In February 2011 Capcom released the game Marvel vs Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds, to much fanfare. A Sequel to the popular Marvel vs Capcom 2, which was released 11 years prior, was eagerly anticipated by the die hard fans of the series. When MvC3 (Marvel vs Capcom 3) became available, it was apparent that a lot of the things that the die hard fans loved were taken out, replaced by combos that weren’t infinite and a more laid back approach that would appeal to all gamers, instead of the die hard fans. Capcom, in listening to their die hard fan-base, put together a new form of MvC3, an ultimate version, as it were. Placing in new characters that the fan-base were very disappointed weren’t in the first installment. This is how we come to review Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 for the Xbox 360.
If you’ve played MvC3, then this game will be pretty much an upgrade with a few surprises that will knock you for a loop. If you haven’t played MvC3, let me start by telling you that this game, to me, is built for the competitive, fighting game community, more so than MvC3 was. In saying that, I mean that if you’re a casual gamer who just wants to check out the characters and mess around with friends, that’s fine, the fighting system in this game if very pick up and go. But once you start learning more and more about the fighting system and the little things about it, like X-Factor, like using assists, you begin to open yourself up to a very deep, involved, fighting system that’s ultimately quite difficult to master.
That being said, the game has a lot to offer to both the casual and hardcore fan-base. First let me talk about the minor menu options. The Gallery Mode is nice as it shows you pictures of the characters, the endings of each character, and artwork for the game. There’s also the sound option which will let you hear every sound contained in the game, which includes each character’s theme. Also, one of the new features of this game is found under sound in Options. There’s an option to turn on “Dynamic BGM,” which is a kind of remixed version of the game’s music, which is the same music from MvC3.
For those without internet connections/Xbox Live Gold, the Offline menu has a few modes that will keep you busy and help you hone your skills. Arcade Mode, which is the main game mode in the Offline portion of the menu, with the other modes being Versus, Training, and Mission. In Arcade mode you follow the same story from Marvel vs Capcom 3. If you don’t know the story, basically, Dr. Doom (Marvel) joins forces with Albert Wesker (Capcom’s Resident Evil villain) to take over both worlds. Somehow in their planning they’ve drawn the ire of Galactus, the character in Marvel Comics that devours worlds. You then chose your team of 3 from the available characters and go through a gauntlet of other teams to get to the finale, which is battling Galactus and his Heralds.
In playing Arcade mode, I found that from the difficulty of Very Easy up to Normal, is where a casual gamer, or perhaps a gamer familiar with fighting games, but not totally hardcore about them, could have a fun outing with this game, and stay in a decent comfort zone. From the difficulty of Normal to Very Hard is where you might find a hardcore fighting gamer using their skills, because the jump in AI skill is very noticeable, and if you’re not prepared to fight hard, or if you don’t have a complete knowledge of all the little things about the fighting system, you will not last long.
Versus Mode is your basic 1 on 1 mode where you can play locally against your friends or family members. Training is just what it says, you can learn the characters move sets, practice how to do them, and you can even set it so the CPU controls the dummy characters as a difficulty you pick. This is a good way to find out how good, or not good, you are. It’s also nice because there’s never an end if you’re getting beat by the CPU pretty bad. One of the cool features about Training Mode is that there’s an option to train under connection lagged conditions. What this means is you can set it up so the game will mimic a degree of lag like what you’d find online, and can train under those conditions. The bad thing about this feature is that, while it mimics the slow moving way that lag affects fights online, it doesn’t mimic the way your controls react under the lag. Lastly, there’s Mission Mode.
In Mission Mode, you choose a character and proceed to attempt to complete 10 missions exclusive to that character. These missions consist of simple things like doing a special attack, to doing a full blown multi hit combo. This mode is a good way to learn the characters in a visual way instead of just going into Training Mode and figuring out what works and doesn’t work, and how to work the moves into your play style.
Once you’ve decided you’ve had enough with the Offline Mode, you can take your skills Online. There are 2 play modes in Online; Ranked Match, Player Match and Lobby.. In Ranked Match you fight other players from around the country, or world, and try to move up the ranks to show how good you are compared to others. In Player Match you can still fight players from around the country, or world, but the only thing on the line will be bragging rights and peace of mind. If you just want to play with friends online, go into Lobby and create a Lobby for your friends to join. In this mode, you can take on friends, or random people, in 1 on 1 contests, with the winner staying and loser getting tossed to the back of the line, assuming there’s more than just you and another person in the lobby. Also, you can spectate during matches while in a lobby. Both Lobby Mode and spectating are new in this game, as MvC3 was lacking a both of these options, and they were sorely needed.
Playing online is a very competitive environment. The lag issues, as is the worry of more games that offer online, is based on whether your connection is good more than the servers for the game, as this game’s online is very much on par with Super Street Fighter 4, where lag was rarely an issue. Keep in mind however, that there is always a slight bit of lag when it comes to button input and little things like that. That being said, this is probably not the best place for casual players of the game to just “have fun,” seeing as the play style of this game lends itself to becoming very frustrating when you’re stuck in certain situations that you can’t get out of. This can be helped, slightly, by being able to search out people of the same skill/rank as yourself. This is good because UMvC3 is very much a game where if you play people that are below, or as knowledgeable of the game as yourself, you can have really exciting, fun matches amongst yourselves. However, when you play someone who is a lot worse, or a lot better, than you are, the matches can get very one sided.
This leads me to one of the main underlying things about this game. Gameplay between MvC3 and UMvC3, while staying the same control wise, were altered slightly in the new version. X-Factor timing has been altered because of this ability being so powerful in MvC3 that a lot of people would turn it on almost at the onset of the fight. Also, the fighting seems more fast pace than MvC3, if that’s even possible. Combos can last a lot longer in UmvC3, also. These combos can go so long in one shot that they can kill a full health character, which is called an infinite combo.
One thing that bugs me about UMvC3, and something that bugs me a lot about most VS games from Capcom, is the helplessness when stuck in a combo. In this game, if you’re fighting a skilled player and they catch you in a combo, it’ll be a while before you’re able to actually make a move. Usually that moment doesn’t come until after that combo has killed your character. It would’ve been nice to have some kind of mechanic in the defense like Tatsunoko vs Capcom had, where if you had enough power in your Super Meter you could break away from your opponent, and it would push them across practically the whole screen to give you a little breathing room. This mechanic combined with the fact that you gain Hyper Meter when you’re struck with a Hyper Combo, could have created a while new way to play this game.
Overall, Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 is a vast improvement over it’s predecessor. The expansion of the roster by 12 characters, and having all the roster unlocked at the beginning, was a treat to a lot of people, especially since there was a lot of demand for some of these characters. Galactus can be unlocked, but that’s really a mode unto itself. The gameplay tweaks made cater to the die hard fans while staying basic enough to still be a pick up and play game to any people with an interest in this game. Graphically, this game gives the comic book feel very well while having 3D rendered characters. Gameplay wise, it improves on what the previous game had, but with it’s improvements it gained a whole new amount of frustrating gameplay coming from the crazy combos, and the lack of much defense aside from blocking. If you’re a competitive gamer, who likes fighting games and possibly competes in fighting game tournaments, this is a must buy. If you’re a casual gamer who just likes to goof around and not take the game too seriously, I suggest renting this, or playing it at a friend’s house, because if you have any kind of competitive spirit, this game will more than likely frustrate you, a lot.
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