Miss Mar­vel: Apoc­a­lypse retread should be skipped

Extra­ne­ous. Super­flu­ous. Unnec­es­sary. Fight­ing game sequels should be doing some­thing to move the nee­dle, whether it be new sys­tems or char­ac­ters to break up the retread. Retro fight­ing games espe­cial­ly had to bring some­thing new with every entry lest they be left behind in a mar­ket where con­sumer choice is king. Mar­vel vs. Street Fight­er did absolute­ly noth­ing new and it shows in the mod­ern fight­ing game scene.

Mar­vel vs. Street Fight­er is the sib­ling of the Ver­sus series that is the for­got­ten child. Using basi­cal­ly the same sto­ry as direct pre­de­ces­sor X‑Men vs. Street Fight­er, MvSF intro­duces one mechan­ic (Vari­able Assist — call­ing your part­ner to assist) and swaps some char­ac­ters. The boss, Apoc­a­lypse, is a retread from the pre­vi­ous game. That’s about it. It plays the same as X‑Men vs. Street Fight­er and gen­er­al­ly fairs less favor­ably by com­par­i­son because of the char­ac­ter swaps and the unnec­es­sary inclu­sion of come­di­an Nori­take Kinashi’s joke char­ac­ter Nori­maro and Cyber Akuma.

And while it leans heav­i­ly on XvSF, the game does­n’t play near­ly as well. It feels slow­er and more plod­ding, just a chore to do much of any­thing. Assists don’t real­ly add any­thing to the game­play flow and gen­er­al­ly can get tagged as soon as they come out. And you can’t choose what move the assist does, some­thing that did­n’t come into play until Mar­vel vs. Cap­com 2. That lack of advance­ment feels lazy. It feels like Cap­com put out a game to check box­es and ful­fill a con­tract. And it shows in the mod­ern fight­ing game tour­na­ment scene where XvSF still enjoys a healthy engage­ment, but no one plays MvSF.

One area where it does do well is the sound depart­ment, though there are a few recy­cled tracks here, too. The sound­track car­ries the game and has some bangers that work for the atmos­phere of MvSF, but you’ve prob­a­bly already heard them (Edi­tor’s note: See this issue’s Beat.Trip.Game for our sound­track choices).

If you’re play­ing Mar­vel vs. Street Fight­er, know that you’re get­ting warmed over Ver­sus series. It’s not ter­ri­ble but it’s not the best that Cap­com is capa­ble of when it comes to the Ver­sus series. Skip this one and jump straight from X‑Men vs. Street Fight­er to Mar­vel vs. Capcom.