Tag Archives: The Punisher

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.

 

The Punisher — Issue 40

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The Pun­ish­er makes good in dig­i­tal crime cleanup

Before Mar­vel vs. Cap­com became a rel­e­vant name to gamers, the com­pa­nies col­lab­o­rat­ed on oth­er games. Those games became essen­tial clas­sics to devel­op gamers who spe­cial­ized in sin­gle-com­bat titles. In 1994, Cap­com and Mar­vel brought a Final Fight-style game to the Gen­e­sis that starred comics’ most infa­mous anti-hero: Frank Cas­tle aka The Punisher.
The game fol­lows the sto­ry­line of the clas­sic Mar­vel comics series. Frank Cas­tle, a dec­o­rat­ed vet­er­an Marine, was enjoy­ing a day in the park with his fam­i­ly when they unwit­ting­ly became wit­ness­es to a mob shoot­ing. As a result, Cas­tle and his fam­i­ly were mas­sa­cred, him being the only sur­vivor. Cas­tle became deter­mined to get pay­back by any means nec­es­sary. With fel­low war­rior Nick Fury (of S.H.I.E.L.D.), Cas­tle begins his war on crime against mob boss Wil­son Fisk aka King­pin, who caused the death of his fam­i­ly and many oth­er innocents. 
The game plays sim­i­lar­ly to “Final Fight” and “Cap­tain Com­man­do.” You can choose to play as either Cas­tle or Fury and can team up in mul­ti­play­er. You start off with the basics, pro­gress­ing to com­bos and var­i­ous weapons such as hand­guns, auto­mat­ic rifles and katanas. There was lib­er­al food and oth­er pow­er-ups such as cash, gold bars and dia­monds that increased my score and restored health since the amount of ene­mies com­ing at me was nonstop. 
The graph­ics were pleas­ant enough, although they attempt­ed to copy arcade cab­i­net-qual­i­ty with lit­tle suc­cess. I will give Cap­com cred­it for mak­ing the graph­ics comic­book-like. it was like read­ing an actu­al issue of the comics includ­ing cap­tions “BLAM!” “KRAK” and “BOOM!” instead of play­ing a rushed paint job of a pop­u­lar com­ic series video game. The music of each stage was also decent as Capcom’s sound team deliv­ered, keep­ing things close to what the Pun­ish­er feels like. 
With the work Cap­com put in, the atten­tion to detail made me want to pick it up to play as a return­ing com­ic book fan who knew about Cas­tle and Fury but want­ed to learn more about the King­pin and oth­er Mar­vel vil­lains such as Bush­whack­er and Bonebreaker. 
The Pun­ish­er is the first suc­cess­ful par­ing of Capcom’s know-how with Marvel’s leg­endary vig­i­lante who wastes no time dis­pens­ing his brand of jus­tice on crim­i­nals. Play­ing through this isn’t exact­ly punishment.