MvC3 countdown!

[trashcanman]

A little under a month until my second most-anticipate game of the year drops. What makes this countdown more exciting is that Capcom continues to leak characters every few weeks. The latest additions: Taskmaster and Akuma. Shit yes. Who'd have thought Tasky would make the cut? Here's the rest of the confirmed roster of so far:

[glow=red,2,300]Marvel [/glow]

Captain America
Deadpool
Doctor Doom
Dormammu
The Hulk
Iron Man
Magneto
MODOK
Phoenix
She-Hulk
Shuma-Gorath (DLC)
Spider-Man
Storm
Super-Skrull
Thor
Wolverine
X-23

[glow=red,2,300]Capcom[/glow]

Amaterasu
Arthur
Chris Redfield
Chun-Li
Crimson Viper
Dante
Felicia
Haggar
Jill Valentine(DLC)
Morrigan
Ryu Spencer
Trish
Tron Bonne
Viewtiful Joe
Wesker
Zero

I'm getting more and more excited about Marvel's roster. Do wish they'd have subbed Psylocke in for Storm. Having Thor around kind of takes the piss out of playing as Storm. No Mega Man yet is bullshit too. A big "yay" for Phoenix and a "boo" for C. Viper. All of those classic Street Fighter character and they brought in that upstart? Blanka, man! Give me Blanka!

[The Curmudgeon]

I've played a few of these games, and the instant pick up and play appeal of the Streetfighter engine never gets old. I dunno if I'm as big a fan of this series as you, Trashy. To me it all gets a bit "hectic" and the skill of the game is replaced by hammering your big power move button once that's built up. And it all gets a little too "combo-ish" for me as well. But I'd still play it in a heartbeat. And no Thor is a crying shame. Thor vs Akuma... fight!

[trashcanman]

Thor will be in the game. Never did figure out why he wasn't in any of the older ones, but the wrong is righted. Apparently, there will be an "easy" mode where power moves and some combos are assigned their own buttons so that newcomers can come in and compete with real players who have to do it the old-fashioned way but have a wider array of moves. Pretty good idea, I think. I get what you're saying about the combos, but I have nothing but sweet memories of playing X-men vs Street Fighter, Marvel Superheroes, and the first MvC in the arcade. By the time MvC2 came out, arcades had become death traps full of $.50-$.75 games with the difficulty cranked to the max so your first few games ended in defeat seconds after you try your first attack. It got old quick so MK3 and MvC2 only got played once or twice by me before I realized that I could put that money towards buying console games that were now of comparable quality and a better deal.

[trashcanman]

I'm planning on feeding the latest and greatest on this one as it's available and here's an article detailing the game and every announced character so far.
cdn.gamerant.com/wp-content/uploads/marvel-vs-capcom-3.jpg

The guy's obviously a hardcore player of the series, but he offers tips regarding which characters are beginner-friendly, which is nice. Kind of pathetic that Thor's big belated fighting game debut seems to have him being the Zangief in a game that was supposed to be extremely balanced. The god of thunder should be among the strongest fighters in any game he appears in and having Storm be the strongest character when he's got all of her powers and tons more is just dumb.

[trashcanman]

One week away and two more bombs dropped.

First, there were rumors of new AI that would be able to replicate individual players' fighting styles so you could fight against copies of them in training mode. Not sure if this is going to be able to be used with online opponents, but it has been confirmed that the games creators have put bots into the game that play as programmed versions of themselves. Very, very interesting.
xbox360.ign.com/articles/114/1148214p1.html

And better than that is this: xbox360.ign.com/articles/114/1148135p1.html

You want an epic final boss. You've got one. I'm already planning on rage-quitting. Galactus and his heralds. Damn. Awesome.

[The Curmudgeon]

That AI sounds pretty interesting. Like to see how that would work. I remember one of the earlier games had you fighting Galactus, but it was just his hand moving across the screen that you had to blast with fireballs. Not great.

[trashcanman]

Did you check the link? It has a vid of Galactus and it looks BRUTAL! I can see tech that analyzes player's styles such as how often the use a given move or combo in a given situation, how often they successfully block attacks or tag out their characters and whatnot and then repeating that style based on gathered performance stats being implemented. It'd make for much better gameplay compared to past fighting games. I'd very much prefer that to the inconsistent move-reading AI that can become unbeatable at will. Playing other players with differing capabilities is fun and spontaneous. Playing a soulless machine that dictates when it will allow you to win can be downright shitty at times (SFIV). I don't really care about battling copies of the game's developers, but I'm pretty sure this bodes well that they are testing this sort of program for future integration into their fighting games. I'm all for it.

[trashcanman]

Tonight's the night. I'm heading to the game store at midnight for my copy of my #2 most anticipated game of the year. Here's the best review up for it so far.

www.1up.com/reviews/marvel-capcom-3-review?pager.offset=0

"There's a lot to be said when you can have a blast playing a fighting game regardless of whether you're winning or losing."

