My Love/Hate Relationship With Capcom

Capcom is by and far one of the most recognizable Japanese developers/publishers in the gaming industry. They're a fairly prestigious company who have created some of the most recognizable characters in the industry; ranging from the likes of Mega Man to popular current characters like Phoenix Wright. Over the years I've become quite fond of the company and their games, some of which I still follow today. If it isn't already clear from prior posts, I'm a very big fan of the Resident Evil series and the genre of survival horror that it created back in the days of the original Playstation. Recent dealings with Capcom however have left me a little jaded in regards to my feelings on the company as a whole.

Being a long time gamer and knowing the trends of Capcom's business dealings, I've come to expect certain things from them. In a sense I think we all have. Capcom is very much known for creating top notch titles, and then continuously improving upon them. My problem with these improvements? The way they have evolved into what amount to cash-grabs rather than true improvements. Last year Capcom released Marvel vs Capcom 3 to great fanfare. I reviewed the game here on the blog and to be honest I absolutely loved it. I had a certain level of expectations based on my nostalgia for Marvel vs Capcom 2 and it was beaten out with a tightly produced game. And well I have much respect to Capcom for that. I even loved that for a brief time after the release of the game they supported it with downloadable content in the form of two new characters, a costume pack, and the shadow player packs with the A.I tendencies of producers and top players.

Return to Raccoon City

Many years ago Capcom dabbled with the idea of a multi-player Resident Evil game. And we're not just talking two player co-op but a full fledged online multi-player experience. This is before online gaming had taken off on the console market and exploded like it has over the last couple years. The result was the Resident Evil: Outbreak series.on the Playstation 2. Needless to say the technology back then couldn't handle the task Capcom had set before themselves. While the main series had moved onto Resident Evil: Code Veronica and was nearing Resident Evil 4, Outbreak returned gamers to the initial spread of the T-Virus in Raccoon City. Playing as one of several survivors of the zombie outbreak, you were tasked with partnering with three other players to complete several scenarios in which our survivors escaped the city before it became a smoking crater to contain the T-Virus.

While the game's premise was great, the execution left a little to be desired. As I look at some of the titles that people are playing today though it could be that Outbreak was just a little ahead of its time. The Playstation 2 was never really intended to be an online gaming console and so connections were slow and very unstable. It was very hard to find a game where people's connections didn't drop 10 minutes into a scenario. This unfortunate fact made it hard to ever complete a scenario with players online. This fact was only compounded by Capcom's design choice to not allow voice chat but instead opting for pre-set voice commands mapped to buttons on the controller such as calling out another character's name or yelling "Help!". Fair enough to say it was very basic but it sure did ramp up the suspense when playing. Especially when you saw that when starting a game more often than not you were separated from the rest group. Much like the other games, Capcom saw fit to minimize the amount of guns and ammo you could find. Luckily they also included rudimentary weapons such as lead pipes and broom handles that characters could use to fend off the onslaught of the undead. So very much of this game was spent walking around alone, searching for your teammates with a broom handle that could break at any minute. Tense? Yes. Fun? Sometimes. Again it was ahead of its time and just not something that could do the concept justice given the hardware.

Fast forward to 2011 and it seems Capcom might be going back to that well with a new game called Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City. As part of their new initiative of partnering with western developers, Capcom has partnered with Slant Six Games; who previously worked on the Socom series for the Playstation. Together, they plan to revisit the Raccoon City incident and bring a whole new style of game-play to the Resident Evil series. Much like Socom, the game will be a squad-based third person shooter in which you play as Umbrella operatives during the Raccoon City outbreak which took place during Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3: Nemesis. Along (with a CPU team) or in co-op, you and your team will clash with the legions of the undead, cross paths with memorable Resident Evil characters, and battle United States agents hell bent on finding evidence of Umbrella's involvement in the outbreak. Slant Six and Capcom plan to deliver this title in the Fall/Winter of 2011 so expect more news and coverage to follow on this title in the coming months. Also check out the press release from Capcom after the break. In the meantime I'm going to get my zombie survival kit ready. 

Two Worlds, One Celestial

The fighting game genre has seen a resurgence in the last couple of years. While the genre had not been very prominent for a while, games like Guilty Gear, BlazBlue, and King of Fighters continued to blaze trails. And after many years Capcom finally stepped back into the ring with the official follow up to Street Fighter 3. Boasting a brand new graphical interface built upon the MT Framework(the next generation game engine that powers Residentl Evil 5, Lost Planet, and Dead Rising), Capcom introduced a new generation of gamers to Ryu, Ken, and the rest of the Street Fighter gang. Meanwhile they revamped the wildly successful, decade old Marvel vs Capcom 2 for an HD release on the Playstation Network and X-Box Live Arcade. Both items sold very well and reinvigorated the fighting genre. Capcom was quick to build upon this resurgence with the follow up, Super Street Fighter 4, bringing in new characters and reintroducing old characters into their brand new engine. Then in April of 2010, after a decade long wait, Capcom finally announced the next iteration in their VS series; and thus Marvel vs Capcom 3 was born.

