Note: Any pictures, movies, clips or links are not the writer's own work, also his opinion is not the opinion of god and everyone is to the right of their own opinion.
Well, after playing my friend's game enough times I've finally come to my conclusion about this game. And to be honest...I am disappointed. It's not that this is a bad game, but it feels so...incomplete. I know some of you, even those who do love this game, feel that your not getting the experience you thought you were going to get and that something in either the mechanics or the overall feel of the game is missing. Well let's see what is missing and what isn't.
But first of some history.
Now we have, ten years later, Marvel vs Capcom 3. When I first saw this trailer, I was shocked and amazed by how well the art work was along with seeing new and familiar faces like Ryu, Hulk, Deadpool, Dante, Dr. Doom and more. I thought this was something Capcom couldn't fail at. They had ten years to make this game great and we all stood ready for it. However, now that we have it we are all mixed on what we feel about it.
Some people are so die hard for it and love it to the death that they defend anything about the game. Now while other people's opinions may very, this is my opinion on why the game is a disappointment overall.
1. Graphics:
Okay let's get the good stuff done first. These are perfect graphics for the game's style. The animated comic like style sets the mood off for the idea of having your favorite comic book heroes fighting alongside and against your favorite game heroes. The first two games were all in classic 2D style fighting and it worked really well at that time. This was a smart move by Capcom to make the game look more 3D like. Sure it still plays like a 2D fighting game going only back and forth, but it keeps the popular 3D art style for the overall look of each character( in great detail by the way) while making the levels they fight in look more then just a simple background.
It's like playing in the likeness Street Fighter 4, but with Iron man and Chris Redfield in it. In fact, many people can see that Street Fighter 4 was a big inspiration to the art team for the likeness and meshes of the art work and that's a good thing. Squeal games need to be both familiar and new to gamers. The familiarity gives them that fan like feeling they get when they play their games while the new content makes the game not seem like the original to much. Many people are familiar with Street Fighter 4, so making it like that game in terms of the art style is a piece of brilliant work and does the game justice.
2. Controls
This is something that a lot of old school fans like me were disappointed in. The control system for the game is not the old classic MvC2 style, a style that was perfect for all types of gamers. From the button smashers to the one hit only users to even the guys who memorize every move, the control system worked and that was one of the best points of MvC2. This time however the controls are totally different. All the familiar moves your fingers remember through muscle memory are going to be obsolete. In fact, the game has only five buttons now. Low, Medium, and High attack while followed by the buttons that call upon your two allies. If you try to play this game like MvC2, your going to get owned....bad. In fact the only time I ever really won was just button smashing and that was only if I was lucky. But what makes this even worse is that their is a mode where the game can even simply the controls even more and make it easy to kill one character in just a few short moves. I'm sorry, maybe it's the old school in me, but this was a mistake.
What makes fighting games great are the controlling mechanics for each move and the combos that follow by pressing the buttons in the right order. Sure this might be hard to some players, but the great thing about these games is that you learn while playing. The more you play with the controls, the easier they become for your muscles to memorize the right moves that are needed. Maybe for some players this easier system works out well...but for me, I've got to say it's a poor choice.
3. Gameplay
Oh where do I begin? While the game does play a lot like the original and has it's fun moments I've got to say this. It's...too....easy. Way to easy. I went through the single player mode in less then 20 minutes...I'm telling the truth here and that was just on normal mode. Once I got the controls finally figured out I just air combo-ed everyone to death and it was simple as that. But in terms of the overall likeness of playing a match I have to say they did keep most of the original stuff in. We got the Hyper Meter, the health bars, the combo signs and more. It feels like the original, but yet it doesn't. This is both good and bad. It's good that it's following my idea of originally and orthodoxy, but it's bad because I can't really feel a satisfied or dissatisfied opinion. I mean you will have fun in the game, that much I will tell you and maybe for some people that's enough, but I feel that there should be deeper emotional feelings then just fun in a game.
On another side note let's talk about the added game modes or better yet, the lack of them! First off there is "Simple Mode" where you only need three buttons to kill anything that moves....yeah next! Verses mode is what you would expect, both system and online are available however I will talk about online later. And then there is the only good mode they have, Mission Mode. As you would expect it's where you take specific characters and try to accomplish certain objectives with these characters like in the Event modes from SSBM. I liked it and it was pretty good. Next one....oh wait...there are no others! Holy crud, what the hell? Why not a tournament mode? I would think by now they would have something that allows us to have a list of tournaments where we can play against other online players for more social interaction. Where is also Time Attack mode and Spectator mode? One of the great things about online gameplay in the second game was while you were waiting for a match, you could watch other people play. It would not only give you an idea of what each opponent's fighting style was like but it also kept you more entertained then just staring at a wall while waiting for your turn.
