If you wanted to take the adventure of every Marvel Cinematic Universe story, mix it up in a blender, and play with it on your television screen, you’d have an idea of what Marvel Battlegrounds is like.  Developed for Disney Infinity, the newest playset integrates characters from every movie in the Marvel pantheon right up to Captain America: Civil War.  Perhaps the most innovative aspect of the game – as well as the most fun – is the ability to play with any of the Marvel characters developed for the Infinity platform.  Whether it’s Black Widow from 2.0 or Iron Man Hulkbuster from 3.0, you can use any or all of them in the game.

Marvel Battlegrounds is fun, straightforward, and relatively simple to play.  Three modes are available for hours of fun – story mode, challenge mode, and versus mode.  Story mode allows the player to participate in the unveiling of a plot that begins with a mysterious attack by two “superheroes” who turn out to be very sophisticated robots.  From there, the action continues to unfold as more is revealed about the mysterious attackers which include Loki, Ulton, and ultimately Thanos.

In a very loose way, the plot is a mash up of every movie made in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  Loki was the primary villain in Avengers, Ultron in Age of Ultron, and Thanos looks to be the big bad in Avengers: Infinity War.  Players don’t actually engage Thanos, but simply find out he is behind the quest for the Infinity Stones.  There are eight different battle locations – everywhere from New York to Knowhere (Guardians of the Galaxy) to Wakanda to Asgard.  And characters appear in the cut scenes from every Marvel movie – Iron Man, Rocket Raccoon, even Ant Man and Black Panther.  The star of the Marvel Battlegrounds is Civil War Captain America who comes included with the playset.  Cap’s moves are slick, easy to understand, and fun to play with.

The second mode is the challenge mode.  Challenge mode is a series of 28 battles, each with a different scenario and win condition.  Each time you master one you gain experience and tokens to help you out.  If you play with specific characters you also unlock items and alternate character costumes.  Collecting all of the special items requires using virtually every Marvel character for Disney Infinity, but you can complete the challenges without any other character than Cap.

Versus mode is the first time up to four players can battle each other using whichever characters they desire.  Up until now, Infinity games could not handle more than two players at once given that there are only two spaces on the Infinity platform, but in versus mode you can switch characters out and the game will retain the memory of which characters are being played.  You can also play by yourself or with just one or two other players.  And in versus mode there are different styles of battle – from straight out last person standing to king of the hill.

Overall Marvel Battlegrounds offers ease of play with multiple options which lead to many hours of fun!  Getting to use any past Marvel character from the 2.0 series is an added bonus. The animation of the characters is also smooth and the moves for each one are fun to play with. If you enjoy a good fighting game or just love exploring the Marvel superhero genre, this is a great game for you!

• Curious about Star Wars on Infinity?  Read about Twilight of the Republic, Rise Against the Empire and The Force Awakens playsets
• Toy Box Speedway is one of the new 3.0 playsets that let you play with any character!