Leading into the release, I couldn't help but compare the changes to the core MvC battle component to the BlazBlue (BB for short) franchise. Like with BB, MvC3's control scheme consists of a light, medium, and hard/strong attack buttons, followed by special attack button. In BB, the special button activates each characters unique abilities or powers. Some characters steal life or freeze opponents, and others fly around the map with ease or have a number of powerful counter attacks. MvC3's special button is at it's most basic function, a launch attack on the ground and smash back to the ground while in the air. Beyond that, it allows you to tag a partner (or two) in midair to continue a flashy air combo, it can also activate some characters unique abilities such as Dr. Doom's flight or Felicia's awesome dodge that sends her into the foreground while moving close to 3/4 of the screen towards the opponent. Aside from attack and button layout, they added a simple mode for casual players that aren't familiar with fighting games, but also want to enjoy the game and player vs. player battles without the complexity. BB did the same thing, last year, and they pretty much work the same way. I find that the simple mode turns the game into nothing more than a shadow of what it was. It splits the attacks into a basic attack button that when pressed rapidly, performs the basic light-medium-hard combo, a special move button that gives you two special moves on the ground, and if they have it, two in the air. But which moves will get selected? Exactly, you need to have prior knowledge of what attack will come out of what character before going in, and this brings problems for characters such as Dante, who when using the normal mode, has a staggering amount of moves at his disposal. Also, those couple of special moves you have at your disposal have a preselected intensity or direction, so if you wish to change up your game at all, the simple mode renders that part of the character useless. This also adds a hyper combo button, but you only get one hyper combo even if your character has multiple, unless they have an air hyper available as well. Lastly, the special attack button works just about the same as it normally does with it's launch and smash properties, except trying to punch in a command like using flight with some characters results in nothing. Basically, Simple mode might (for some players) be a good place to start if you aren't familiar with fighting games and have issues doing a quarter-circle forward, but it's inclusion doesn't help bring the casual players into a hardcore world, in fact it cripples them. Which as far as I'm concerned, almost tells an important story in MvC3.
There is no tutorial. Those of us that have fighting game experience and enjoy tapping the hours away in training to discover new uses to all of the equipment we've been given is one thing, but to the average John Doe on the street who uses their PS3 or 360 for Rock band and the like generally requires something closer to instant gratification (awesome stuff instantly) or an easier way to learn. I didn't have a problem reading the manual for the interesting tricks that add depth to the fighting system and then trying it out on the fly or in training, but with a game like this that is so involved could really use a fully built in tutorial. There are three main ways to learn, you can see it (visual), you can hear it (auditory), and you can do it (kinaesthetic). This game only barely encourages learning through experience and mistakes, which works well for some, but certainly not for all considering the game already assumes you've spent tons of time with previous fighting games or this one in particular. This leads me to the closest thing to a tutorial they have besides reading the manual and tinkering around with training, the mission mode. There are no missions to be found here besides a couple of moves, and then a number of combos that range from simple to ridiculous. The worst thing here is the serious ramp in difficulty with most characters, and the absence of a way to preview the combos. Considering the online community has been trading combos and tips online for years now, this is nothing new to the hardcore crowd. This is again crippling to the casual crowd, aside from the absence of previews and the sometimes hard to follow scrolling commands on the left side of the screen, mission mode doesn't support the simple control scheme. This could have been a great way for those players that use the simple mode that want to jump up to the normal control scheme to practice all of those complex directional sequences alone and within combos, but the large ramp in difficulty and lack of a visual aid, casual players have little chance of getting past a few missions without frustration. Capcom tried adding the simple mode with the idea of hopefully drawing in more of the casual gamer, but without dedicating almost as much time as they spent crafting the game for the hardcore followers, all I see is a lackluster attempt to expand their demographic. While I'm not a casual gamer, I have some trouble tapping some of the higher level combos in the mission mode because of a lack of understanding the physics, timing, and general unfamiliarity with the game as of now. Regardless, I still feel cheated that this portion of the game wasn't fully fleshed out.
