Tag Archives: Lyndsey Beatty

Marvel vs. Capcom — Issue 55

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The best: Mar­vel vs. Cap­com is a masterpiece

First of its name is crossover com­bi­na­tion every­one needs

Mar­vel vs. Cap­com is where I start­ed. My broad­er Mar­vel edu­ca­tion beyond the X‑Men? Mar­vel vs. Cap­com. My love for the Ver­sus series? Mar­vel vs. Cap­com. I learned these lessons through the epony­mous Ver­sus title, and I’m rich­er for it. MvC is six-but­ton perfection.

Mar­vel vs. Cap­com is tech­ni­cal­ly the third game in the Ver­sus series, not count­ing X‑Men: Chil­dren of the Atom and Mar­vel Super Heroes. This is where the mag­ic has been per­fect­ed. Loose­ly adapt­ing Mar­vel’s Onslaught sto­ry arc, MvC brings togeth­er some of Mar­vel’s biggest names that had yet to appear and the wider Cap­com uni­verse. Some big Mar­vel names like Mag­ne­to and Colos­sus reap­pear in assist roles while new­com­ers like Ven­om and War Machine join the fray, and Cap­com mines the depths of its cat­a­logue to bring in char­ac­ters such as Strid­er, Mega Man, Mor­ri­g­an and Cap­tain Com­man­do. The ros­ter is an inter­est­ing mix and good call because it intro­duces a lot of favorite faces and it tries hard to avoid retreads. 

Also, a good deci­sion is the refine­ment of the two-char­ac­ter team con­cept. MvC plays like a dream and char­ac­ters feel sub­stan­tial. The game­play flows well, and moves and supers feel bom­bas­tic, as they should in a Ver­sus game. Pick­ing up the game is easy thanks to the Auto Mode and moves feel smooth. There are still some moves that are hard to per­form (look­ing at you, Eter­nal Slum­ber), but over­all, the game plays with a bet­ter han­dle on fight­ing than its pre­de­ces­sor, Mar­vel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter.
Anoth­er area where MvC excels over the pre­ced­ing game is the pre­sen­ta­tion. The game looks great, with large col­or­ful sprites and gor­geous back­grounds. Char­ac­ters ani­mate smooth­ly and look great as rep­re­sen­ta­tions of their respec­tive series. Equal­ly as impres­sive as the graph­ics is the sound­track. MvC has one of the best sound­tracks in the series, and it’s not because there are remix­es of exist­ing char­ac­ter themes. The music fits the game mood well and the announc­er — Sal­ly Cahill of Res­i­dent Evil fame — adds to the crossover atmosphere.

While MvC isn’t per­fect, it’s close. I don’t have too many com­plaints beyond dif­fi­cul­ty pac­ing issues in the arcade lad­der. The final two fights before fac­ing boss Onslaught are bru­tal, and the dif­fi­cul­ty could have been tweaked just a tad. But that is not enough for me to ding the game heavily.

What I appre­ci­ate the most is the obvi­ous care and atten­tion to detail with MvC. MvSF is unmit­i­gat­ed lazi­ness while MvC got seri­ous again about the lega­cy of the series. The ros­ter for main char­ac­ters and assists feels thought­ful, the pre­sen­ta­tion is fun and engag­ing and the game­play still holds up well. It might not be played as much as its direct sequel in Mar­vel vs. Cap­com 2, but I still find myself return­ing to pull off Duo Team Attacks fre­quent­ly. MvC is the most mar­velous of the series.

Marvel vs. Capcom 3 — Issue 55

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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

Marvel Origins — Issue 55

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Mar­vel Ori­gins did series proud with two best games

Editor’s note: This review orig­i­nal­ly appeared in Issue 21 (1Q2013). It has been edit­ed for spelling, gram­mar and clarity.

There are those of us who love games and com­ic books, and then there’s those of us who love the Ver­sus fight­ing game series. I’m firm­ly in the camp that loves the Ver­sus series with pas­sion. Some games more than oth­ers attack my heart, but I real­ly appre­ci­ate the depth and intri­ca­cy that can be found in Mar­vel char­ac­ters team­ing up to fight along­side or against each oth­er or Cap­com char­ac­ters. Out of all the series’ offer­ings, I seem to derive the most plea­sure from Mar­vel vs. Capcom.