Which bring me to my next major point, the failure of online gameplay. Now I ran out of my Gold Xbox membership awhile ago and haven't found the time to update it so I had to play at my friend's apartment and on his live system. I will tell you right now....this was the most disappointing thing in this game. Almost 3/4ths of the time did I have connection problems getting into a single game and I was forced back to the menu screen where I was forced to once again go all the way to the online screen and try again only to fail again. And when I did finally get to a lobby, I had to wait while other people were fighting. Yet I can't view the fight because there is no Spectator Mode. So I was forced to wait for 20 minutes until I finally got to play a game online only to get some whining brat who complained that I was a "hax" for kicking his ass so hard. Yeah, so I'm not interested in getting online matches for some time. I don't know what the hell happened Capcom, but you need to check your servers.
4. Story
Now It's obvious by now that most people don't focus on the story in most fighting games. Some do it well while some do it terrible, this is mostly because more energy is put on the mechanics of the game then the story in this type of gaming field. However, after viewing the trailers for the game I thought that for once there was going to be a very interesting storyline in this game that would actually feature some great cut scenes and action. It was all possible to do, I'm sure this idea was thought about in the Pre-Production phase. However, much to my continued disappointment...it didn't happen. Yet, this isn't a surprise to me. I mean MvC2 had a plot, but really nobody paid attention to it and seeing the same thing happen here is not a surprise. However, one thing I was angry about was the lack of animated videos in each of the character endings. You would think with all the trailers and artwork they did they would have done a simple 30 second movie for each character at the end of the single player game, but we just get artwork with no voices....that's just lazy.
4. Characters
Ah, now we get to a really interesting part. One of the great things about MvC2 was that it had over fifty-six characters, half from Marvel and half from Capcom. This was awesome because it allowed so many combination's for team building that it almost seemed limitless. In Marvel vs Capcom 3 however we only get a total thirty-six characters. That's a lot lower then what we were expecting and there are only 4 characters that are hidden. Now we can all guess what Capcom is doing, there going to put more characters in the game through the use of DLC. I'm sorry, but I feel a bit screwed by this. I would have accept forty-five characters before DLC, maybe even forty. But the fact that you are going to give us only barley half the amount of characters we had in the original game feels like a joke and your doing this to range in the cash cow because you know we'll pay whatever amount of money just to get all our old playable characters again.
Let's talk about the characters now shall we? First off we got familiar ones like Ryu, Wolverine, Captain Amercia and Chun-Li while getting new ones such as Dante, Arthur, Thor, and Phoenix. I was glad to see so many new faces and I was happy to play those guys, but there is something that is still bothering me. A lot of old characters I liked that have been around since the beginning are not in the game anymore. We don't have Megaman, but we have Zero which is strange, and we don't have Strider one of my favorite guys. And some characters I feel really didn't need to be even in the game. That guy from Biotic Commando? She-Hulk? Doramammu?! Sure some characters I'm glad to see gone and replaced (Cough cough "Iceman" cough cough) but, seriously? Doramammu?
Well, enough about that. Let's get to how they play. This is where the game goes right. Most of the characters feel like they play and act like their respective styles. It was entertaining to see the characters fight each other and I had a blast doing so. But some characters however, like Akuma and Sentinal, are really overpowered and can kill you within a second. But hey, you get that in every fighting game really.
6. Sound
It's great. Still has the same good beat, great voices, nice sound effects and more. Nothing else to be said.
OVERALL:
Now for the overall verdict. I will admit I had fun playing the game and there were times I did forgive some of the problems....but I still feel that I only got half the game I wanted. So much is missing and so much was taken out that I can't help but feel this is a big disappointment to us all. Sure I know people praise the game so much, but there are others like me who feel the same feelings. Because of all this I am going to give this game an average rating.
Marvel vs Capcom 3: 3/5
I suggest you don't buy the game yet and wait for the DLC's to come out. If the DLC's make the game better with more characters and a lot of game modes then maybe I will buy it myself. But until then, it's not going to be in my Xbox personally.
Well, that's my review. Thanks for reading and remember.
We are gamers and we are legion.
Later
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