Wait is over for third Mar­vel vs. Capcom

Fate of Two Worlds shores up Cap­com Ver­sus fight­ing game franchise

Edi­tor’s note: This review orig­i­nal­ly appeared in Issue 16 (4Q2011). It has been edit­ed for spelling, gram­mar and clarity.

By Jamie Mosley, for­mer asso­ciate editor
Gam­ing Insurrection

It may seem odd to most gamers that some­times it takes a long time for a sequel to be released for a suc­cess­ful fran­chise. Gamers that have just start­ed in the sev­enth gen­er­a­tion of con­soles have seen fran­chis­es milked lit­er­al­ly to death like the Gui­tar Hero fran­chise. And we get a new Call of Duty game every sin­gle year. The Mar­vel vs. Cap­com fran­chise, how­ev­er, has­n’t seen a new install­ment for a decade, miss­ing out entire­ly on the sixth gen­er­a­tion. Sure, the most recent install­ment, Mar­vel vs. Cap­com 2, has been port­ed about a mil­lion times, but the fact remains that it took Cap­com more than 10 years to make an offi­cial sequel. Was it worth the wait? 

Mar­vel vs. Cap­com 3 is a fight­ing game that takes char­ac­ters from the Mar­vel uni­verse and the Cap­com uni­verse and puts them togeth­er. Crossovers like this don’t hap­pen often, and it’s excit­ing to see fan-favorite char­ac­ters duke it out. The ros­ter includes Chris Red­field, Albert Wesker, Ryu, Amat­era­su, Viewti­ful Joe, Spi­der-Man, Cap­tain Amer­i­ca, Wolver­ine, The Incred­i­ble Hulk, Iron Man and many oth­ers. This epic cast of char­ac­ters can sat­is­fy most fans of Cap­com or Mar­vel. Despite this, there are a few char­ac­ters whose lack of appear­ance is dis­ap­point­ing. Mega Man, who was in the wide­ly suc­cess­ful MvC and MvC2, is absent from this game as is Cap­tain Com­man­do. On top of that, some new­er Cap­com char­ac­ters that have recent­ly become quite pop­u­lar in this gen­er­a­tion, Frank West and Phoenix Wright, also don’t make an appear­ance in MvC3 (Edi­tor’s note: This was rec­ti­fied in Ulti­mate Mar­vel vs. Cap­com 3).

Frank West is espe­cial­ly dis­ap­point­ing con­sid­er­ing he was in the Wii’s Tat­sunoko vs. Cap­com: Ulti­mate All-Stars. Ven­om, from the Spi­der-Man uni­verse, would have been a fan­tas­tic fit (Edi­tor’s note: Ven­om returned in Mar­vel vs. Cap­com: Infi­nite), and the Mar­vel side is pret­ty light on vil­lains in gen­er­al. A lot of the fran­chis­es are under-rep­re­sent­ed, which was quite dis­ap­point­ing. Despite the lack of obvi­ous char­ac­ters and the small­er ros­ter com­pared to its pre­de­ces­sor, MvC3 still boasts one of the great­est ros­ters in fight­ing game his­to­ry, in my opin­ion. The amount of poten­tial awe­some­ness here is over­whelm­ing. Clas­sic rival­ries can be revis­it­ed and watch­ing Chris Red­field shoot Spi­der-Man in the face with a shot­gun nev­er gets old. Each char­ac­ter has plen­ty of unlock­able col­or schemes for their out­fits plus a robust arse­nal of attacks. Every char­ac­ter feels unique and plays dif­fer­ent­ly than any oth­er of the oth­er char­ac­ters to choose from. This is espe­cial­ly true for Amat­era­su from Oka­mi and Dante from Dev­il May Cry, two of the most pop­u­lar char­ac­ters in the game.

On top of the 30 plus char­ac­ters avail­able, there are also four unlock­able char­ac­ters. While these char­ac­ters aren’t espe­cial­ly excit­ing or any­thing, it’s still fun to unlock them. The bit­ing thing about MvC3 is the fact that it was promised to have char­ac­ters to down­load as DLC and a new game­play mode, all of which were talked about before the game was even released. 

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, releas­ing these char­ac­ters and an entire­ly new game­play mode as DLC so close to the game’s launch looked bad, to say the least. Cap­com, of all com­pa­nies, should be wary of DLC, and releas­ing it on day one or talk­ing about the DLC in detail before the game has even hit shelves will make this con­sumer feel cheat­ed, espe­cial­ly when most of it is on the disc already and it has to be paid for to be unlocked. 

