I spent over $2,000 in 2024 playing Marvel Snap, trying to be a streamer and getting myself leveled up to 74, failing to hit Infinite. Since then, I got a little burned out, felt addicted, and got bitter. Some of you may even remember I did some YouTube videos about it back then. And I've been a little scared to play again. But I had so much fun playing Snap before, and what I'm interested to see is: okay, I literally didn't log into the game in two years. What is it going to be like to just use one of my existing decks? And what's it going to feel like to jump back into the game today?
Opening the game after two years
Holy cow, there's a lot of notifications, and there's the shop. Man, they make the shop maximum — you have to check this thing every day. I used to buy out every single bundle trying to level up. I'm close to the next collector's tokens right here. And I'm sad to see, after two years not playing, that some of the cards I paid so much for are nearly worthless now — which, you know, they have every right to do that. I'm the one who spent the money on it, right? So let's just jump in and see what happens playing a game.
Do I even remember how to play?
It'll probably be against a bot at this point, but I'm just going to use the deck I had before and see if I can even remember how to play. I'm interested to see: what does it feel like? Do I like it? Do I not like it? Does it feel good? Does it feel bad? And do I want to keep playing? The cube element is really well done in Marvel Snap — it kind of feels a little bit like gambling, but it's not actually gambling, which is funny. And I'm trying to remember what the cards even do. I've played long enough, but I don't even remember what any of these cards do. "Cards cost one less" — that's good. So I guess we'll just throw her out and end the turn. It's probably a bot, so we'll just go ahead and snap, right? Like, why not? See what happens.
The first game back
What does this guy do — your cards with power? Oh, all right, now I kind of remember this one: minus power to the right location. So we'll throw him out right now. And then we use Annihilus to throw the negative nine over to his side. All right, I remember this. So we've got Mockingbird here — ongoing effects apply an additional time. Nice. And then, all right, this is interesting: if we drop Cerise right here, we can actually transform this into something better instead of having it switch sides. That is a little risky, but let's just throw Cerise out — I'm just interested to see what happens. Let's see what happens if we transform this Void into a different card. Oh, she's transforming into the Devil Dinosaur. That's funny. That's so funny. Well, that's going to be an easy win, isn't it? Probably. I have no idea what kind of decks I'm playing against at this point. It's crazy — I didn't play for two years, and there are things that look recognizable, but man, it's amazing how fast you forget things in life.
One more game
Ongoing effects apply an additional time. Cards cost less. So we can remove the text of a card here and nerf it — we could nerf a card right here. A lot of options. Let's start Red Guardian down here; we'll nerf one of their cards, and we'll bump him up — we'll play a Sentinel there, and we'll play Jeff there, and we'll get some more Sentinels in hand. Okay. The opponent retreated. Well, that was pretty straightforward at this point — you're just playing bots, right? I wonder how much I need to play so we can upgrade that to a Legendary.
The welcome-back grind and the range of emotions
I liked that this game's available on a tablet. But dude — you definitely need to play Marvel Snap every day to get the best out of it, which is part of what makes it addicting. But don't you get burned out having to show up every single day? I remember reading that they have a welcome-back calendar, so you've got to play every day and get your welcome-back calendar and the daily challenges. It's interesting to experience the range of emotions going through me right now. Like, wow — here it is again. All right, let's play one more. Oh no, I've got a yoga class to go to.
So, I'm interested to see — okay, I played one game of Marvel Snap. Is this going to reel me back in, or am I never going to play this again? I spent all this money on it; I just had to see one time what it's like to play it again. So I played it again. If you've ever walked away from a game you sank real money and time into, you'll know this exact feeling — it's the same thing I wrote about in the hardest thing in gaming. You can watch more of my gaming videos on my Games playlist. Let me know if you think I should come back to playing every day, or what else I should do with my life.