There’s a lot to be said about Marvel’s Avengers and its many shortcomings, but the Hulk isn’t one of them.

Marvel’s Avengers is both a fantastic story and a dead-average grind for meaningless loot. When everything comes together, it’s a brilliant power fantasy with heart and true passion for its source material. Those moments are fleeting though, held back by a range of technical issues, shockingly sloppy design and no solid idea of what kind of game it really wants to be. Some assembly, definitely required.

Earth’s mightiest heroes are about to expand like my waistline at an all you can eat Twinkie buffet.

With some extra polish, a retuning of the enemies and less frequent knockdowns, there could be something magical here down the road. I’m still not entirely sold on the live service model and having a battle pass system in play this early in the lifecycle of Marvel’s Avengers feels premature, but I’m slowly feeling it!

Marvel’s Avengers may play like a checklist of live service game tropes, but it’s a damn good-looking assemblage of Earth’s mightiest heroes. Square Enix has revealed the minimum and recommended PC specs for the game, which are about as standard as torn purple pants on a gamma-powered giant with staggering anger management issues.

Hawkeye won't be sitting on the benches for long when Marvel's Avengers launches, as he'll be the first free DLC character that players can get their hands on

PlayStation players will get in earlier than anyone else, followed by PC and Xbox players before the full open beta.

On the surface, Marvel’s Avengers looks like your stock standard live service game: Several characters and classes to choose from, a whole lot of gear to chase down so that you’ll always have a mathematical edge in combat and a whole lot cannon fodder to punch your way through. Last night’s war table event finally shed light on one of the other modes that’ll be coming with the game in September: A properly chunky co-op selection of missions known as Warzones.