Marvel Rivals Season 3 has arrived, and with it a new dawn for NetEase’s live-service hero shooter. Character adjustments, be it a buff or a nerf, can be profound and pivotal depending on who is affected and how strong it makes them in the ongoing meta. Likewise, the same can be said about Team-Up abilities as they have an opportunity to redefine team compositions for upcoming seasons if each character involved has an equally advantageous reason to queue together. New playable characters like Marvel Rivals’ Jean Grey/Phoenix will be insta-locked, but others will be popular based on their perceived viability.
Lately, Squirrel Girl has been quite a contentious character in Marvel Rivals. It’d be surprising to see her at the top of anybody’s tier lists, yet the ease with which players can swiftly master her simple gameplay kit can be rather grating to deal with on the opposing team. The cherry on top of Squirrel Girl in Season 3 is that her Team-Up with Spider-Man, ESU Alumnus, has been snapped out of existence, and she’s instead been added to Iron Man and Ultron’s Team-Up, dubbed Stark Protocol. However, even though it already seems grossly overpowered and in need of a nerf, there’s an argument to be made for Squirrel Girl remaining how she is.
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Much of the ire drawn by Marvel Rivals’ Squirrel Girl boils down to the claim that she doesn’t have to aim in order to achieve kills. This isn’t as simple as a yes or no, though; Squirrel Girl can certainly take advantage of her lobbed, arcing shots from any distance and from behind defensive cover to not have to aim as precisely as a character with hitscan has to, to be clear, but securing final hits or kills that way isn’t always effortless or without strategy.
Plus, while Squirrel Girl has relatively decent mobility due to being able to bounce into the air, she loses almost every bout of close-quarters combat against divers unless players are fortunate enough to loose enough shots to ricochet and hit their opponent in a tightly enclosed corner packed with surfaces. Regardless, there are a multitude of downsides to Squirrel Girl and her Marvel Rivals gameplay kit, and so Squirrel Girl receiving a phenomenal new Team-Up ability may be bewildering to anyone who’s been on the receiving end of her attacks but doesn’t seem all too bizarre or tone-deaf from the perspective of those who play her.
Marvel Rivals’ Stark Protocol Team-Up reads:
“When Iron Man, Ultron, and Squirrel Girl team up, Ultron’s Encephalo-Ray upgrades to Nano-Ray, firing a beam that pierces through all characters, dealing continuous damage to foes while healing allies; Squirrel Girl gains the Squirrel Missile ability. She directs a squirrel to ride Iron Man’s nanotech glove as a homing missile. Upon hit, the squirrel flees just before a fiery explosion.”
Squirrel Girl’s Stark Protocol Team-Up is only available if Iron Man is on the team, and with a burgeoning Marvel Rivals anti-air meta targeting flyers it is not guaranteed that an Iron Man will be around often or for a full match in Season 3.
Marvel Rivals Season 3 only began today and, as such, it’s perhaps too early to say whether Squirrel Girl’s Squirrel Missile ability is too overpowered. Still, the character is unlikely to become any less polarizing due to her Team-Up as it further reinforces the idea that Squirrel Girl doesn’t need to aim to do well, as well as reinforcing the idea that she now finally has a reliable weapon, so long as one character is around. In this way, it’s debatable that Squirrel Girl is incredibly well-balanced going into Season 3, and it’ll take some convincing data to prove that she should be nerfed or that Stark Protocol should be the second Team-Up confiscated from her.
9/10
December 6, 2024
T For Teen // Violence
NetEase Games
NetEase Games
Unreal Engine 5
