Squirrel Girl coming to the Playstation 4! Also some other superheroes.

Gazillion recently retooled the skill system in their very good free-to-play Marvel Heroes Online (for the record, the phrases “very good” and “free-to-play” rarely appear next to each other). It was quite the makeover. A whole bunch of bits and bobs were either cut out entirely, or streamlined, or clumped into larger bits and bobs. There were fewer skills with more distinct kinds of powers. Characters like Doctor Strange who required multiple hotkey bars got simpler. A crazy endgame thing called Omega Powers or something just vanished. Marvel Heroes suddenly worked well with a gamepad. I wonder why they did all that? Who can say?

Oh, speaking of Gazillion, guess what. Today they announced Marvel Heroes Online for the Playstation 4! Who could see that coming? It will be called Marvel Heroes Omega, so no wonder they had to cut the Omega thing from the PC game. That just would have been confusing.

The console version will retain the free-to-play model. No cross-platform play, of course. It will launch with 38 of the 61 superheroes currently in the PC version. Yep, there are 61 heroes in the PC version. I didn’t even know there were 61 Marvel heroes. I figured we’d run out after Ant-Man. But looking through the game’s roster, I see there’s one named Angela. Just Angela. Someone wasn’t even trying. The latest addition to Marvel Heroes was a guy named Black Bolt. He looks like Captain America trying to be edgy by wearing a black suit. He borrowed Hawkeye’s stubby little wings, which sort of takes the edge off. It makes him look like a little girl playing fairy princess. But, you know, in black.

Of course, the big question on everyone’s mind is whether Squirrel Girl will be among the 38 characters available at launch. We’ll find out soon enough, because Marvel Heroes Omega is due out this spring. As in, the season we’re currently in. Expect a beta announcement soon.