Marvel’s Midnight Suns has just kicked off its season pass content with the arrival of everyone’s favorite Merc with the Mouth. Deadpool arrives in The Good, The Bad, and the Undead, three new missions that kick off a brand new storyline that’ll eventually see Morbius, Storm, and Venom join the party. But, for this installment, we’re squarely focused on the fourth-wall-busting mercenary, and even among the eclectic group of heroes already in the game, he’s considered an oddball.
First and foremost, Midnight Suns’ Deadpool successfully navigates the tightrope of being both funny and extremely aggravating, aided by a great performance from veteran Deadpool voice actor Nolan North. One minute in, and he’s breaking the fourth wall (to the confusion of other heroes), clicking his heels together at the joy of being DLC (Deadpool Living Comfortably), summoning 1980s pop hits from the ether, and poking fun at the video game convention of the player character relentlessly befriending every hero in the Abbey.
Deadpool’s missions add a smattering of new enemy types to the game in the form of ‘Vampyres’ (which Blade is keen to underline are distinct from vampires). Individually these bloodsuckers aren’t a huge threat, though they hunt in packs and their attacks always inflict bleed to slowly drain your life away. We also get a new villain in Red Skull’s daughter Sin and a late tease on who the real overarching villain of the season pass will be.
Wade Wilson turns out to be a fairly well-rounded hero in battle. His gimmick is the ‘En Fuego’ meter, which rises with each KO and buffs his attacks. It’s not too hard to keep this topped up and all his base attacks get decent damage multipliers when he’s running at full Fuego. Upgrading his cards also increases En Fuego’s damage boost, so focusing on wiping out lower-level enemies to crank up the meter before unleashing him on a single powerful enemy works wonders.
He also comes with some fun taunts, though in keeping with the character, Deadpool dishes out insults without considering the repercussions, so you’ll want to pair him alongside a hero that can buff him with some block or draw aggro away. On the scale of Midnight Suns heroes, he’s fairly easy to understand, more like Blade than the head-scratching mechanics of Scarlet Witch.
Midnight Suns pairs Deadpool with Hunter and Blade on his missions, a smart choice as both make fine straight-men to his wacky antics. His vampire-hunting outing with an exasperated Blade is particularly fun, with Michael Jai White struggling to keep up his stoic daywalker act while contending with Deadpool’s goofy one-liners and bizarre flirting. Beyond that, there’s a great running gag of the rest of the heroes knowing all too well how insufferable he is in-universe: when Hunter floats the idea of Deadpool coming to live with them, there’s a chorus of panicked cries of “noooo” down the interdimensional intercom.
The only other wrinkle is that this DLC is very short. I played through the whole thing in just over an hour, and that’s including the side missions you need to complete to unlock each of the three missions centered around him. Once you have Deadpool, you can use him however you please and the vampyre enemies and new villain Sin will begin to appear in the game’s regular side missions, though whether that’s worth the $16 asking price is up to you. If Morbius, Storm, and Venom’s DLC episodes are of similar length, the $50 season pass is going to start looking a bit stingy.
I loved Midnight Suns — I’m hyped to see how the season pass story develops and, generally speaking, enjoyed my time with Deadpool. He plays well, the writers have a rock-solid grasp on his character, and he has a whole bunch of optional dialogue and interactions that put him on par with every other hero (he’s especially fun to take on hang-outs). But, for $15.99, we just wish his storyline had been spread over a few more missions, if only so we could see him rub shoulders with more of the Midnight Suns team.
This review is based on the Steam version of the game. A code was provided by 2K Games.
