Marvel Rivals’ New Mode Sounds Like The Stuff That Crashes Your PC

Marvel Rivals has always been a chaotic, competitive game of sensory overload. Developer NetEase is deciding to lean further into that by giving the hero shooter a mode that triples the number of players on screen at once. Happy first anniversary, heroes.

The 18v18 Annihilation mode is exactly what it sounds like. The 36-player mode pits two teams that are three times the size of your usual Rivals stack against one another and crosses its fingers that your PC and console can handle it. I’m thinking of all the technically demanding attacks and effects in this game, and wondering what happens if you have 36 players using them at the same time. Will your PS5 crash if 36 Doctor Strange players open portals up on one map? We’ll find out tomorrow when the mode goes live.

Funnily enough, you could have an 18v18 match made up entirely of different heroes with the game’s expansive roster, though the trailer shows some match-ups of multiple of the same character, like a fight of mostly players waddling around as Jeff the Land Shark. With this many heroes on the field at once, any characters with big, game-changing area-of-effect moves are going to thrive, I will say, seeing Star-Lord auto-aiming with his ultimate as a crowd of helpless enemies’ health bars ticked down did scratch an itch in my brain. 

Will this be what gets me back into Marvel Rivals? Probably not. Overwatch 2 and I worked out our differences, and I’ve got a battle pass to complete. I doubt this mode is going to become the go-to competitive play style for Rivals players, but it will probably give them something fun to do for a few weeks before everyone inevitably goes back to playing the standard 6v6 format. I look forward to seeing the crazy clips of shenanigans players pull off.

Marvel Rivals just entered its fifth season, which added Gambit to the roster. Rogue will join the fray during the mid-season update next month.