Phoenix is in Marvel Rivals, which means I might finally put Overwatch 2 on the shelf for a bit and get back into NetEase’s hero shooter game. Not out of some deep admiration for Phoenix, mind you. The only things I know about her are what I gleaned from Wikipedia after NetEase announced her for Marvel Rivals season 3 and one important fact from her character trailer: She actually moves like a normal human — well, mutant — and that was exciting, something I couldn’t say for Rivals prior to this point.
Since the game launched in December 2024, Marvel Rivals players have periodically complained on Reddit about how slow character movement speed is, or seems to be. Some said it felt like walking in slow motion; others said it was just a perspective trick, that of course games like Overwatch seemed faster, since the camera is first person and seems more dynamic. I agreed with the former and lamented the slow strides and glacial attack pace that plagued every hero in Rivals, gradually playing less and less as the perceived issue grew more and more annoying.
Now that Overwatch 2 has its third-person Stadium mode, and after seeing how Phoenix seemed to move more quickly, I decided to see if my theory about the rest of Rivals being so slow was right. It was. Kind of.
The practice arena in both games includes areas with distance measurements to help calculate damage drop-off ranges, which also doubles as the perfect place to test movement speed. After messing around with multiple characters, I confirmed that Rivals characters take roughly half of a stride longer to travel five meters compared to Overwatch 2 characters. That sounds like a problem, but Rivals’ distance scaling is also a bit different. Five meters in Rivals is about 11.5 inches, where the same distance is approximately 10 inches in Overwatch 2.
“Why does this matter?” you might be asking. The answer is that it means Rivals characters move about as fast as most Overwatch 2 characters, or even faster, since they’re technically covering a longer distance in the same-ish number of steps. It’s not a speed issue. It’s a style issue.
Cloak and Dagger, Namor, Spider-Man, and the rest move as if they’re auditioning for a role in Baywatch, loping dramatically down the battlefield in big, rangey steps. Lengthy pauses punctuate attack combos for everyone who isn’t the martial arts expert Iron Fist, turning what should be high-energy battles into something that wouldn’t be out of place in a ballet. Most attack sounds and animations are muted, too. Winter Soldier’s swanky pistol sounds like a popgun with a silencer on it, and Scarlet Witch’s life absorption has, well, no life to it. All this is elegant in an understated way, sure — but it’s not very super.
Phoenix changes all of that. A searing whoosh sound accompanies her attacks, with a small explosion after three consecutive hits on the same enemy. Her other offensive skill detonates an even bigger explosion. She zooms around in flaming-bird form to quickly relocate, and can even combine this with a second mobility skill, one that doesn’t have an obscenely lengthy cooldown timer. When she dodges or changes direction, she’s moving quickly instead of leaning lazily to one side as if she can’t be bothered, and there’s a quickness to her movement animations that adds a sense of urgency, even if she’s not actually moving faster. (She isn’t. Cloak and Dagger cover the same distance in fewer steps.)
Basically, NetEase finally found a combination of style and function that isn’t boring and doesn’t make you feel like you’re swimming through pudding. Phoenix plays and moves like you’d expect a trained fighter to move, so even though she may not be fundamentally different from other characters, her fights feel exciting. And that’s enough for me.