That pretty much says it all. I've actually been a big anxious because of the legendary competitive difficulty of these games since the only true 2D fighter I've played in over 10 years was Street Fighter IV, and I didn't even get online with that one. I pretty much borrowed it long enough to remember how fucking much I love those games, beat up a friend or two at a LAN party at my brother-in-law's house, and returned it with an eye towards the upcoming "Super" edition. Then the first trailer dropped for MvC3 and I knew that was the one I wanted. At the end of the day, it's all about having fun and I doubt I'll be the only one who hasn't spent the last decade practicing hundred hit combos in MvC2 in anticipation of this night so I'm sure I'll be fine.

The reviews point out that there is no spectator mode in online play. What this means is that while you wait for your next turn, you cannot see the other players' fight. This is a dealbreaker for me. No spectator mode, no online play. I had way too much fun with Dead or Alive 4 listening to and participating in match commentary with my fellow gamers to stare at a shitty loading screen (or whatever) when I should be able to see the action going down in my party. Capcom has assured us that this problem will be patched, but this is really just a good excuse for me to learn the game better before I wade into the online proving ground to take my lumps. I just hope I don't fall too far behind the more patient competition.

One thing left to discuss. My first team. Right now it's looking like this:



and one of these two villains


or


Or maybe I'll go with



The internal debate on my final first team-of-3 spot will continue until just after midnight when I finally fire this puppy up. Until then, this has been my Marvel vs Capcom 3 countdown. Good gaming to you all.

[The Curmudgeon]

Trashy, I had pretty much zero interest in this game up until reading about it in here. You've sold it to me. Let me know what you think, because I'm pretty pumped for it myself now. You should work for Capcom, man.

[trashcanman]

All right. Countdown's over. Game is here. And it pretty much rules. It'll take longer than I've got to master for sure, but it's extremely easy to pick up and play. Sucks that I'm working graveyard shift so I have little time to play, but I stayed up until 6AM on release night and was sweating like crazy even though it's still winter. Awesome game.

Right now I'm only in the "feeling out characters while seeing all the endings" stage so I'm playing on Easy mode (to save time) and learning moves and combos before ramping the difficulty back up for an actual challenge. Every time you beat the game with a new character (whoever lands the final blow on Galactus gets the ending) you get a ton of unlockables for them, plus every character has a solo challenge mode to teach you how to utilize them in combat. So no shortage of things to see and do. The gameplay is the classic 6-man Street Fighter on speed. 'Nuff said about that.

Best of all is the insane amount of references and crossover love. The in-game dialogue is always entertaining and occasionally awesome as some characters specifically call each other out before and after the match. The endings are shown as comic books, which is cool, but I'd have preferred full cinematics. A lot of these endings are really fun and feature additional crossover appeal with stuff like Chun Li arresting The Kingpin, Dante confronting Ghost Rider, and Tron Bonne enlisting the Sentinel to intimidate Mega Man. Gotta love that. Here's a rather lazy list of ingame comic references.

www.ugo.com/games/the-best-references-in-marvel-vs-capcom-3

Most of those are just alternate costumes and crap in the background. They should have more of the references from the dialogue and stuff like that, but it does show how obscure they were willing to get. Lastly, in case you aren't pumped enough here is the full opening to the game. Enjoy.

[The Curmudgeon]

I've actually purposefully not watched that clip and not clicked on that link because, you've sold it to me, I now want it myself. No funds right now, but my birthday's about 5 weeks away. Time to start dropping some hints.

By the way, it was the unlockable content, differnet endings and cross-overs that finally sold it to me.

[trashcanman]

There's a lot of funny random comments like Iron Man dissing Bionic Commando's tech and stuff that just keep popping up as you experiment with different combinations of characters. I went up against Galactus with the Avengers' Big Three line-up and he said something like "Earth's mightiest heroes mean nothing to one who controls the universe". Or when I used an all X-Men team, Wolverine said something like "Get ready, X-men" pre-fight.

Most of the characters you're pissed didn't make the line-up show up in the endings in some form, which is cool. Man, I love the art in this too. The only thing I hate is the Mission Mode. They seriously expect you to do combos so long they can't fit the instructions on the screen. You have to read the attacks as they scroll down the screen. If you've ever comboed in a fighting game, you know how fucking hard that is. It feels more like practicing for a damn piano recital once you get past the first few "missions". Fuck that shit. Not fun. I found you can actually accept or issue online challenges in-game (and they are constant) so I sidestepped the no Spectator Mode problem. I'm about 50/50 in online play against people who clearly suck. Goddamn those corner traps! Comboing online is pretty hard since the timing changes based on connection speed so I can't fully punish the win-at-all-costs evildoers who can't use anybody except for Dante and his overpowered nonstop one-button combo attacks. I won't use him on basic principle. The best thing I can say about this game so far is that I literally cannot decide who to use. Most fighters I always end up with a few clear favorites pretty quick, but I seriously enjoy every character in the game except for Crimson Viper. Hated her ass in SF4, and I'm still miffed she made it into MvC3 over so many classic Capcom characters like Megaman, Strider, or any of the original World Warriors. But yeah, I'm having a ball with this.