Of the var­i­ous ver­sions of the game out on the mar­ket, this newest ver­sion belongs in the pre­mier ech­e­lon of treat­ment. It’s pack­aged with Mar­vel Super Heroes ― the sec­ond game in the series ― and gives some of the new­er gamers the back­ground nec­es­sary to ful­ly under­stand what’s being dan­gled in front of them today with Ulti­mate Mar­vel vs. Cap­com 3. True, there isn’t an excess of 56 char­ac­ters or the gaudi­ness of X‑Factor as a draw, but the foun­da­tion and the buildup on that foun­da­tion are present through both games and that’s what mat­ters when you want to learn where a fran­chise comes from.

If you’re a purist in terms of the struc­ture of the game, this is a ver­sion that deserves a purist’s crit­i­cal eye. The game­play in both games is per­fect. It’s as smooth an expe­ri­ence as putting in quar­ters at an arcade and play­ing to your heart’s con­tent. Moves work the way they should, and com­bos can be pulled off very well. Game­play quirks ― such as Mar­vel vs. Cap­com’s frus­trat­ing dif­fi­cul­ty in the arcade mode ― are still there, but that should­n’t be a deter­rent to the over­all expe­ri­ence. And for me, it was­n’t. I picked it up and played Mar­vel vs. Cap­com imme­di­ate­ly as if it were the Dream­cast ver­sion, which is also an arcade-per­fect port. Mar­vel Super Heroes is a sub­lime play expe­ri­ence as well for many of the same reasons.


Because these are arcade-per­fect ren­di­tions of the games, the music and graph­ics are pret­ty much the same, too. There are a few options added for the view, and I must applaud the cre­ation of the chal­lenge side­bar that can be turned on or off for both games. It’s a neat way to keep abreast of progress in the games’ accom­plish­ments, and the view doesn’t get in the way of the game­play. Done in an arcade cab­i­net style, it’s eas­i­er to keep up with the action than if the game were in wide-screen format.

If you con­sid­er your­self a fight­ing game effec­tor and you loved the Ver­sus series, you’re prob­a­bly going to love this. It’s espe­cial­ly poignant to be able to play the ear­ly entries in the series now that con­soles and fight­ing games have moved on from this style of play. It’s easy to for­get about the prog­en­i­tors of a series when there’s fresh blood in town. Mar­vel vs. Cap­com Ori­gins some­how man­ages to bring back famil­iar game­play while retelling its ori­gin sto­ry to a new­er generation.

 

Marvel Super Heroes — Issue 55

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Super­heroes have super start in Mar­vel Super Heroes

Edi­tor’s note: This review orig­i­nal­ly appeared in Issue 11 (3Q2010). It has been edit­ed for spelling, gram­mar and clarity.

By Jamie Mosley, for­mer asso­ciate editor
Gam­ing Insurrection

By now, every­one read­ing this should know about Cap­com’s 2D fight­ers. Cap­com likes to keep cer­tain stan­dards for their famous fight­ing titles that car­ry over from one fight­er to the next. There will be col­or­ful supers, tight-yet-famil­iar con­trols and fast paced action. Mar­vel Super Heroes is no excep­tion to this. 

Fol­low­ing the still-pop­u­lar X‑Men: Chil­dren of the Atom in art style and game­play, Cap­com has allowed oppor­tu­ni­ties to pum­mel your oppo­nents to con­tin­ue by launch­ing them in the air for that super­hero-type feel. Some of Mar­vel’s famous heroes and vil­lains appear so you, the true believ­ers, can give swift jus­tice over your foes. Use Cap­tain Amer­i­ca, Spi­der-Man, Iron Man, Jug­ger­naut and Mag­ne­to to fight your way to Thanos. While on your way, be sure to pick up and use the Infin­i­ty Gems you find. You may need them.