The fight­ing engine in Mar­vel vs. Cap­com 3 favors play­ers that prac­tice and learn all the dif­fer­ent com­bos, but it also favors but­ton mash­ers. Essen­tial­ly, you can try to play the game strate­gi­cal­ly and be suc­cess­ful, but there is also a huge pos­si­bil­i­ty that some­one who has bare­ly played the game could eas­i­ly defeat a vet­er­an just by mash­ing on the con­troller and pick­ing the right team. There are char­ac­ters that are clear­ly more pow­er­ful than the rest of the ros­ter, and while I real­ly am not too con­cerned with bal­ance in over-the-top fight­ing games like this, it will undoubt­ed­ly become an issue for seri­ous play­ers. But even so, every char­ac­ter is dan­ger­ous in their own way.

Speak­ing of imbal­ance, there is a mechan­ic that can turn the tides of bat­tle in a quick sec­ond: the X‑Factor. On the oth­er hand, the abil­i­ty becomes a great defense when you are left with only one char­ac­ter on your team because it’s a great morale killer. But like I said, bal­ance isn’t a big deal with this game, at least not for me. Just like the Super Smash Bros. games, the point of MvC3 is over-the-top, insane action fea­tur­ing a ros­ter teem­ing with vari­ety. It’s fun test­ing out all the dif­fer­ent com­bi­na­tions of char­ac­ters to find which com­bi­na­tion yields the most destruc­tive results. And that is what keeps me com­ing back to MVC3. The dif­fer­ent com­bi­na­tions of teams, attacks and the fun that can be had is endless.

Play­ing online cer­tain­ly boosts the replay fac­tor con­sid­er­ably, and it def­i­nite­ly helps that the online is most­ly lag-free. I expe­ri­enced some while play­ing over Xbox Live, but the over­all expe­ri­ence was fan­tas­tic. The rank­ing sys­tem imple­ment­ed in the game echoes Call of Duty, and even though rank­ing up in the game is mean­ing­less, it’s still strange­ly addict­ing. The online com­po­nent also ensures that you’ll always have some­one to play with, even when your friends aren’t around. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, MvC3’s online mul­ti­play­er isn’t set up well at all. Just find­ing a ranked match can be dif­fi­cult. The sec­ond day of play­ing the game, it became near­ly impos­si­ble for me to get into a match. 

In the end, whether or not you’re a fan of Mar­vel or Cap­com will influ­ence whether or not you will pick the game up, but the more casu­al fight­ing fans should give this lat­est crossover from Cap­com at least a rent.

2UP eval­u­a­tion

By Lyn­d­sey Beatty

I nev­er thought we’d be see­ing anoth­er entry in the Mar­vel vs. Cap­com series. After 10 years, and plen­ty of denials on both sides, it’s been made, released and played in quite a few tour­na­ments with­in the past year. Am I pleased with it? Yes, but with a few caveats.

I don’t want any­one to get the wrong idea: Yes, I love the game. It’s got a great look to it, and the visu­als could only go up after 10 years and MvC2. There are a few both­er­some things about the look that I don’t care for, such as the matchup screen and the com­ic book theme, but it’s noth­ing that would keep me from play­ing. I also have a prob­lem with some of the char­ac­ter line­up choic­es. Real­ly, did we need Hulk and She-Hulk? No, prob­a­bly not. Wolver­ine and X‑23? Also prob­a­bly not, but I do rec­og­nize that they have indi­vid­ual traits and aren’t nec­es­sar­i­ly the bane that was the Adaman­tium Wolverine/Bone Claw Wolver­ine of MvC2. 

My only oth­er gripe with the game is the net­code. Some­one at Cap­com should have been pay­ing atten­tion to the Street Fight­er IV team. Get­ting online in that game is a smooth expe­ri­ence. Here? Not so much. It’s ridicu­lous­ly hard to find a match and get start­ed play­ing, and after it’s over? You go back to the match choice screen. It’s com­plete­ly unnec­es­sary and it’s a real hin­drance to the over­all play if you want to enjoy matchups against oth­er peo­ple who aren’t your friends. Hope­ful­ly, this will be fixed in the already-announced Ulti­mate Mar­vel vs. Cap­com 3.

Over­all, though, it’s a sol­id entry in the crowd­ed fight­ing game are­na, one that I did­n’t think I’d ever see or be able to sit down and enjoy. The pack­age, for what it’s worth, more than sells itself and with down­load­able con­tent, it’s worth com­ing back to this well. 

Score: 4 out 5