"I'm gonna take you for a ride, do dah di dah" is what greets you when you select your fighters, and its right this game is one seriously cool ride. Long ago I used to talk about a Marvel Megamix game, and now my dream has come true.
Marvel Vs Capcom 2 [MVSC2] is the sequel to Marvel Vs Capcom, I assume that you already knew that. However what's more is that it is part four in the 'Vs' series. Marvel Vs Capcom was distinctly average, it had only 15 characters and everything was just to extreme. Fortunately Capcom have learnt from their mistakes and have given us MVSC2.
MVSC2 plays very differently from its predecessor, those of you who played X-men Vs Street Fighter will be in familiar territory. MVSC2 combines tactical combo's with the crazy super powered moves that we all love.
MVSC2 plays differently also due to the new button layout. The medium attack buttons have disappeared meaning that the zig-zag combo kings and queens will have to adapt to the new layout. The medium attacks are still available by pressing the weak buttons real quick
Graphics in MVSC2 looks twice as good…why? Because it is running in twice the resolution - 640*480. Unfortunately the characters have not been re-drawn they have been stretched. This is not that apparent unless you are playing the game through a VGA box. The new characters like Cable, Marrow, and Tron all look amazing and their voice samples are how we would expect them to sound. But all this is trivial as the biggest part of MVSC2 is the 56 playable characters!
With 56 characters it is easy to understand why MVSC2 is now a tag team plus one, so 3 on 3 fighting is the order of the day. The annoying helpers from MVSC1 have been removed, instead the characters not battling can help you by pulling off either an air, ground or health assist - which one they pull off is dependant on you chosen assist type.
Having such a huge amount of characters does pose a problem. Some of the characters stand little chance against the others, Felicia and Dan spring to mind. This is a shame as all to soon you will end up avoiding playing a large bulk of the characters.
All the backgrounds are 3D and look amazing. The 2D characters look good against the backgrounds, MVSC2 is definitely a showcase Dreamcast title. As with all fighting games lastability lies in the hands of the game player, MVSC2 increases its lifespan by rewarding you with points with which you can by new characters and stages.
The final boss is the massive Abyss, from the Marvel universe. He appears in 3 forms, comparing him to the previous 'Vs' bosses he is quite easy to beat as long as you have a character who has a super projectile attack like Ryu or Cyclops. However it is not just Abyss you is easy to defeat, the whole game is easily beaten.
For the first time you will be playing this game on difficulty 8 for a challenge. The difficulty of the game also relies on the characters you pick, if you want a challenge pick Dhalsim, Dan, and Felicia!
When you have played the Arcade mode to death, there is the Score attack mode. This basically takes you through the arcade game but you are playing for all out points. To get points you need combos, my highest is 124 hit.
The game features the standard versus mode, and training mode. Basically anything that did not go in this game you don't want, believe me when I say that this game will amaze you, like Soul Calibur did the first time you saw it.
The music deserves a special mention as many of the background battle music features music and are in short small songs, and although you may initially cringe at the lyrics you will soon love them and be humming them around the house. Sound effects are crisp, they seem to have been redone and as all the Marvel characters speak English we can understand their comic references.
MVSC2 is definitely a fan game, whether you are Marvel or Capcom orientated. Playing Jill Valentine [from Resident Evil] is too cool, her new vocals really add to the excitement! "I'm a member of the S.T.A.R.S." is what she say's. Maybe it is just me, but touches like this put an over size smile on my face. Back on track this game is primarily all out FUN. There is no story to speak of, so there is no character specific endings. The character artwork has been drawn in sepia toned washed out water style effect. Along with the 3D backgrounds, and the quality of the character animation really makes this game something special.
Everyone should own this game, it houses all our comic favourites and gives us the most amazing organised chaos ever in a video game. There are those who won't like the over the top moves, but no one can deny its entertainment value.
In short buy this game.
Everything that was good about X-Men VS Street Fighter is back. It has 56 characters! 56! Surely that should be enough. The character portrait art is an exceptional washed out/sepia look.
There are no character endings which is a shame, but judging by the endings in Marvel VS Capcom 1 that may be a good thing.
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Marvel VS Capcom 2