The con­trols and game­play are what I con­sid­er clas­sic for any 2D Street Fight­er. The main dif­fer­ence in this game comes from Infin­i­ty Gems. Each gem has the poten­tial to unlock spe­cial abil­i­ties for a hero. For exam­ple, if Mag­ne­to uses the Space Gem, he pro­duces a force field and he will not take dam­age for a lim­it­ed time. In each match, the AI oppo­nent will have a gem with them. You must kick, punch or stare hard at them to take it.

Not all is per­fect in this entry. The music in the game does­n’t stand out but the upbeat tem­po of each stage helps you stay in the action. Also, the game may slow to a crawl depend­ing on the gem effects if both char­ac­ters are using them at the same time. Some­times the game is so slow that a full sec­ond will go by before your char­ac­ter reacts to your but­ton com­mands. But this slow­down is rare.

I still enjoy this game. Despite the game’s occa­sion­al prob­lems, I remem­ber my friend Ted King and I going to the local depart­ment store in my home­town and play­ing it for hours. Once it was released for home con­soles, we played it even more. The zany com­bos that one can do are almost lim­it­less. In some skilled play­er’s hands, they are lim­it­less because of infi­nite com­bos that near­ly every char­ac­ter had. That’s anoth­er stan­dard that Cap­com kept with their fighters. 

Mar­vel Super Heroes paved the way for the famous Ver­sus series of which Cap­com is very proud. And they should be proud. With games like Mar­vel vs. Street Fight­er, the Mar­vel vs. Cap­com series and the Cap­com vs. SNK entries, few oth­er com­pa­nies have been suc­cess­ful in cre­at­ing a more pop­u­lar series that mil­lions enjoy to date. And now with the announce­ment of Mar­vel vs. Cap­com 3, I’m going to play them all until it is released.

If you want a fight­er that you can pick up and play with lit­tle knowl­edge about Street Fight­er, Mar­vel Super Heroes is it. If you want to make cre­ative com­bos, look no fur­ther. This is good, clas­sic fun made for com­ic book fans around the world to enjoy.

2UP eval­u­a­tion

By Lyn­d­sey Beatty

The Ver­sus series has come a long way since the heroes and vil­lains of Mar­vel Super Heroes gath­ered in 1996 for this slugfest. The graph­ics may have evolved, and the Mar­vel license revert­ed sev­er­al times, but one thing remains the same: Fight­ing with super­heroes of the Mar­vel ilk is fun. 

Mar­vel Super Heroes neat­ly upgrad­ed the expe­ri­ence of X‑Men: Chil­dren of the Atom. With a more acces­si­ble com­bo sys­tem and bet­ter play feel, Mar­vel Super Heroes is almost a dream to play, even by mod­ern stan­dards. There are still prob­lems, though, such as touch-of-death com­bos for every­one and a lim­it­ed ros­ter imme­di­ate­ly made obso­lete by suc­ces­sive games. But Mar­vel Super Heroes is still playable, and there’s still a scene in 2026, so Cap­com got some­thing right. 

Score: 3.5 out of 5

Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter — Issue 55

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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.

Marvel vs. Capcom 2 — Issue 55

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Mar­vel vs. Cap­com 2 a new age of frustration

I have a polar­iz­ing rela­tion­ship with Mar­vel vs. Cap­com 2. While it’s revered as one of the great­est games of all time, and I spent a lot of time play­ing it, I don’t love it as much as I once did. There are rea­sons for my trans­ac­tion­al love for the Cap­com stal­wart, and there are rea­sons why it’s tak­en this long for Gam­ing Insur­rec­tion to engage.

Mar­vel vs. Cap­com 2 rounds up every­one who was present in the Ver­sus uni­verse, adds a few new faces and throws them togeth­er to cre­ate a mashup of epic pro­por­tions. Vet­er­ans such as Mag­ne­to, Dr. Doom, M. Bison, Ryu and Chun-Li join new­com­ers such as Ruby Heart, Cable and Amin­go. The rag­tag mot­ley crew join forces to take on new vil­lain Abyss, whose main goal is world dom­i­na­tion through decay. The sto­ry is engag­ing enough to jus­ti­fy the col­lid­ing of the respec­tive uni­vers­es but not too deep to jus­ti­fy any sort of lore research.

