Tag Archives: XBox 360

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

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.

Darkstalkers Resurrection — Issue 46

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Dark­stalk­ers com­bo a fun,
fright­ful fight

Duo of Vam­pire Hunter, Sav­ior offered in package

At this point, we know what Dark­stalk­ers is and isn’t. My wor­ried brow of con­cern isn’t with get­ting a new one but more with the re-releas­es of the tril­o­gy of games and the two sup­ple­men­tal games released as upgrades. We know what to expect when it comes to Dark­stalk­ers, but as occa­sion­al com­pi­la­tions are released, we have to take a crit­i­cal look at whether it’s worth your time and cur­ren­cy to engage in Cap­com’s release the Krak­en in the form of remakes strategy.

Dark­stalk­ers Res­ur­rec­tion aims to do what Cap­com’s pre­vi­ous release in Mar­vel Origins

Vam­pire Sav­ior: Mor­ri­g­an vs. Jedah

did: Release two games in the series as start­ing points to get you to explore more. Res­ur­rec­tion con­sists of two games: Night War­riors: Dark­stalk­ers’ Revenge and Dark­stalk­ers 3. Both games are includ­ed in their entire­ty as Amer­i­can arcade ports emu­lat­ed on disc with extras added for the home release. Much as with Mar­vel Ori­gins, there’s online play and gallery unlocks from chal­lenges added. Every­thing has been giv­en a fresh coat of paint with new­er art and visu­als, which means a lot con­sid­er­ing Dark­stalk­ers 3 was released in 1997. All of this results in a nice-look­ing, souped-up package. 

Vam­pire Hunter: Dono­van vs. Jon Talbain

The game­play is as clean as it ever was, and because it’s emu­lat­ed from the arcade ports, it’s bet­ter than any oth­er release that came before it with the excep­tion of the PlaySta­tion 2 Vam­pire Col­lec­tion. Every­thing works the way it should in terms of com­bos and Dark­stalk­ers’ noto­ri­ous­ly hard-to-do moveset. The moves land the way you want and there’s no lag. Not­ing that this is an accept­able port for high-lev­el com­pe­ti­tion, Res­ur­rec­tion hits the right spot in terms of playa­bil­i­ty. If you want­ed to know how Dark­stalk­ers played in the arcade with­out try­ing to emu­late it with MAME or Fight­cade, Res­ur­rec­tion is your answer.

There real­ly isn’t any­thing wrong with Res­ur­rec­tion, either. The only annoy­ing thing about the game is the fact that it did­n’t sell well. That isn’t the game’s fault, though. This is a tech­ni­cal­ly sound port of two fan­tas­tic fight­ing games that play well and work well in what they’re being asked to do: Be a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of a long-dead fight­ing fran­chise to intro­duce new­er folks to the Vampire/Darkstalkers scene. It’s done its job admirably with strong mechan­ics and gor­geous updat­ed visu­als. You can’t ask for more from a retro fight­ing game. This fan­tas­tic fight­ing fright fest deserves more respect for its abil­i­ty to shine 25 years after its last release and should scare up a spot in your fight­ing game collection.

BlazBlue: Continuum Shift Extend — 3Q2018 issue

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Guilty Gear suc­ces­sor cleans up nice­ly in fight­ing game arena

Fight­ing game con­nois­seurs have a robust buf­fet to choose from these days. There’s Mar­vel, Street Fight­er, Tekken and Mor­tal Kom­bat for tour­na­ment purists, a new Soul Cal­ibur has been announced, and a new Smash is on the hori­zon and the old­er games in the series are still played in some cir­cles. Guilty Gear, which has always been qui­et­ly in the back of the lunch­room, was a mix of tour­na­ment and casu­al, so it stands to rea­son that its spir­i­tu­al suc­ces­sor — BlazBlue — would mim­ic that notion.

BlazBlue arrived in the fight­ing game scene as a new entry in the port­fo­lio of Guilty Gear devel­op­er Arc­Sys­tem. Tak­ing what they learned from that series, Arc­Sys­tem improved upon the for­mu­la they’d cre­at­ed with gor­geous visu­als, a rock­ing sound­track and impres­sive game­play options that ensure you’ll have plen­ty to do.

BlazBlue CSE starts off rather intim­i­dat­ing­ly. From the begin­ning, there are quite a few modes to choose from. If you’re not informed, you might be a lit­tle lost try­ing to under­stand just where you should start. With a var­ied plate to choose from, at the very least the modes are inter­est­ing­ly designed and add val­ue to an already-packed game. 
The stand­out fea­tures, how­ev­er, are the graph­ics and sto­ry. As with Guilty Gear, you’re get­ting a treat visu­al­ly. The lev­el of detail in each char­ac­ter and the back­grounds make the game worth sit­ting down and study­ing. If you’re into ani­me, the aes­thet­ics were designed with you in mind.

The sto­ry is also wor­thy of com­par­i­son to most mod­ern ani­me. It’s con­vo­lut­ed and com­plex and has twists and turns involv­ing a mul­ti-lay­ered cast. There’s a lot about the search­ing for a sav­ior and mag­ic — which isn’t out of place for an Arc­Sys­tem game. It feels famil­iar but it doesn’t detract from the fact that it’s lay­ered and deep.

Learn­ing the mechan­ics for most fight­ing games is a mixed bag. Some games expect you to be able to jump in and mas­ter the basics as if you’ve done noth­ing but play fight­ing games all of your gam­ing life. Oth­ers like to give you a tuto­r­i­al so that you’re not lost and quick­ly putting the game down, nev­er to return. BlazBlue CSE is in the lat­ter cat­e­go­ry: So con­cerned is the game about you learn­ing to play and mas­ter all that it has to offer that it throws a sur­pris­ing­ly deep tuto­r­i­al mode at you. It slow­ly increas­es the lev­el of com­plex­i­ty and the mechan­ics are spot on and easy to grasp. All fight­ing games need the type of learn­ing tool that’s offered here.

If you love Guilty Gear or if you just want a deep­er sto­ry­line than what’s cur­rent­ly offered by the larg­er more well-known titles on the mar­ket in fight­ing games, BlazBlue promis­es to deliv­er a rich expe­ri­ence. It deliv­ers on that promise with a com­mit­ment to extend­ing beyond just the reg­u­lar fight­ing game expectations.