Tag Archives: Marvel vs Capcom

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 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.

Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite — Issue 38

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Mar­vel vs. Cap­com now infi­nite­ly frus­trat­ing series

The Mar­vel fight­ing game scene is well known by now and well worn. Pret­ty much, any­one who’s any­one in the Mar­vel com­ic uni­verse and movies has been in a Mar­vel Ver­sus game. This is noth­ing new by now. You’ve seen these peo­ple before and, if you’re a Cap­com fan, you have seen their side of the ros­ter in oth­er games before you got here. So, what exact­ly are you get­ting out of play­ing the lat­est iter­a­tion in the long-run­ning Mar­vel Ver­sus Cap­com series? Not much, but Cap­com already knew that. They just hoped you wouldn’t notice.

If you’re invest­ed in the Mar­vel Cin­e­mat­ic Uni­verse but don’t know any­thing about the comics, MvC: Infi­nite serves as a start­ing point for under­stand­ing the comics side of things in prepa­ra­tion for Avengers Endgame. Oh, yeah, there’s some Cap­com sto­ry set up, too, as an after­thought. Real­ly, this is sev­er­al sto­ries mashed togeth­er: From Mar­vel, you get the Infin­i­ty Saga and Age of Ultron sto­ry; from Cap­com comes Sig­ma and Mega Man X’s sto­ry and some of Vam­pire Savior/Darkstalker’s 3 arc deal­ing with Jedah Dohma. The sto­ry kind of makes sense in a mashed-up way. It’s not half bad, giv­en that the pre­vi­ous efforts of Mar­vel vs. Cap­com 3 to give a cin­e­mat­ic team up was decent and miles ahead of any oth­er title in the series to date. Most­ly, the Mar­vel Ver­sus series has fol­lowed an estab­lished com­ic book arc — Mar­vel vs. Street Fight­er was most­ly Apoc­a­lypse and the first Mar­vel vs. Cap­com focused on Onslaught — and this is no dif­fer­ent. Where it fal­ters is oversimplification.

The Infin­i­ty Saga is nev­er tru­ly fin­ished in the comics because Mar­vel con­stant­ly returns to it over the years to explain a lot of things. Also, think­ing crit­i­cal­ly about what this is real­ly based on, the sto­ry of the Infin­i­ty Saga real­ly took about 18 of the 22 MCU movies to tell its sto­ry. You can­not tell this sto­ry in two games — Mar­vel Super Heroes being the first to tell this arc. Infi­nite tries to and winds up half accom­plish­ing it with some weird, forced Cap­com sto­ry side fool­ish­ness thrown in for good mea­sure, because hey, Cap­com is also in the name.

You get the sense that if Capcom’s angle of things was removed, this would be just fine, and Infi­nite would be OK with­out it. That does not help Cap­com at all here. Imme­di­ate­ly, it destroys the need for a new team-up game and ren­ders Capcom’s side of the ros­ter unnec­es­sary. I do not feel Ryu or Chun Li are use­ful in any of the sit­u­a­tions pre­sent­ed in the sto­ry mode.

The ros­ter is actu­al­ly not bad, but with the few new addi­tions locked behind a DLC pay­wall, you’re kind of left to won­der would Infi­nite be just a tad bit bet­ter if the more note­wor­thy char­ac­ters were avail­able from the start. The base group is basi­cal­ly a retread ros­ter from MvC3, and the new addi­tions should have been in the series; the fact that we’re just now get­ting Black Wid­ow, Black Pan­ther, Jedah and the Win­ter Sol­dier is a crime that only Cap­com seems to like committing.

In addi­tion to the gener­ic over­sim­pli­fi­ca­tion of the sto­ry, the pre­sen­ta­tion is just as gener­ic and bland. The Mar­vel Ver­sus series has always had strong pre­sen­ta­tion, and to be frank, this ain’t it, as the kids say these days. The back­grounds are good, but some of the char­ac­ter designs have an oof lev­el the size of Ultron Sigma’s final form. They are, quite frankly, ter­ri­ble a lot of the time. There seems to be an attempt at real­ism but not, at the same time, because some of the Mar­vel char­ac­ters look like their MCU coun­ter­parts, but then when you look clos­er, there’s a detail that keeps them from look­ing exact­ly like the actor or actress that plays the character.

For exam­ple, look at Cap­tain Amer­i­ca and Cap­tain Mar­vel. Cap­tain Amer­i­ca, from far away, looks exact­ly like MCU Win­ter Sol­dier-era Cap­tain Amer­i­ca as por­trayed by real-world Cap­tain Amer­i­ca stal­wart Chris Evans. Up close, how­ev­er, Cap looks just enough dif­fer­ent for you to real­ize that Evans prob­a­bly didn’t con­sent to his like­ness for the game. Same for Cap­tain Mar­vel and actress Brie Lar­son. It’s a small but notice­able quib­ble I have here. And, some of these Cap­com char­ac­ters look atro­cious. Ryu’s face on the title screen is hor­rif­ic. The sprites look ter­ri­ble here but in game, he looks fine. It’s a shame because every oth­er game in the series has been OK in terms of the graph­ics. Sure, they weren’t award-win­ning, but they reflect­ed the series’ growth. Infi­nite looks like it took about 10 steps back in a lot of respects.

The music is just as bland. Each iter­a­tion of the Ver­sus series has had some bangers on the sound­track — even the much-maligned Mar­vel vs. Cap­com 2’s sound­track was mem­o­rable if not catchy. Here, there is absolute­ly noth­ing note­wor­thy. It’s the first Ver­sus game where I don’t have some­thing from the sound­track saved, which is not good at all. As I played through the sto­ry mode, I kept wait­ing for some­thing to jump out at me, and I got noth­ing. I was not impressed.

The con­trols didn’t impress, either. There has been a not­ed trend, since MvC3 was released, to sim­pli­fy the game sys­tem for the Ver­sus games to make them more accessible.

While I’m always a fan of draw­ing in the casu­al fan for these types of games, I’m not a fan of ruin­ing a good thing. MvC2 was still acces­si­ble to even the most casu­al fight­ing game play­er, and this is even worse than the ton­ing down of the con­trols between MvC2 and MvC3. There is no depth to the com­bo sys­tem now, and that doesn’t help Infi­nite in any way.

I’m under­whelmed when it comes to Mar­vel vs. Cap­com Infi­nite. Noth­ing plays in its favor, noth­ing makes any sense, and the team-up crossover event is show­ing its age in every facet of the game. There’s noth­ing new here to make me say wow or push me to play as I did the oth­er games in the series. If Cap­com were to lose the Mar­vel license again, it wouldn’t be a shock­er or unwarranted.

 It’s time to admit that the series is not an infi­nite source of amuse­ment. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, at this point, it’s mere­ly a finite source of fight­ing game goodness.