The mashup, how­ev­er, is what is most impor­tant. The meld­ing of realms and reunion of the pre­vi­ous games’ ros­ter brings togeth­er 56 char­ac­ters to make three-char­ac­ter teams. The over­pow­ered gods of pre­vi­ous out­ings return to set up shop in the upper ech­e­lon of the game’s tiers, and the joke char­ac­ters and non-essen­tials also return for the ride. 

All of this is wrapped up in a futur­is­tic seri­ous-look­ing bow, com­plete with a seri­ous announc­er that lacks com­ic book trap­pings. The back­grounds are mod­eled well and are an impres­sive leap from the pre­vi­ous hand-drawn entries. The sound­track is also OK. I’m not one of the legions that appar­ent­ly hat­ed the sound­track back in the day, and it’s fine now. The smooth jazz has always fit the action, and I nev­er saw what the prob­lem was with it. Jazz has always been a part of the Ver­sus series expe­ri­ence, and it did­n’t seem dif­fer­ent this time around than any of the oth­er games in the series. I’ve always felt the response to the sound­track was overblown and sil­ly. Focus on the more impor­tant things that are wrong with the game.


And here’s where I want to put that focus and explore why it’s the source of my ire and apa­thy with MvC2. For a game that touts 56 char­ac­ters, in hind­sight, only 10 are viable tour­na­ment options. Yes, tour­na­ments have been played with the low tier char­ac­ters, but his­tor­i­cal­ly, the major tour­na­ments of the day have always fea­tured teams that have the Mar­vel 2 gods involved. You’re going to see a Cable, Storm, Sen­tinel, Mag­ne­to or Iron Man in the top 3. You’re going to see the same assists anchor­ing those teams as well. That’s a prob­lem. With that many char­ac­ters avail­able, the same hand­ful of names should not be dom­i­nat­ing. There should be vari­ety. This has been a prob­lem in the Mar­vel 2 tour­na­ment scene since the first six months post release when every­one fig­ured out the ini­tial tech and real­ized Tiger Knee Hyper Viper Beam and Fly­/Un-fly com­bos were the way to vic­to­ry. And, yes, I real­ize it’s been 25 years since the game was released, new tech still pops up that makes char­ac­ters look bet­ter than they ever did, and ambas­sadors such as Justin Wong use dif­fer­ent teams to high­light this dis­par­i­ty. But it was a mas­sive prob­lem back in the day and ruined the expe­ri­ence for me going forward.

Mar­vel vs. Cap­com 2 gets near­ly every­thing right: Evolved game­play with assists, clean­er visu­als and a gigan­tic ros­ter with famil­iar faces and cool addi­tions. How­ev­er, that near­ly is what breaks the game for me. I can’t rec­on­cile my nos­tal­gia for the game and the time spent trav­el­ing, meet­ing new peo­ple, the gift of Ruby Heart and lov­ing the Ver­sus series with the absolute fool­ish­ness that is the game­play. This is the point of the Ver­sus ride where I get off.

Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 — Issue 55

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Ulti­mate MvC3 almost slips back into bad habits

Final ver­sion of MvC3 is a true upgrade

Editor’s note: This review orig­i­nal­ly appeared in Issue 24 (4Q2013). It has been edit­ed for spelling, gram­mar and clarity.

I usu­al­ly have a gen­uine prob­lem with Cap­com’s release pol­i­cy for its fight­ing games. Gen­er­al­ly, I know to expect a revi­sion edi­tion lat­er down the line that adds maybe a few char­ac­ters and few new back­grounds. Mar­vel vs. Cap­com 3 was no dif­fer­ent. I knew what was com­ing and, sure enough, Cap­com played its hand with Ulti­mate. Curi­ous­ly, this is a decent play, though like all Cap­com releas­es, it should have come right at the beginning.

