Marvel’s Midnight Suns review – superheroes, strategy and Gen Z banter

Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox; Firaxis/2K
Making good use of the comics, this turn-based strategy games gives players satisfyingly fiendish challenges - and room to chillax afterwards

Playing a turn-based strategy game developed by genre leader Firaxis, creator of the brilliant XCOM reboots, there were several things I did not expect to be doing. I did not foresee having to sort out the love life of macho vampiric superhero, Blade. I didn't expect to be joining a book club with Captain Marvel (first read: Sun Tzu's Art of War). At no point while the game was installing did I envisage going on a bird-watching trip with Doctor Strange.

Yet all these unlikely scenarios are very much a part of this latest Marvel video game spinoff, which takes as many of its design cues from the fantasy role-playing series Fire Emblem as it does from XCOM. Here, players take on the role of a new hero character, Hunter, a 300-year-old sorceress reanimated by a re-imagining of a character from the Ghost Rider comics, to battle an evil witch bent on galactic domination. That witch also happens to be Hunter's mother - and she's recruited a whole army of Hydra goons to help out.