The Strength of Spider-Man Unlimited and Future Fight’s Female Characters

Spider-Man Unlimited started out as a game with only Spider-Men. An update soon brought the first Spider-Woman to the game, Spider-Girl May “MayDay” Parker, and many more were included as the endless runner evolved. From the beginning of the game to its current state, the most competitive Spiders were as follows (in rough order):

• Scarlet Spider (+1 to combo attacks, +30% bonus score from combo counters)
• Bulletproof Spider-Armor (+1 to combo attacks, +1 to near miss)
• Big Time (Stealth Suit) Spider-Man (+1 to combo, 40% bonus score from defeating the boss)
• Spider-Man: India (+1 to near miss, +30% bonus from combo counters)
• Spider-Woman: (+1 to near miss, +30% bonus score from combo counters)
• Spider-Goblin (+2 to combo attacks, +60% bonus score from combo counters)

As you can see, all of the Spideys I mentioned with the exception of Jessica Drew (the real name of Spider-Woman) are male, and all of them have abilities that allow players to aggressively attack the leaderboards and score high. When female Spideys were released, not many of them had these high scoring ability combinations. Spider-Girl and Spider-Gwen (the first two released) both had only 1 good scoring skill, and characters from then on had only utility skills or were missing one ability that would make them truly competitive. It wasn’t until Spider-Woman, mentioned above, was released that a female spidey was used as one of the best cards for high scoring.

The current state of the game has shifted the trend, starting with the release of Titan Spideys. In fact, with the exception of the titan rarity

Spider-Goblin

, female spideys now dominate as the game as the best spideys for competitive play. Part of this is due to the fact

Scarlet Spider (Felicity Hardy)

was the first and most obtained Titan Spider, as well as the first spidey to introduce new level of powers. Although

Spider-Man India

has the same ability set,

Spider-Woman

is one of the best (if not the best) Legendaries to use in Unlimited play, and the newly released

Black Cat

Legendary has the coveted +1 to combo +1 near miss ability set. On top of those 3,

Mary Jane

is the latest Titan with 2 combo boosting abilities, and Spider-Girl is receiving a new Titan form that will address her transformation to a

Spider-Woman

. Even with a

Peter Parker

Titan on the way, females will still outnumber males in that rarity tier -and with the small amount of Titans in the game, each one is essential for those wanting to score high. I’d say

Spider-Man Unlimited

has a great balance of power thus far between the genders thus far.

On the other hand, there’s the female roster in Future Fight. Out of the 53 heroes and villains, 13 are female characters (agents). In terms of top tier status in the game, as in which characters are the “best” in each of the game’s modes, most of the most used characters are male. Future Fight is interesting in that any of the game’s 53 characters can be strong enough to beat the levels and excel in player vs. player content if they are max rank (Future Fight has a ranking system from 1 to 6 stars, with each star exponentially increasing a character’s power), but there are some agents that are clearly a step above the others. Since these agents have many useful abilities, well distributed stats, or excel in certain modes, the player base tends to rank up these characters first. These characters include:

• Iron Patriot (War Machine Uniform)
• Vision (Age of Ultron Uniform)
• Giant Man (Goliath Uniform)
• Yellowjacket
• Spider-Man (With or without his Renew Your Vows Uniform)
• Venom (Zombie Uniform)
• Ronan (Mainly due to his leadership ability)
• Gamora
• Black Widow (2099 outfit)

Now there are arguments for other characters not found on this list (a list I compiled through personal experience, the forums, and the Reddit), but for the most part these characters are widely and frequently seen or referred to as the best. Out of the 9 agents I mentioned only 2 of them are female, but a factor of this is the fact there are only 13/53 female characters in the game thus far. Many of these agents are considered lackluster, either lacking raw stats and damage, or having a weak combination of skills. Examples of these attributes are Elektra, Black Cat, and newcomer Singularity.

Another observation, and one that the game finally moved away from with the addition of new characters, is that almost half of the females in the game are stuck in the speed archetype (one type along with universal, combat, and blast), with an impressive 6/13 women heroes/villains having this type. When the game released there were 0 women in the blast type (which now has Wasp and Sister Grimm) and 0 women in the combat type (which now has She-Hulk and Nebula). The game made a push for diversity with their last update, adding 3 non-speed type A-Force team members (She-Hulk, Sister Grimm, and Singularity).

Perhaps the biggest evidence of the player base not ranking up or using the female cast is found in the new Battleworld mode. Battleworld is a 5v5 player vs. player mode which has rotating restrictions on what type of characters a player can build his team with. In one of the recent rounds, only female characters could be used. I personally do not have many female characters at 5 stars or higher, although I use Captain Marvel daily and have a 5 star Wasp. Despite the fact I have only 2 high level female characters, I rampaged through the other teams I was matched against and scored high on the leaderboard. The reason for this is that not many teams I faced (I played around 180 matches) had even one high ranked or leveled female agent. Black Widow was the only consistently high ranked agent I faced in my many battles.

Both games contain strong female characters, but as it stands,

Future Fight’s

roster skews toward male characters in terms of availability and strength.

Spider-Man Unlimited

may have an easier time adding female characters to its roster due to its spidery focus, but it’s undeniable that Marvel has a deep cast of female characters for

Future Fight

to choose from. In any case, both of these apps will continue to update and grow, and hopefully many interesting and useful heroes/villains (male and female) will become available for play. And if you play either of these awesome Marvel games, I’d suggest grabbing a Scarlet Spider Felicity and Black Cat in SMU, and ranking up the elusive Sister Grimm in

Future Fight

, as these women are formidable.