Don’t forget: Marvel’s Avengers is free to play this weekend with a 4x XP bonus

Something for the weekend? (pic: Square Enix)

If you’ve been wary of trying out Square Enix’s co-op Avengers game then you’ve got the chance to play it for free this weekend.

It’ll be the one year anniversary of Marvel’s Avengers in a couple of months and it seems fair to say that things have not gone well up until this point.

The initial reviews were justifiably poor and, no doubt in part due to the pandemic, the post-launch support has been extremely weak, with the only new characters that have been added being two variants of Hawkeye.

The best chance for a turnaround is when the Black Panther expansion is released next month but if you want to see what the game plays like at the moment it’ll be completely free to download from now until Sunday, August 1 at 5pm BST.

The game will be available free for PlayStation 4 and 5, PC via Steam, and Stadia. Xbox formats aren’t included, but Square Enix is hoping to finalise a deal with Microsoft to have a free weekend at a later date.

If you do choose to give it a go then you’ll get access to all the content so far released, including the two Hawkeyes and their story expansions, plus all the new multiplayer additions that have been released in the last 10 months.

As an extra bonus you can earn four times the normal amount of XP this weekend, and then carry that over to the full game if you choose to buy it afterwards.

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As for the War For Wakanda expansion, that’ll be released on August 17 for all formats and will be the biggest addition to the game since launch.

Obviously, you’ll be able to play as Black Panther (voiced by God Of War’s Christopher Judge), plus there’ll be two new supervillains, one of which is Ulysses ‘Klaw’ Klaue, and a range of new cannon fodder enemies.

The new single-player story campaign – which was by far the best part of the original game – will last a hefty 25 hours, so it’s almost a new game in itself.

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