Today, we took another deep dive into Marvel's Avengers. A special live stream, War Table, rehashed much of what we already know about the game: the main villain of Marvel's Avengers is Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing, also known as M.O.D.O.K.

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The 25-minute live stream repeated most of what we already know about the game. It's an action game where you control (at least) six Avengers: Captain America, Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, Black Widow, and Ms. Marvel. Select a mission (either a single-player story mission or a multiplayer challenge mission) from the central hub and proceed to fight off enemies with light attacks, heavy attacks, and special attacks. You can customize your character's skills and upgrade your equipment over time.

We got to see some new levels this time around. It is a Thor-centric mission called "Once An Avenger." In this mission, Thor confronts a variety of battle robots on a rooftop and crushes his enemies by wielding the lightning-quick Mjolnir. If you've played "God of War" or "Spider-Man," you've seen something quite similar to this battle, but "Marvel's Avengers" is level-based rather than open world.

The interesting news concerns the semi-deep Marvel villain who will be the star this time around, M.O.D.O.K. M.O.D.O.K. appears as a scientist named George Talton, who attempts to "cure" the condition that creates the Inhumans. (Explaining the Inhumans would require an article of its own, but basically, some are good, some are bad, and some have various superpowers, and Ms. Marvel is one of them.) Over the course of the game, he mutates into something more powerful and more grotesque.

Marvel's Avengers has been accused of trying to split the difference between a single-player action game and an ongoing multiplayer live-service game, but the arrival of M.O.D.O.K. is a good indication that Crystal Dynamics is at least attempting to be creative with the story. The Avengers game tends to return to the same handful of bad guys (Dr. Doom, Loki, Ultron, Thanos, Galactus), and it's good to see a B-star in the lead role for once. Of course, additional villains are likely to appear, but it's time for M.O.D.O.K. to step into the spotlight.

Otherwise, for lack of a better term, the game looks very video game-like. The YouTube and Twitter reactions to the live stream show that some fans feel the game looks like a derivative of other great superhero games, while others are happy to see another Avengers game from a major studio.

I myself am the latter, but that will become clear on September 4, when the game launches for PS4, PC, and Xbox One. Fans who purchased Marvel's Avengers on the current consoles will receive a free update when the PS5 and Xbox Series X versions are released.