Marvel Rivals' Spring Festival Event Is Already Being Compared to Overwatch's Lúcioball

NetEase Games has revealed the Marvel Rivals Spring Festival event, which adds a handful of new hero skins and a soccer game mode that might look familiar to Overwatch and Rocket League players.

The team behind the hero shooter hit announced its latest update with a trailer, below, promising to kick off the new year with the Clash of Dancing Lions game mode as well as the Fortune & Colors Gallery Card customization event starting January 23 at 9am UTC.

Let’s not beat around the bush: Clash of Dancing Lions looks an awful lot like Overwatch’s long-running summer event, Lúcioball. The standard version of both modes sees players compete in 3v3 soccer matches with a few unique twists that capitalize on their heroes’ abilities. Both obviously rip elements from Psyonix’s massively popular Rocket League, though, and it looks like the Marvel take on the blown-up soccer experience comes with a few differences, too.

For starters, the limited-time mode seems to focus on at least three characters – Star-Lord, Iron Fist, and Black Widow – instead of just one hero. The soccer ball also seems to be the size of your average, real-life ball, too, as players can be seen carrying it around the competition and to the goal. Marvel Rivals and Overwatch already share more than a few things in common, but it will be hard to say just how similar Clash of Dancing Lions and Lúcioball are until the Marvel event drops in a few days.

The Marvel Rivals Spring Festival event allows players to complete tasks for rewards, including the Star-Lord Lion’s Mane costume seen in the trailer. Additional details remain under wraps, but NetEase tells players that they’ll be able to earn other goodies, such as a nameplate, spray, and more, as part of the event. While the Iron Fist Lion’s Gaze and Black Widow Lion’s Heartbeat outfits were also shown off in the new video, the developers only tell fans to expect to see the three skins arrive in-game “in the coming weeks.”

In other Marvel Rivals news, players are still looking forward to the Marvel’s Spider-Man tie-in skin set to arrive later this month. Meanwhile, many community members are still discussing the project’s alleged bot problem and what it could mean for the future of the competitive Marvel video game. For more on NetEase’s popular hero shooter, you can check out all active Marvel Rivals codes here.

Michael Cripe is a freelance contributor with IGN. He's best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP.

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