The upcoming Marvel Rivals Spring Festival is set to start on January 23, in just a couple of days, and will introduce a Gallery Card customisation event, a few good-looking skins, and a new game mode called Clash of Dancing Lions that seems awfully familiar.
This new game mode will see teams of three go up against each other in a football stadium and "use their skills to gain possession of the ball and maneuver it into the scoring zones located on either side of the field," a press release says. "The first team to reach a predetermined score will be declared the winner."
Looking at the Spring Festival trailer, the new Clash of Dancing Lions looks very similar to the Lucio Ball event in Overwatch 2, but that could just be because that stadium is burned into my retinas after years of playing. This mode does seem to be more complex than just having one hero bounce a ball around, hoping it will find its way towards a goal.
It involves Star-Lord, Black Widow, and Iron Fist, who can all use their abilities to steal the ball and score goals. It looks like Iron Fist can dribble past enemy players with his K-un-Lun Kick ability, Star-Lord can fly with the ball thanks to his Rocket Propulsion ability, and Black Widow can run with the ball with her passive sprint ability. To knock a ball away from an enemy, all you need to do is damage them in any way and then snag the ball before they can pick it back up. Unlike Lucio Ball, it doesn't look like you can launch the ball to the goal and instead just need to run with it across the goal line to score points.
Alongside this new event, there'll also be a few new skins for the three heroes involved in Clashing of Dancing Lions, and they honestly look sick. The costumes for Marvel Rivals have been pretty impressive so far—some of my favourite ones so far include Cloak and Dagger's Growth and Decay skin, Adam Warlock's Darkhold battle pass skin, and Jeff the Shark's Incognito Dolphin skin.
It's not yet clear how players will obtain the upcoming Spring Festival skin, but it will likely be available to buy in the store. I'm hoping we'll be able to earn even just one of these through event challenges, similar to how NetEase ran the Winter Celebration event a couple of months ago.
Jeff the Land Shark's creator tells whiny Marvel Rivals players who can't deal with her hero to buck up: 'Sounds like a skill issue to me, if my boy is beating your ass every night'
'The market is large enough to accommodate both games': NetEase is confident it can make space for Marvel Rivals and Overwatch 2
