MvC3 offers tons to chew on in terms of strategic considerations. A lot of thought will go into how you’ll plot out your team of three characters, what techniques you focus on. (You’ll also get Achievements and trophies for doing things like winning with a team of Captain America, Thor and Iron Man.) But, all these decisions won’t all go down easy. The game’s a fair sight more inviting than other top-tier fighting releases and sometimes moves too fast. The fact that moves are accessible to new players is great but it all unfolds so quickly that a neophyte may not have a chance to absorb what they did to make a shiny thing happen. There’s also a Simple Mode to get those more powerful attacks out without any quarter-circle turns but it expedites combat so much that it feels like cheating. Longtime players will no doubt feel like their years of study have been sold short in the hopes of commercial success.
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Furthermore, certain characters feel way underpowered. Phoenix wields great distance attacks but always seemed to suffer a lot of damage very quickly. And the opposite is true, too, for other characters. For a guy who was always a second-tier villain, Super-Skrull sure does smack fools around pretty easily. Again, players who dedicate themselves practicing with certain characters will probably find ways to win with them. But the reality is that not everyone will do so and that means that lots of folks will be glomming onto the overpowered bruisers. Anyone hopping online for competitive play should be prepared to see lots of Dantes, Zeros and, yes, Deadpools.
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Still, the spectacle of it all will hypnotize you. The Capcom devs promised a game that looked like a moving comic-book and they delivered. Graphically, the figures in the game look slathered in thick outlines of india ink with animations that feel pitch-perfect. She-Hulk, for example, moves with the confidence of a sassy female wrestler, just like you’d imagine her to. The catchphrases are sometimes contextual, too, so when Thor faces up against sun goddess Amaterasu from Okami, he’ll say something like “‘Tis fitting that two gods should meet on the field of battle.” These little touches add much to the proceedings and the visual presentation tends to be well-done, too. The backgrounds feel lively but not distracting and the forced-perspective cutaways during the Super Moves really show off the power of the MT Framework engine. Also, the online experience for the Xbox Live matches I played were smooth and lag-free. We’ll see if this holds up when the game actually goes live.
Playing MvC3 feels like watching a fireworks show. It’s bright and loud and you generally don’t know what shape the explosions are going to take. You’ll find yourself ooh-ing and ah-ing even as the idea that it’s not terribly deep orbits in the back of your brain. However, it doesn’t need to be. It more than satisfies the requirement of any good fighting game, which is that it’ll keep you and your crew of sparring partners coming back for more. And for those who’ve wanted to know who’d win in a Captain America vs. Chris Redfield showdown, the answer is you, True Believer.
Official Techland Score: 8.9 out of 10