More detailed thoughts on my time with MvC3.

by mooseymcman

So, as you may or may not know, I acquired a copy of MvC3 Friday last week. And I spent a large chunk of the weekend playing it. Here's my thoughts (PS3 version, just so you know): Presentation Damn, this is a nice looking game. Capcom nailed the comic-book look of the game just about perfectly. Even better is that even at its craziest, the framerate never, EVER drops. Well, at least not when p...

So, as you may or may not know, I acquired a copy of MvC3 Friday last week. And I spent a large chunk of the weekend playing it. Here's my thoughts (PS3 version, just so you know):

Presentation

Damn, this is a nice looking game. Capcom nailed the comic-book look of the game just about perfectly. Even better is that even at its craziest, the framerate never, EVER drops. Well, at least not when playing offline, but that's beside the point. It's a game that really needs to be seen (preferably on a large, HD television) to be believed. The menus are pretty slick looking too (what with still frames of various characters mid-combat), but they can be a little clumsy to navigate at times. The load times are also really fast, which is nice.

And I was quite impressed with the instruction book. It was fairly thick (probably 40-ish pages, and only one language), and was in full color. It even has abridged move lists for the non-secret characters in the game.

Gameplay

Never having played an MvC game before, I wasn't exactly sure what to expect in terms of how to play it, but the game is really easy to pick up, even with the normal control scheme (speaking of which, don't play on Simple mode unless you're absolutely terrible at fighting games). Yeah, I was mashing a lot at first, but it's pretty easy to figure out how characters play, and what stick movements need to be done to pull off hypers.

Overall, the gameplay is what really makes this game shine, and keeps me coming back for more despite its shortcomings. It's easy to pick up, yet very deep, and always fun. And always crazy.

Game Modes

This is where the game falls short. While I didn't dabble in the online much (at least not beyond getting the Trophies for pitting specific characters against each other (and if you're reading this, thank you to the guy who helped me (not sure if that PSN name is tied to someone here on GB, and if so who it is (sorry!)))), I have played the offline modes pretty extensively. Also, my time online was pretty laggy, though that probably has more to do with my internet than anything else (it was snowing out, and it tends to run slower when it's cold out (I blame Comcast and old/crappy cable lines)).

Versus mode: Your typical 2 player local multiplayer mode. It has options for time limits and handicaps (I always set time to infinite), but not much beyond that. But this is the ideal way to play against people, because it's lag-free, and the framerate is as solid as ever. Plus, I always find playing with people in the same room to be INFINITELY more fun than playing with people online, even if those people are my slightly-annoying crazy cousins. But if you're going to be playing this game, this is the mode I recommend spending time with.

Arcade mode: This mode was a little disappointing to me. You pick your crew, fight a few fights, and then go up against Galactus and a couple of his heralds. The final fight (pun intended, but only if you're playing as Haggar) is kinda clunky, because the game wasn't really built with fighting something as big as Galactus in mind, and I ran into some troubles fighting two heralds at once, because there doesn't seem to be any way to pick which direction you're facing when you have one on each side.

Then, after beating Galactus (which is hard, I can barely do it on normal), you get two static images (which aren't even full screen) along with some text in the form of dialog from one or more characters. That's it. No animations, and no voice acting. Which is a real shame, because the voice acting is really good overall (with Nolan North stealing the show as Deadpool), and even a little bit of voice acting would make the endings tremendously better. After the credits roll, you unlock some more stuff like character bios and stuff, but again, it's all kinda underwhelming.

However, it doesn't stop the mode from being fun though, at least if you're like me and not good enough to destroy the AI. And while the endings aren't that great, I have a strange urge to go and get them all...

Training and Mission modes: I'm lumping these two because they both revolve around raising one's skill in the game. Training mode is what you expect from a fighting game, and is notable only in that you can do two player in it (which may be standard for all I know), and that it lets you simulate lag. But the trouble with the lag simulator is that the lag is too consistent, whereas in my experience with real lag, it's constantly changing in the level of laginess. Still a neat feature though, if only because it's funny.

Mission mode is different though (and poorly named). Here, the game gives you some moves to do, and you complete the "mission" by doing them. The big problem here is that with the game not paused, it only tells you the names of the moves, not how to actually do them, so I often found myself pausing the game, and going to a menu (and the game automatically brings the menu selector thingy to the correct menu, as if the developers knew this was a problem) to find out how the moves are done. But the bigger problem (for me) was that I'm not actually fast and accurate enough to do most of the moves, so I wind up with only two or three "missions" done for most characters. I was able to get to five or six on a couple of them (Magneto comes to mind), but there are 10 (I think) per character, so I'm not that great. But if you're better than me, then you may blow through these, so whatever.

And that's about it in terms of gameplay modes. There's not a lot here beyond the core combat. But, if that's all you want out of a game, then this is the game to get, because this is the fun I've had with a fighting game in years. Of course, a lot of my enjoyment is coming from the fact that I love having a fun fighting game filled with Marvel characters (and to a lesser extent, the Capcom ones), so the roster is going to have a fairly big impact on what you think of the game. If you can't stand Marvel comics (though I can't think of any logical reason as to why), then you might not get as much out of hearing Deadpool say "Welcome to die" to Magneto. But if you understand why that is awesome, then you're going to love the characters in this game.

So, my final word is that if you like fighting games, check this game out. But, if you like fighting games, Marvel comics, and things that are CONSTANTLY CRAZY, then you need to play this game.

Also, Thor says, "By Odin's beard!" during one of his hyper moves.