One of the things people always ask about Marvel Heroes is, “When will there be a Marvel Villains? I want to play as Venom or Magneto.” Well there isn’t really a need for a separate game for villains because Gazillion has been adding villains to their roster since around October of 2013. Loki was released around the time Thor: Dark World came out, then shortly after Taskmaster was released. So does this mean we will get to play as our favorite villains? Most likely… yes!
Gazillion has stated that any villain who has ever been on the heroes’ side or switches sides every so often is going to be on their list of characters that can be added to the game. So a few months ago Gaz started selling a pack called the Villains Pack, which comes with Juggernaut, Magneto and Venom! They’ve also teased other villains like Dr. Doom, but right now he is just a team-up. Well in November of 2014 we got our first villain from the Villains pack, Juggernaut and let me tell you, he’s smashing good fun!
Look: So Juggernaut is… well Juggernaut. I personally have always thought Juggernaut was dumb looking with his dome helmet, but that being said, Gaz did a decent job on making him look like he does in the comics. Really it wasn’t hard to make Juggernaut look the part. I think the bigger problem is finding different looks for Jugg because the two costumes we got were a bit too similar for my liking. The default costume Jugg comes with is a brown “Unstoppable” costume that’s been ripped from Thunderbolts. This costume isn’t something I’ve heard a lot of love for, mainly because we live in the days where X-Men the animated series was so popular during our childhood, so the costume we all know and love is the red “Classic” costume. This red costume is more the way I picture Jugg in my head and how I have always known him. This costume is pretty much all I wear. The difference between these two costumes is just some slight detailing on the brown suit and the color, otherwise they’re pretty much identical. So choose brown and red. I’d love to see Gaz put in the Ultimate Juggernaut costume. It’s always been my favorite and is slightly more fun of an alternate than the ones given to us. 6/10
Powers: If there is one thing Juggernaut has, it’s power. Gaz did a great job making Jugg feel like he should. You can barrel your way down a street passing through cars and making them explode without slowing down at all. Jugg comes with a wide array for charges and different moves to build up his momentum, a new system of power created just for Juggernaut. Every time Jugg is moving, he’s building momentum, which is used instead of the standard spirit meter. This is kind of what we thought they’d do with Nova, but we were wrong and they did it for Juggernaut instead. So you either run around or use movement powers to build up momentum, then you have certain powers like a big elbow-drop that will spend all of your momentum giving you it’s base damage plus 4% damage for every 10 momentum spent. This can lead to some devastating numbers on whole groups of enemies. Juggernaut’s power trees come pretty much in groups. The first tree Mystical Powerhouse, is mainly all punches with a head-butt and a clap ability thrown in. These for the most part were pretty dull for me, although they literally make him hit like a truck. My favorite tree is the second one which is called Unstappable. This is where all of Jugg’s charges and big area-of-effect powers are like his Earthquake. His last tree is Avatar of Cyttorak where you will get a ton of defensive powers, some cool downs and some toggles. This tree makes your Juggernaut un-killable for the most part. There is also a nice ground slam in this tree as well as a short damage buff as well. This is a good tree for dumping points in. Jugg’s signature power had a few people disappointed but I wasn’t one of them. It’s called Unstoppable Charge and it basically gives you a few seconds where you just put your head down and run around dealing crazy amounts of damage to anything or anyone you run through. Lastly, you get the power the Juggernaut boss in the game has called Devastating Charge, where you charge it up and dash forward dealing deadly amounts of damage. Juggernaut is a extremely well rounded character. He’s got insane damage, insane maneuverability and godly defense. My only issue with Jugg is that he’s pretty much the fasted character in the game now; since his movement power Stride doesn’t cost anything, Juggernaut can travel as fast as Nova/Silver Surfer (which shouldn’t be possible) and be able to do it for longer. 9/10
Ultimate Power: Full Power is basically what you’d expect from Juggernaut. It makes you HUGE, makes you do a huge shockwave of damage, and gives you a huge boost to your damage while making you immune to all crowd control. It makes you truly unstoppable. Not much else to say. I kind of wish they would switch the signature and the ultimate around and adjust the effects accordingly. I find the signature way more fun to use. 8/10
Voice Acting: There are some people on the forums that are exclaiming that Juggernaut’s voice work and lines are some of the best the game has to offer, and while I wouldn’t go that far, he does have some great voice work! Fred Tatasciore who also voices Hulk, Blob, Mandarin and Beast, voiced Jugg and he did a fantastic job. You really feel like the jerk Juggernaut is when running around a social hub antagonizing the heroes. I really love it. He’ll say things like “Ashes, Ashes we all fall DOWN” when attacking enemies, which shows his inner kid. When you summon Magik as a team-up companion he’ll say “You’re Magik, I’m Magic. Do you fancy going for a drink after this?” which I laughed at. Hilarious to see such a massive dude flirting with Magik. Other good lines are when you see some of the X-men, take Colossus for example: “We’ve punched each other so many times… I’m startin’ to forget a lot of things.” Overall they did a great job on Jugg’s writing. I almost want to give -1 point here because of the line “I’m da Juggernaut, wimp!” but I understand it’s a family friendly game. So… 10/10!
In conclusion, if you are a fan of “da Juggernaut” you are going to really enjoy this guy. They need to put out a different costume, maybe bring his power in line with all the other heroes, and then they’ll have really knocked it out of the park with this one. It seems like each new hero we’re getting is more unique, more powerful and more fun overall than the last one. I can’t wait until the next “villain”, Magneto, releases in a few weeks. I hope he’s even more powerful!
Overall rating: 8/10!
If you’d like to try out Juggernaut yourself, click the link to Marvel Heroes on the sidebar!