This wouldn't just be a rehash of the old game though. This was a brand new game, also built on Capcom's MT Framework engine. While familiar faces returned, Capcom and Marvel promised to bring new characters to the series as well as promising to balance them. Certain programming choices in Marvel vs Capcom 2 left some characters overpowered and dominant, leading players to exploit these attributes in games and giving themselves a clear advantage over the competition. Thankfully Capcom made good on this claim. While some characters are definitely more powerful than others, it doesn't throw off the balance of the matches. And lets not forget that style of play can also be a big part of how fights unfold. I'm getting ahead of myself here though. Lets break this game down to its basic core for this review.

The Lost Art of Survival Horror

Just like in books and films, atmosphere can play a big part in your gaming experience. Setting and ambiance play a big part in immersing a person into the game that they're playing. The games that take full advantage of this fact and play it to their advantage would be the sub-genre of Survival Horror. Just as it sounds, the basis for the survival horror genre is just that, to survive given the bleak circumstances that surround you. Take the earlier Resident Evil games as an example. More often than not, the game have you very limited resources and forced you to strategically navigate through it. Things tend to get a lot more tense for a player when they can't shoot their way through a scenario.

Steam! And other things!

So at the suggestion of fellow contributor, Ramble On Dru, I finally signed up for Steam. For those of you unaware, Steam is basically a gaming portal. It's a nifty little client that you download to your laptop/PC/Mac that lets you access thousands of games to download for free, demo, or buy. I'm not the biggest PC gamer and usually my range ends at playing The Sims but after enough prodding I finally decided to give this thing a shot. If you're on Steam too, look me up and add me. The name of course is Lucid_Delusion. So far I only have Alien Swarm and have yet to give a try but I've heard good things. When the budget allows it, I'll explore some of the other titles that Steam offers.

Moving right along here, I just wanted to touch on some things that have been going on that I haven't been really up to date on. Again, I'm really trying to roll with the updates here. IGN has officially launched their own Twitter/Facebook hybrid program called My IGN. Yes, yours truly has signed up as I often do with these sorts of things. You can find me here, Lucid Delusion as well as link to my Twitter account at the top of the blog page as always. Lots of cross pollination going on between services but I figure it can help expand the amount of people the blog reaches. 

In other news, Comic Con has come and gone and this year was quite the spectacle. Really made me wish I was a resident of the West Coast so I could have gone and covered it for the blog. Of course I did my best to catch up on news as it was released. Lots of goodies for us comic fans in the forms of the Avengers panel and Green Lantern news. Needless to say, gaming had a hard felt presence at this year's show. In this blogger's opinion though, nothing could outshine what Capcom managed to introduce this year. Not only do they have their hands full with Marvel vs Capcom 3 but they also introduced a new crossover to the gaming world in Street Fighter X Tekken. This title of course is being handled by the devs at Capcom, meanwhile a similar yet opposite title, Tekken X Street Fighter is being developed by Namco. So if you've ever wondered what it would be like to pit Kazuya and Ryu in a battle against one another, now you'll know. The best part is you'll be able to play it with either Street Fighter's gamplay mechanics or Tekken's gameplay mechanics. Win/win for the fans.

Now I mentioned Marvel vs Capcom 3 and they didn't leave us hanging there. Prior to Comic Con, like right before, we got to see four more characters unveiled in the form of Devil May Cry's Trish, Marvel's Doctor Doom, Super Skrull, and Darkstalker's Felicia. Great additions to an already impressive roster which boasts the likes of Dante, Chris Redfield, Iron Man, Deadpool, and more. At Comic-Con we got treated to two more reveals in the form of the god of thunder, Thor and Capcom's Amaterasu from Okami. I'm thrilled at the inclusion of Thor, but I'm not too versed on the Okami character. Should provide some interesting gameplay stylings. Also an interview with one of the designers shot down a few characters fans have been hoping for in She-Hulk, Daredevil, and the Fantastic Four. 

Okay, heavy handed with Marvel stuff, I know. I'm a geek and I'll admit I favor Marvel a little more than DC but I'll give DC their due. I'm interested in Green Lantern. I think there's potential for a great movie to come out of the story of Hal Jordan. News in recent months has also alluded to the idea of other characters making the transition to film should Green Lantern do well. I'll be honest, I would love to see a film about the Flash or even Green Arrow. They're two of my favorites from DC. I'm getting a bit off base here though as you're probably wondering what this has to do with gaming. Well I was getting to that. You see Sony Online Entertainment has been working on an online MMO for the PC and PS3 for years that takes place in the DC universe, aptly titled DC Universe Online. At Comic-Con they released a story trailer for the game and I have to say it's one of the best interpretations of DC's characters I've seen since Justice League: Unlimited was cancelled. Sadly it is only a trailer, but it gives some promise to the MMO which will be entering its beta phase very soon. So as I conclude this post, I give you the trailer for DC Universe Online.