Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds – Game Review

The Story: It’s Marvel and Capcom villains assembled! Dr Doom has joined forces with Resident Evil’s Albert Wesker to unite their universes and conquer both of them. With this ungodly union of evil, it’s up to the heroes of Marvel to team-up with Capcom’s finest to save the day.

About The Game: This has been a long time coming; 11 years to be exact, for the Marvel vs.  Capcom series.  For those who are new to the VS series game, the gameplay consists of you picking a team of three characters (whether they’re from the Marvel Universe or from the Capcom world) to fight your opponent’s team of three.  There is always a character on point that can tag out with the other two teammates, or you can keep your point character out and call out one of your teammates for an assist.  The assists are based on moves that are already set by Capcom which you pick during your character selection.  Also while the assist can take damage, if the player does not call them out again, the two characters in line to come out will regenerate life depending on the red health bar; you can always tag your lead character out anytime to let them regenerate life as well.

The button layout for this game is just like Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, but for those that do not know, there is a light, medium, heavy hits, a special which is your launcher and hard hit in the air to slam the opponent to the ground and 2 assist buttons.

What’s Good: The obvious one– the graphics. The visuals elements this game gives us a very pleasing sight with highly detailed and vibrantly colored characters, done in a necessary comic book aesthetic. You’re pretty much controlling the fight scene of a motion comic…

To add on to this visually striking game, there is an awesome new installment that fans of this series will love, and that the ability to do an air attack combo while tagging your next teammate in line to continue the assault in the air (however, each air combo is limited to three tags). This not only adds excitement to the gameplay, but it also allows players to showcase their skills in executing the most impressive moves. Another cool and also new thing that was added is the X-Factor ability, which boosts each character’s damage, speed, health regeneration. Furthermore, the X-Factor ability also allows members in your team to avoid chip damage (a special move that deals damage while a person is blocking).

Aside from all the new technical elements added, one of the main things I love most about this game are the new faces from both, Marvel and Capcom. You’re going to be surprised at the detail of the variant outfits for each character. Capcom worked with Marvel really well, giving all the cast of Marvel characters a good array of schemes for alternate colors based on uniforms and past outfits that had appeared from past and recent issues. On the Capcom side, they modeled the alternate colors off of older games, and some were added in from their own choices. In addition, the creators of the game also brilliantly used sound to capture the essence of each character.

Capcom really took soundtracks to the next level, by switching the theme songs whenever a character was defeated; giving a cinematic feel to the battle, while also adding on to the characters’ personalities. Along with the music, the creators also brilliantly casted each character’s voice and provided good writing for the dialogue in all the soundbytes. The Merc with the Mouth says and shows it all…

Furthermore, the producers of the game dug deep and captured all the nuances of each character’s personality through various visual details. The creators of the game designed and modeled the personality and the play style of each character appropriately. For example, X-23 has a small frame and is a wild character. She’s fast and nimble with low health, and has ways of getting in the opponent’s face quickly and dealing her damage. On the other end there is Dormammu, who’s slow with lots of health, yet he relies on projectiles to do his damage. As each character has their own play style, you can vary the many combinations for teams in this game. However, there is a the element of synergy that should be kept in mind. Synergy is the way your team works together, because there are assists in this game, where having good synergy helps to protect your characters’ weak spots or avoid pressure from your opponent.

What’s Not So Good: Now we come to the bad parts of this game. As a gamer, my biggest gripe is with the obvious “cheap” characters. Having these characters in your team often give the player an unfair edge, such as having the power to single handedly win you the game. The forums from the gaming community are already discussing ways to improve Marvel vs. Capcom 3; especially for tournament regulation. Hopefully Capcom will listen to the community and patch the game up, with the balances people are suggesting. They have done this pretty well in the past for games like Street Fighter 4.

As a reader, I am not too happy about some of the characters that they included in this game. I’m safely assuming that some of the new choices they brought in were not in many people’s “who I’d like to see” lists. MODOK? Taskmaster? Dormammu? WTF?! Why couldn’t they have Osborn, or someone from the Fantastic Four?

Conclusion: For fans of fighting games and comics, this is a good game to have. It may have its problems with its fair play, but I’m crossing my fingers that Capcom will take care of that. With these next gen consoles, Capcom has many ways to keep players happy with Downloadable Content. It’s already been announced that the game will already be having two characters added on March 1st, and two more that we have yet to find out.

Grade: B+

-Denny Ngo & Ray Hilario