Warning! The following contains spoilers for the Marvel's Avengers DLC mission "Operation: Hawkeye - Future Imperfect," available now.
The latest update for Marvel's Avengers is finally here, bringing with it the long-awaited next-gen upgrades and a slew of new features like customizable HARM Rooms. It also brings the game's second DLC character: Clint Barton, aka Hawkeye.
Hawkeye's appearance has been built around his DLC mission, "Operation: Future Imperfect," which sees Old Man Hawkeye and the future wasteland popularized by Old Man Logan. More importantly, the DLC has been very much advertised around the appearance of The Maestro, a sinister future version of The Hulk. However, if you were coming here for The Maestro or anything resembling the groundbreaking mini-series The Incredible Hulk: Future Imperfect, you're just going to be disappointed.
Truth be told, there's not a lot to "Future Imperfect." We streamed the DLC on Twitch, where the total playtime came in at just shy of three hours, and that includes waiting for the DLC patch data to copy over, time in the HARM Room learning how to use Clint and the game's various load times. The DLC hit a rough patch right off the bat, as it struggled to run the opening cutscene recapping Kate Bishop's DLC mission, "Taking AIM." Once the game did get running, we were quickly thrust into the shoes of Old Man Hawkeye in a distant possible future, chasing SHIELD signals and fighting off scarred AIM bots.
The bulk of the story has to do with Project Omega, the top-secret AIM operation that Nick Fury and Clint Barton were investigating that led to the creation of time bridges. In the present, Clint awakens a few weeks after passing out at the end of "Taking AIM." The team promptly heads to his Brooklyn apartment for a scene straight out of the iconic Fraction/Aja story "My Life As A Weapon" (the mission is even named as such), but that's as much of that run as you'll see here.
"My Life As A Weapon" will serve as your first real opportunity to try out Clint, too. Old Man Hawkeye has his moves, but present-day Clint's the one who will be getting level-ups and gear that actually accentuates your abilities. Whereas Kate Bishop was all about using stolen AIM tech for increased mobility, Clint's gameplay is far more acrobatic. Though he wields a sword for melee, he's built around mastering a variety of trick arrows and setting up opponents for big damage. You'll start with three types of arrows tied to your intrinsic meter, but soon pick up some homing arrows and a grapple arrow for closing distance. If that's not enough, the boomerang arrow makes an appearance as well, proving invaluable for dealing with shield toting enemies at range.
Clint's Heroics make him a powerful damage dealer, especially his Assault Heroic, Nightstorm Arrows, which bombards enemies from the sky and his Ultimate Heroic, Hunter's Arrow, an AI-driven arrow that targets enemies. However, his Support Heroic Good To Go will make him an essential part of any team, as he's now the second character with an outright heal after Ms. Marvel. Good To Go will quickly heal your teammates if they're in range, but upgraded versions expand its radius and remove negative status effects from your team.
Recovering Project Omega data Clint had stolen and saving Lucky the Dog, the team takes a modified Quinjet modified by Hank Pym into the future for the bulk of the DLC mission. However, it's essentially a series of fetch quests down pathways. Old Man Hawkeye is only concerned with finding Nick Fury so that the Clint of the present day can prevent the future from unfolding. The desolate future is gorgeous, but there's just not much to do here. Most of the missions have you following highways in search of Nick Fury, who Old Man Hawkeye is certain is alive but doesn't know how to find.
As the story unfolds, we realize the biggest issue with the DLC: there's just not much to do. The Wasteland biome has a few open areas, but they're few and far between and joined by highways. Enemies are the same enemies you've been fighting, just with new post-destruction future skins. The majority of the future is a lonely highway peppered with enemies as you follow a series of beacons and alerts to your eventual goal.
That goal is The Maestro, hands down the DLC's biggest letdown. Despite being prominently featured in the DLC's advertising and key art, Maestro doesn't really factor into the plot. He's the mission's final boss, but he only appears for about 10 minutes total, including the fight. He's not even the story's big bad or anything, either. The Maestro's entire involvement in the plot is incidental -- he just happens to be at the end of the path Clint and Old Man Hawkeye are following. Sure, he's ruling the Wastes as the Supreme Leader, but it's not related to Fury, and neither Hawkeye seems particularly concerned with it. It's a terrible missed opportunity, a waste of an iconic character and a genuine disappointment for fans of the story this claims to hail from.
What's more, it's a worrisome precedent for a game already marred with a troublesome launch and delays. The game's set-piece DLC was outright billed as something it isn't. That's not to say the mission is bad; the story is honestly fine, and Clint is a great character that fits in well with the aesthetic of Marvel's Avengers. But it's an empty, hollow world that doesn't resemble the story it advertised itself as being based on. Not only do Bruce and Maestro never actually meet, but no Avenger aside from Kate factors into the story. No Cap or Iron Man facing the prospect of an evil Hulk. No Black Widow meeting the broken Old Man Hawkeye. The Avengers, who were such a significant part of Kate's story, are just in the background as you explore a world built on their failure.
It could be argued that we're asking a lot, but the DLC heroes and their attached operations are the selling point for Marvel's Avengers. The game was built on the promise that these heroes would release for some time to come to build your roster and flesh out the game's world, but "Future Imperfect" does little more than setting up the next series of events playing out over the summer. These upcoming events could be big, but they don't appear to introduce new characters or set up new DLC; you'll have to wait for Black Panther for that. Sure, Kate and Clint are both fun to play, but if you're just going back into the same generic beat 'em up missions while the world remains as limited as ever, is it really worth it? With the player base reportedly shrinking, Marvel's Avengers needs more than big-name character drops. It needs meat on its bones, and it needs it fast.
Developed by Crystal Dynamics and published by Square Enix, Marvel's Avengers is available now for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S|X, Google Stadia and PC. "Operation: Hawkeye - Future Imperfect" is available now as free DLC for all platforms.