Speaking of not fully fleshed out, aside from the arcade mode, training/missions and the basic components of fighting online, the rest of the game feels pretty barren. The first thing that comes up when in defense is that it's a fighting game, all it needs is an awesome game play engine and a platform to do battle on. I agree and also disagree with that statement. Now, the game play is fast, deep, and incredibly satisfying, but the nothing about the game feels personal. You don't ever feel attached to the characters or really feel the struggle. The story is quite good actually, I like the way this particular adventure is structured, but besides the good guys wanting to save their dimension and the bad guys wanting to enslave or destroy theirs, that's pretty much where the presentation of it ends outside of the fantastic trailers released over the past few months. It all goes right back to the fighting, aside from a witty line at the beginning of a match between a number of characters in the game, that's as far as the relationships between characters is explored. The thing is, fighting games have always been about telling their own stories in player vs. player combat (Justin Wong's impressive EVO MvC2 victory a few years ago with Cyclops against an entire other team, youtube that if you don't know what I'm talking about please, you'll thank me), of how the underdog in a match or tournament somehow fought his way into the finals against the multi-time champion and scored an upset, or didn't but earned a reputation, so this is easily overlooked. I personally don't have a problem with the comic book-like stills that tell the aftermath of the final battle with Galactus, though I would have really enjoyed seeing more like the gorgeous CGI trailers/intro, but what can you do.
There neither a campaign nor survival mode. The lack of a campaign/story mode can again be forgiven because of the throwback-style of fighting games that are played not for their lore, but for the competition of other actual people. A survival mode is always fun to jump into and see how long you can last against an endless wave of enemies, but it was left out for unknown reasons. But this and the disappointing mission mode aren't the only shortcomings, the online mode has received similar treatment. There is no way to create lobbies with custom rules. You can't set restrictions besides through verbal communication, and you can't set a handicap, damage, time limit or anything else. On top of this, there is no spectator mode when you're waiting to battle. We're reduced to watching life bars bounce around while a couple of player-cards of the two current combatants smack against each other. And what if you had a particularly awesome win you'd like to save, upload or share with others to gloat about your victory? There are no replay functions either, so that match is lost unless you have some type of video capture device hooked up to a computer somewhere. It's also lacking the tournament mode that was featured with it's older sibling, Super Street Fighter IV. As a current gen fighter, these shortcomings are extremely disappointing considering many games that were released in the past launched with the features mentioned previously. My only hope is that they can somehow patch a bunch of stuff like spectator mode, replay and custom lobby support sometime soon, though I have a feeling a lot of this is going to be saved for the "Super" version of the game Capcom loves releasing a year or so after the product has been released, which leaves a very stale taste in my mouth.
Unlockable content is kept relatively simple as well. There are 4 characters to unlock, that requires nothing more than an hour or two involved with game play to get all 4, titles and icons to customize your online playercard, and the usual host of sound effects and galleries to fill. The titles are unlocked by fulfilling certain requirements with each of the characters such as selecting a character 30 times, finishing the arcade mode, repeating it on the very hard mode, finishing 5 and all missions with characters. The titles are unlocked by doing the same thing with each of the characters, do don't expect any variety while unlock the titles besides the pleasure of using a different character. The sound effects, voices and background music are typical game unlocks, though it is nice to be able to switch which characters you want to have Japanese or English voices. The gallery has a few promotional images, movies unlocked so far, interesting character bios that details their back-story and power levels within the game, as well as character themes and a model viewer. Aside from the character bios, most of it is pretty useless unless you get attached to some of the themes or grunts of the characters, as we've seen a lot of the images online already. If you haven't checked it out yet then it's worth taking a look, but I'd rather be playing the game than looking at images I've seen or listening to sounds I could be hearing while playing.
However, if you know what you're getting into, and that's a great core fighting game with a untold amount of depth and replay value (if you really dig the combat anyhow) with very few bells and whistles. The visuals are detailed and beautiful, though the action is so fast you can't see how amazing these animations are (until you knock a character out, Trish's Air Special, I'm looking at you...awesome, replay feature with slo-mo please) most of the time, but believe me as they are there. The sound is also stellar, the characters comment frequently during combat which makes for a much louder game than before, but coming from BlazBlue I love and welcome all of the mouthiness in it's glory. The net code has also been quite good from my experience, though I've only played a few friends in a private lobby from around this area and Sean or resides a few states away. A bit of lag did hit us, but nothing a host switch and new lobby couldn't fix.
Regardless of the ranting above, I really do enjoy the game but I am disappointed at what it should not be lacking. It's a great experience if you have an open mind and some time with fighting games in the past, especially with a fight stick of some sort (I'm running the Tekken 6 Limited Edition fight stick that came with that respective bundle, I love it so far) which really enhances the old-school arcade presence and precision. While some characters are more popular than others, character balance appears well thought out, and is much less an issue now than it was in Marvel vs Capcom 2, though Sentinel is still a very large jerk. We'll see in how it plays out in the coming months.
In case you forgot, Sean's official review can be found right here. I agree with pretty much everything he posted, this is just meant to complement his post with a few of my concerns. Thanks for reading, good gaming!
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