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Earlier this month, Capcom announced a public unveiling of the Tokyo Game Show build for Marvel Vs. Capcom 3, which was to take place in Chicago. I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to test drive the latest build of “Mahvel”, so I ventured into the Windy City to face what would become one of the largest blunders in crowd management I have ever seen. I barely made it out in one piece – however, I did manage to learn quite a bit about the game.
The interior of the Club was hot, noisy, and filled with the odors of sweat and angst. The free pizza and soda had long since been devoured. But Marvel 3 was still there – and I got to play it.
Three things immediately came to mind when watching and playing Marvel vs. Capcom 3.
1.) It’s gorgeous.
Everything from the backgrounds to the particle effects to the character animations was amazingly polished. This game was a showcase for the MT Framework running at its full potential. Aside from a few slight hiccups that occured when characters were K.O.ed, everything ran at a silky-smooth 60 frames per second, even when the screen was overflowing with fireworks. The game looked – for all intents and purposes – ready to ship.
2.) Aerial raves are much more beginner-friendly thanks to a controversially reworked control scheme.
There has been a lot of controversy regarding the new “casual-friendly” control system for Marvel vs. Capcom 3, and I’m inclined mostly to agree with those criticisms. The layout is much more similar to Tatsunoko, with the top three buttons devoted to light, medium, and hard attacks. The bottom row consists of a launcher button, and two assist buttons. Unlike in MvC2, where a tag was performed by pressing a punch and kick simutaneously – or in Tatsunoko, where a tag was performed by holding back and pressing the assist button – Marvel 3‘s tag system is a little confusing to new players. In Marvel 3, the tag is performed by holding the assist button down for two seconds and releasing.
This is rather awkward in practice, particularly for those used to either MvC2 or Tatsunoko tagging systems. Also, the addition of the launch button takes the complication out of setting up aerial raves. A beginner can mash out a 7-8 hit aerial rave without even blinking – possibly even chaining into a hyper combo – with minimal effort. Marvel has always been about crazy combos, but now Capcom has made it even easier to hit your opponent into the air, follow them up, smack them around, and look good doing it.
Is making the gameplay mechanics even easier a good thing for the versus series? I’m still undecided at this point – but I’m inclined to say yes, as it will introduce new gamers to the genre and allow them to have fun without overwhelming them with technical execution. There is also a Simple (Beginner) mode, that assigns special moves to the light, medium, and hard attack buttons – but I didn’t get a chance to test that out.
3.) Observations of the new cast show strengths and weaknesses.
18 characters were available in the demo, including the late additions Dormammu and Amaterasu (but Spider Man, Tron Bonne, X-23, and Wesker remained absent). Crowd favorites included Deadpool, Dante, and Super Skrull. There were a few Ryu and Hulk players as well, but in general most matches at the Fight Club that I witnessed were played using the new characters.
The team I spent the most time with is Morrigan, Amaterasu, and Dante. Morrigan played very similar to her incarnation in Tatsunoko Vs. Capcom, while Amaterasu’s unusual hitbox and special moves make her both unique and complex. Dante is complex too – as Capcom has gone on record as stating his special move list is longer than any character in any Capcom fighting game in history – and based on my experiences I can definitely see why they made that statement.
Admittedly, since the Fight Club only lasted three hours, nobody had enough time with the game to really catch a lot of the nuances. No character appeared to be truly “broken” (in the sense of Cable’s Hyper Viper Beam shenanigans in MvC2, for example) though some characters certainly seemed weaker than others. Thor, in particular probably needs some tuning as he is far too slow to mount an effective offense (perhaps tone the damage down and increase his speed ).
Overall, Marvel vs. Capcom 3 is shaping up to be everything the fans have wanted, and more. The character selection is diverse (as opposed to being heavily weighted in the X-Men and Street Fighter camps), the graphics are great, and the gameplay feels both familiar and new. Spring 2011 can’t come soon enough. “Mahvel” is coming back, bigger and better than ever.