Ulti­mate picks up the slack where vanil­la left off. You’re still sav­ing the Earth from Galac­tus and the basic look of the game is still the same. Except, there’s a few new bells and whis­tles thrown in for good mea­sure. The new intro throws a fresh coat of paint on the pro­ceed­ings. The intro is gor­geous, with a freeze-frame look at var­i­ous bat­tles between Mar­vel and Cap­com char­ac­ters around the city. There are also a few new back­grounds, though I wish there were more. I par­tic­u­lar­ly loved the new Days of Future Past back­ground with the want­ed poster of the X‑Men arc cov­er re-done with char­ac­ters’ sta­tus from both sides. And, no, Mega Man’s ques­tion­able sta­tus did not escape my notice.


The new char­ac­ters added to both sides are eas­i­ly the best rea­son to pick up the new ver­sion. There are 12 new (Phoenix Wright, Fire­brand, Frank West, Neme­sis T‑Type, Strid­er Hiryu and Vergil for Cap­com; Doc­tor Strange, Rock­et Rac­coon, Nova, Iron Fist, Hawk­eye and Ghost Rid­er for Mar­vel) with the DLC add-ons of Jill Valen­tine and Shu­ma-Gorath still avail­able and Galac­tus made playable through an offline mode. Play­ing through once more is inter­est­ing, just to see how the new char­ac­ters work with­in the bal­ance of the game at large. Speak­ing of bal­ance, new moves have been giv­en to the old­er char­ac­ters as well as some tweaks to their movesets and the over­all game engine.

Prob­a­bly the biggest addi­tion aside from the char­ac­ters is Heroes and Her­alds mode. Basi­cal­ly, you choose a fac­tion — Heroes, who will oppose Galac­tus; or Her­alds a la Sil­ver Surfer, who work to soft­en up the earth for the plan­et-devour­ing god — and fight through stages of vary­ing dif­fi­cul­ty. As you fight, you acquire abil­i­ty cards that are used to form a deck. The cards apply spe­cial attrib­ut­es to your team mem­bers or to the game itself. It’s a nov­el and well-exe­cut­ed idea and one that makes sense in the larg­er scheme of Mar­vel vs. Cap­com. I’m sur­prised it was­n’t thought of until now, and I’m even more sur­prised that it’s not in more Cap­com games.

Ulti­mate Mar­vel vs. Cap­com 3 isn’t the fresh­est idea out of Cap­com’s camp, but it has quite a bit going for it to war­rant a pur­chase. While it’s too much con­tent to be DLC only, it’s a shame that full price was charged for it when it was released. Cap­com man­aged to dodge the usu­al shenani­gans it’s known for with Street Fight­er, but it cut it close. Thank­ful­ly, Ulti­mate MvC3’s ride is an enter­tain­ing one to take.

Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics — Issue 55

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Lat­est fight­ing col­lec­tion is a mod­ern Marvel

I might have got­ten mad at Cap­com with this release if they had­n’t includ­ed every­thing I need­ed for a mod­ern Ver­sus col­lec­tion. As I am wont to do when there is a new Cap­com cash grab, I take a hard, long look at the offer­ings and judge whether it’s worth my dol­lars or is skip­pable. With Mar­vel vs. Cap­com Fight­ing Col­lec­tion: Arcade Clas­sics, that judg­ing pro­duced a win­ning run on my wal­let quickly.

Let’s get straight to the point. The Mar­vel vs. Cap­com col­lec­tion, while great, is exact­ly like the oth­er col­lec­tions Cap­com has released in the past four years. If you already bought the Cap­com Clas­sics Col­lec­tions with the entire Vam­pire series and then Cap­com vs. SNK 2 and Rival Schools, you already know what to expect with this. The pack­age of games this time, how­ev­er, is strict­ly Ver­sus series titles. Every­thing from the start of the series is includ­ed — start­ing with X‑Men: Chil­dren of the Atom and end­ing with Mar­vel vs. Cap­com 2. All ver­sions fea­tured are the arcade ports of the respec­tive games with train­ing modes and secrets unlocked from the begin­ning. So, no, you won’t have to play to unlock all char­ac­ters in MvC2 or go through the round­about unlock­ing process in MvC. That makes it eas­i­ly acces­si­ble, which I need because I’m not about the unlock­ing life at this stage of the game.

