I literally just wrote about the beat ’em up genre.

Unfortunately, the likes of “Marvel Cosmic Invasion” are precisely what I wanted this genre to move on from! It has gorgeous art, a ton of fan service, plenty of fun playable characters, and it’s short…

Too short. This thing is over before you know it, and although I love the locations this is set in, the backgrounds are just backdrops. It’s a flat, linear game where you hit the same buttons and not much else. Even the leveling is just more health for each hero.

The main gist is you play as two heroes at once, you fight famous villains in famous locales from the comics, you beat up the same looking enemies as Venom or Jean Grey, and then it ends. And of course, it asks you to play it over again, but the novelty is gone by that point.

I would call it a “nothing” game, but you can absolutely have stupid fun with people — including online co-op. But “Cosmic Invasion” is akin to non-buttered popcorn. It’s edible, you have some, it’s over, it’s not filling, and you move on. As much as I adore the license in question, the nostalgic ties to the old school “X-Men” arcade game, and the way this incorporates some moves from “Marvel vs. Capcom,” Dotemu already pulled off this magic trick with “TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge.”

Don’t get me wrong, both of those games are good! Not great, but good. Dotemu is a relatively newer name for most gamers, but they’ve been everywhere in terms of mining your childhood for modern remakes, remasters, comebacks, and flippin’ “Streets of Rage 4” and “Windjammers 2.”

They’ve published the aforementioned “Shredder’s Revenge,” “Absolum,” and this year alone “Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound” and “Cosmic Invasion.” So the 2D sprite pipeline of things from the ’80s is alive and well because Dotemu owns the pipe that brings us this stuff now. Good for them, but “Cosmic Invasion” is a fun weekend, and not at all the thing I was really looking forward to.

I would much rather direct people to play “Absolum” instead, but the fact that this is on Game Pass and on every console imaginable is a tantalizing prospect. “Absolum” is not on Xbox yet, so MS fans (if they still exist) should look elsewhere for their beat ’em up revolution.

I think “Cosmic Invasion” is a blast from the past, but it’s just spinning its wheels offering more of the same slop in new packaging. And, boy, let me tell you, I ate that slop up for a mean three hours before I finished it and never thought about it again!

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Image Credit: “Marvel Cosmic Invasion,” Dotemu