focuses its mission and artwork around. (e.g. Wolverine and Storm are the focus for Genosha, etc.) A lot of the VAs are returning to characters from various other Marvel projects, including Cal Dodd as Wolverine from X-Men: The Animated Series and X-Men ’97, Josh Keaton as Spider-Man from The Spectacular Spider-Man cartoon, and Trevor Devall as Rocket Raccoon from Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite, amongst others. These familiar voices add a layer of authenticity to the representation of the characters and they all act, feel, sound and animate as fans would hope they do with easter eggs in dialogue, the backgrounds of stages and even fight animations.

Gameplay follows the tried and true formula of the beat ’em up genre with the fun cosmic twist this time around coming in the form of a Marvel vs. Capcom-esque tag and assist mechanic. For this game, you don’t just pick one hero to fight as – you choose two. I primarily used Iron Man and Wolverine as my dynamic duo, as those are my personal favorite Marvel characters. In a stage, you can tap a button to summon your second hero to attack enemies alongside you, and if you hold the button down you can swap hero to play as your second pick. Both heroes have separate health bars, and when both heroes are KO’d, you have to start the stage over. There are plenty of health food that can be found hidden within stage obstacles, as is genre tradition, and there are various different enemy types to fight off against, including A.I.M scientists, Annihilus’ bug army, sentinels and symbiotes all with unique attack patterns and weaponry players will need to adapt to on the fly. Each hero has a standard combo string, a dodge/block button, and a unique attack button. Iron Man shoots out repulsor blasts, but they are limited, and Tony won’t hesitate to tell you when his arc reactor needs to cool off. Wolverine leaps towards the enemy and grabs them, ripping into them with his claws as the player mashes the attack button. Some characters can fly after jumping by hitting the jump button again, and every hero has unique air attacks too. This is useful against enemies that stay primarily airborne. All heroes have an EXP meter, and level up after a stage. The level cap is at 10, but characters only level up as you play them so if you’re like me and chose not to play as She-Hulk or Silver Surfer, you’ll have a lopsided roster of some fighters at their strongest point and some at their weakest.

The campaign isn’t especially long – players should comfortably beat it in 3-5 hours – but the fun of these games come in how replayable they are. I chose to do a run as Iron Man and Wolverine, but my next could be with Rocket and Spidey. With unique character dialogue in the stages, some new movesets to play around with, no two playthroughs will feel the same. The added incentive comes in the unlockable rewards players can obtain, including character bios in the Nova Corps’ Files, alternative color palette schemes for the playable characters, added options for the arcade mode that plays like an old-school arcade beat ’em up with no progress saves between stages, and the game’s soundtrack to listen to in its entirety without the chaos on-screen. This was my favorite unlockable, as the soundtrack comes from Tee Lopes of Sonic Mania fame, and for my money, the man hasn’t composed a bad soundtrack yet. I found myself listening to the Helicarrier theme on repeat and I was humming the hero select theme when out running errands, so the BGMs in this game can be classified as certified bangers.

As is the case with most beat ’em ups though, half the fun is having someone to clobber heads with. I asked my sister to play a few stages with me in local co-op – the game boasts up to four offline and online – and the game ran just as comfortably as when I was playing single player, both handheld and docked. I never once experienced any form of slow down, graphical errors or framerate issues of any kind. This game is technically sound and the development team deserve massive credit for the level of polish on display here.

My only real criticisms could merely be described as nitpicks; I don’t like that characters only level up if you play them. It really discouraged me from swapping out from Tony and Logan in my initial run through the game, but I understand that this is with the mindset players are intended to playthrough multiple times. Even so, I really wish there was a Pokemon-like EXP Share option so that heroes who aren’t being played as at least gain a little bit of experience and slowly level up so there isn’t as much of a disparity in power level when you swap out. Still, this is a very minor issue and not really anything that important. This isn’t really a criticism either, but I also found it interesting how detailed a lot of the boss fights attack patterns were while playing, and it kind of struck me that they could have been repurposed a little bit to make them playable, too. Due to the narrative structure of the game’s plot, it is understandable very few villains would be playable, but when seeing how cool Thanos and M.O.D.O.K looked in motion, one couldn’t help but want to play as them. Perhaps as DLC down the line?

Marvel Cosmic Invasion is a top-tier level beat ’em up game that nails the charm of Marvel and showcases the appeal of why this genre is so fun and addictive. With amazing pixel art, a stellar soundtrack, a unique tag mechanic, and a plethora of fun Easter eggs and deep cuts for comic book fans to sink their teeth into, this title is virtually perfect and very little fault can be found with its incredible level of detail and polish. To paraphrase Captain America: “I could play this all day.”

Marvel Cosmic Invasion copy provided by the publisher for the purposes of this review.