The col­lec­tion looks and plays like the oth­er col­lec­tions. There is a sound­track mode and gal­leries with infor­ma­tion and pro­mo­tion­al art­work for each game along with leader­boards and online play for all games. Cap­com did­n’t rock the boat with the pre­sen­ta­tion and I guess fig­ured, it worked for the oth­er pack­ages we’ve released so don’t be dif­fer­ent. I’m not com­plain­ing because that’s exact­ly what I expect. I want famil­iar­i­ty so I can just jump right in when I’m ready. And as with the oth­er pack­ages, I love the but­ton set­up customization. 


There isn’t too much that I don’t love about the col­lec­tion. Going in and out the train­ing mode is slight­ly tedious — as it is with the oth­er col­lec­tions — but it’s not a deal­break­er. The announc­er for the over­all col­lec­tion is also a bit weird, but it, too, is not some­thing hold­ing the game back. These are admit­ted­ly nit­pick­ing things about the game, and it does­n’t sub­tract from the over­all package.

The Mar­vel vs. Cap­com Fight­ing Col­lec­tion is the quin­tes­sen­tial col­lec­tion of Ver­sus games. It super­sedes any oth­er mod­ern Mar­vel col­lec­tion released in the past 15 years and is the best col­lec­tion of the bunch so far that Cap­com has released. The fact that it’s all ear­ly Mar­vel Ver­sus games in a mod­ern set­ting and read­i­ly acces­si­ble makes this worth an imme­di­ate purchase.

 

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein — Issue 54

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Mary Shel­ley’s Franken­stein (SNES)
Bits Stu­dios, 1994

A Crea­ture this piti­ful should have shuf­fled off the mor­tal coil

Mary Shel­ley, in her gild­ed cof­fin of prose and man and mad­ness, must have rolled over in her grave when this abom­i­na­tion based on her great­est work was released. As if the ’90s did­n’t have enough ter­ri­ble movie-to-game ties, along sham­bles the vit­ri­olic cash grab that is Mary Shel­ley’s Frankenstein.

The plot is tied direct­ly to the 1994 movie direct­ed by the inim­itable Ken­neth Branaugh and star­ring the leg­endary Robert De Niro. Vic­tor Franken­stein, a med­ical stu­dent, brings his cre­ation to life through sci­ence. The Crea­ture, which is sound­ly reject­ed as an abom­i­na­tion by soci­ety, wan­ders the Earth attempt­ing to find Vic­tor and exact revenge. 
The orig­i­nal sto­ry is com­pelling. The video game ver­sion is not. As some­one who read Franken­stein, Or the Mod­ern Prometheus pre­vi­ous­ly, I have expo­sure to the sto­ry and the char­ac­ters. The game does noth­ing to tie the movie or the sto­ry to the game. You start the game as a being with no expla­na­tion of who you are or what you’re sup­posed to be doing. The strug­gle is imme­di­ate­ly and painful­ly obvi­ous once you’re dropped on the scene of a tired brown vil­lage. As I lat­er learned, I start as the Crea­ture, and I’m sup­posed to be flee­ing the vil­lage. The vil­lagers assume the Crea­ture is a demon and are try­ing to kill him while he’s on the way to find and kill Vic­tor. That’s the gist of the sto­ry, but I had to piece that togeth­er while watch­ing oth­er playthroughs. That was atro­cious in 1994 and is still atro­cious today.


