Hi gamers, it's been a while since I've had anything of substance to write here, I've continued to make progress learning super street fighter IV and soul calibur IV which are actually two of the first games I got for my playstation 3. Somewhat to my own surprise I am not spending as much time with tekken 6 as I thought I would, I am sure that this will not be a permanent thing, I just only have so much spare time to spend on gaming. Very recently however, I have picked up Capcom's latest title, Marvel VS Capcom 3 which was released earlier this week and this is my main reason for doing a blog post here.
This game is a bit different from the ones I have tried so far. True it is a fighting game as are pretty much all my other titles but in this one you pick a team of three characters from a pretty impressive list that I will include later. These characters are from Marvel Comics and from various Capcom game titles. Who you pick is entirely up to you and is of course not set in stone, you can change teams at any time, my current team consists of Ryu from the Super Streetfighter series, the Hulk obviously from Marvel and some guy named Zero, not sure where he is from. Once you pick your team you can either play against the AI in arcade mode or you can go into the training mode to figure out what moves do what, something I highly recommend, or you can go online and fight other players which I am not near good enough for yet, I've had the game less than a week. Once you pick what mode you want you have to pick your operation mode either normal or simple. Basically what this does is set how you want your four main buttons to act. I am not going to go into a huge description of what button does what, not in this post at least, there are many places where you can find that out. Essentially, if you choose simple operation, then all you have to do to perform the special moves is hit one of your four main buttons rather than having to do something like a quarter circle forward or backward and hit one or two buttons simultaneously. Simple mode is obviously much easier to start out with and I am still using it sometimes but I can see how it will really limit what moves and combos you are able to do and it makes you much less flexible.
So, how do you go about playing? Once the match starts you come out as your first character that you picked, I choose Ryu because I'm the most familiar with his moves from Super Streetfighter IV. It is worth mentioning that when I say his moves I mean what happens when you perform an action, not the way you do it, the two games are quite different in that way. Because this game involves two teams of three, it is necessary to utilize some strategy when you are playing especially as you advance through the levels and they get harder. You have to pick which player you want to use at what time and how. For instance you can have Ryu standing off at a distance throwing fireballs at the opposing team while Hulk dashes in to do damage at close quarters. There are a couple ways to do this, I have only figured out one of them so far. This involves pressing either R1 or L1 and holding it for a short time this will cause your point of view to switch to one of your other players at which point you carry on the fight. It is easy to tell which character you switch to because they speak when you press the corresponding L1 or R1 button. Should you wish to go back to your first character just press the same button you used to switch to your second or third team member. As I said earlier there are other ways to switch characters that may be more effective than this one but this is the way I have figured out so far.
Now on to some general thoughts and impressions. First this is a very fast paced and potentially confusing game for the blind or V.I. Player. You have a total of six characters to deal with at a time, all of them different with different abilities. I know I was totally overwhelmed and basically said “what the hell is going on!” when I first listened to previews of this title a month or so back. I would probably not recommend this to someone as their first mainstream title unless maybe they have enough sight to help them figure it out, it would be very easy to get discouraged and give up. Having said that, I have to say that Capcom has done a very good job for us in terms of dealing with character selection. Each time you pick a character his name is announced, something we have seen in some but unfortunately not all of their other titles. If you go into the training stage that is announced as well. Best of all once you are in the training stage many though not all of the special moves and combos are announced if you do them right which will help you figure them out. Whether you are in training mode or actually playing, as with many Capcom titles including Super Streetfighter IV, audio cues are abundant and very useful, walking, dashing and jumping are distinguishable by sound as are the different attacks and special moves. While none of this is of course designed specifically with us in mind, we can and should definitely take advantage of it. Both English and Japanese audio tracks are available and I've got to say the English voice acting is pretty good in this title.
So, when all's said and done should you go out and spend your hard earned cash on Marvel VS Capcom 3? If you are at least a decent player of fighting games I'd say definitely. As I said earlier this title is very fast paced because you have six players at a time things are happening pretty much from the instant the match starts. If you are new to fighting games or mainstream gaming in general this is probably not the best title to start out with. Also, if you are looking for a game with a big plot and story mode this is not the game for you. The play is pretty simple, you have an arcade mode and another mode and an online mode where you fight other human players and that's about it. There are rumors that Capcom may release more advanced modes later as downloadable content but this is not confirmed at this point. So long as this isn't an issue for you, it isn't for me, then I would overall highly recommend this title and I consider my money well spent. My only difficulty is that I have only a rudimentary knowledge of the Marvel Comics characters never having been able to read the comics, this makes playing the game somewhat difficult because I don't really know who the characters are or what they can do but this is in no way the fault of the game.
Lastly, here is an example of the menus and character grid that you have when the game first starts. This example is not complete because several characters are locked when you first get the game, they are unlocked as you get better. Thanks to my gaming guru Clemant for providing this character grid and menu list. Note that this is the Xbox version, everything is apparently the same except for something in the sound menu, I will post the PS3 version of this when I have it.
offline mode:
arcade
operation mode:
normal
simple
characters (left to right)
row 1: wesker, chris, doctor doom, dormammu
row 2: tron, zero, super-skrull, m.o.d.o.k.
row 3: c viper, chun li, ryu, captain America, thor, iron man
row 4: trish, dante, random, random, spiderman, storm
row 5: amaterasu, spencer, viewtiful joe, wolverine, deadpool, magneto
row 6: morrigan, Felicia, x-23, phoenix
row 7: arthur, haggar, hulk, she-hulk
versus
training
mission
xbox live
gallery:
movies
view the movies used in-game. As u play, more movies will be available to watch character bios read up on characters once u have cleared the game with them character endings view the endings of every character u have cleared the game with model viewer view the 3D models of every character u have cleared the game with artwork view illustrations used in the game. More will be available as u play sound listen to tracks used in the game as well as character voices
options
controller
(lists all controls for player 1 and an empty list for player 2) operation mode control select control type default
hud position
sound
bgm style
se style
battle commentary
bgm volume
se volume
voice volume
default
character voice
(each character is listed and u can choose English or Japanese voice)
system
notifications
default
I hope you've found this useful and/or entertaining, if you have any questions or comments feel free to ask.
Game on!
Tom