Equal­ly ter­ri­ble are the game­play and graph­ics, which go hand in hand. There is noth­ing redeem­ing about play­ing as the Crea­ture. He ani­mates ter­ri­bly and plays just as ter­ri­bly. He moves slow­ly through every motion and looks hor­ri­ble while doing so. His shuf­fling gait stark­ly con­trasts with his spry yet stale jump­ing, and his abil­i­ties to swing a weapon are sub­par at best. Of spe­cial note, the plat­form­ing ele­ments are absolute­ly garbage. Egre­gious­ly, there is no map to indi­cate pre­vi­ous­ly vis­it­ed areas or loca­tions of inter­est. That’s nec­es­sary if you’re ask­ing me to back­track and solve hid­den item puz­zles in a large play­field. In an age where Super Metroid had been recent­ly released, there is no excuse for this type of ludi­crous over­sight. Sure, this is a quick movie tie-in, but the least you can do as a devel­op­er is take notes from a mas­ter of the craft and at least halfway attempt to steal basic con­cepts such as a map. 

And about the only redeem­ing fac­tor is the music. The tracks are repet­i­tive but they’re 1990s house music and goth­ic mean­der­ings so it’s tol­er­a­ble. But that can’t save the oth­er­wise mediocre prod­uct that groaned out of Mary Shel­ley’s mas­ter­piece novel.
The obvi­ous draw of Mary Shel­ley’s Franken­stein is, in fact, the Crea­ture but you would­n’t know it from the way this plays over­all. There is noth­ing here, except for the sound­track, that is worth both­er­ing with and even then, that’s ques­tion­able. Much like De Niro’s choice to play the Crea­ture, the biggest ques­tion of this whole trav­es­ty is why?

House of the Dead — Issue 54

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House of the Dead
Sega, 1998

Retro House of the Dead sets up shop for franchise

Ah, the progress that has been made. The on rails shoot­ers genre has made strides in the last 27 years. Mod­ern con­trols — includ­ing light guns avail­able for the home mar­ket — have made play­ing a lot more enjoy­able. And that has made the House of the Dead series — and espe­cial­ly the orig­i­nal game — a tad bit more tolerable.

House of the Dead starts off as most zom­bie hor­ror games of the day did: A mega­lo­ma­ni­a­cal weirdo is mess­ing with bioter­ror­ism unnec­es­sar­i­ly and has cre­at­ed a mess. And by mess, I mean mutat­ed, trans­formed humans with a taste for flesh. That’s lit­er­al­ly the plot of the game. There’s some­thing about a fiancée that needs sav­ing and stop­ping this blight from spread­ing to the rest of human­i­ty, but that’s the basics. It’s ser­vice­able and real­ly does­n’t do much to affect the game­play. You’re killing zom­bies, boss zom­bies and most like­ly the end boss guy who cre­at­ed the prob­lem. Clean it up and go on in future sequels to take on an even larg­er threat in the bad guy’s boss because, of course, he has a boss.


Clean­ing up the prob­lem is the fun part here. The con­trols are your stan­dard light gun shoot­er but they’re fine. Aim­ing and shoot­ing was­n’t bad, though lin­ing up my shot some­times was not exact­ly sharp. There were a few times fight­ing some of the aer­i­al boss­es that the cur­sor just was­n’t keep­ing up so I took cheap hits. As an arcade old head, I know that’s the name of the game here: It’s designed to be a quar­ter-munch­er. But by the time I get home, there should be a bet­ter under­stand­ing that this isn’t going to fly. Thank­ful­ly, cheat codes exist so it’s not a prob­lem. But for arcade con­di­tions sake, this real­ly isn’t cool.

Because this is a 1998 prod­uct we’re talk­ing about, I’m also not expect­ing the graph­ics to look like much. And they don’t, beyond these zom­bies look­ing OK. Keep in mind that these graph­ics did­n’t real­ly improve until well beyond the sec­ond game/Typing of the Dead, so you’re going to be see­ing them for a long time. The music fares about the same, too. They are decent enough for the late ’90s, and they work well in the con­fines of House of the Dead.

House of the Dead has made many improve­ments in the near­ly 30 years since the orig­i­nal game. It did­n’t set the barn on fire then but it’s a nice rail shoot­er if you’re into zom­bie hor­ror and like what the series has to offer. Per­son­al­ly, I’m more apt to play Typ­ing of the Dead before House of the Dead, but that’s because I pre­fer to be a key­board sharp­shoot­er these days. House of the Dead­’s ret­i­cle is set in the mid­dle with the abil­i­ty to go higher.