More Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 Impressions

Hey folks, sorry for not putting this up last night. This past weekend has kicked my ass and I was just getting done being sick from the week before and I think it's coming back. It's a good bet that I'll have to visit the doctor soon, really not feeling too good. I went through my videos I took at Comic Con and they all came out like garbage. While I had a lot of fun it was really crowded so the videos came out really jumpy. I had a good shot at Donkey Kong Returns but one of the people said "Umm...No direct screen shots please!!" so I got about three seconds of footage of it. Meanwhile on the smaller screens some guys had their cameras out getting full footage of the game.

So I thought I'd do a post with my impressions on Marvel Vs. Capcom 3. The video I'm including was the best I could get. I was going to take more videos while I was on line to play on the big screen but one of the Capcom reps was going around with the last of the posters they had so I made sure I got them. So because of that the video wasn't even zoomed in on the screen and was less then a minute long. Here's some of my impressions of the characters, controls and overall looks of the game.

Please keep in mind, they were using the Tokyo Game Show build of the game. X-23, Spider-Man, Tron Bonne and Albert Wesker were not playable.

The Capcom booth was one of the most popular at the whole convention. For the entire three days the booth had people five to seven rows deep of people watching the game or waiting on line to try it. Even people who didn't look like gamers had a kick out of seeing the game in action. I saw one guy who was walking past with his girlfriend stop when he saw Captain America and Thor on the screen. IGN had their own booth running the game as well and it was the same story of people lined up to play.

The game really does feel like Marvel mixed with TvC. During my three days I watched a lot of people pulling off moves and combos that are possible in TvC. Lots of pop up combos as Ryu with hurricane kicks into shinku-hadokens. For me it was hard to dash, I was having problems pulling it off. Certain characters like Captain America could do flips n' stuff while others kinda lurched forward. The game's graphics looked great. The characters have great animation and a lot of life to them. All of the background stages look great. From the streets of New York City to an secret Umbrella Lab they all look great and have a lot of stuff going on to watch.

This is the standard button layout for the game.

Weak Attack - Medium Attack - Strong Attack

Air Launcher - Partner 1 - Partner 2

You need to HOLD down on the partner assist button in order to tag. A lot of people had no idea how to do it, even the little print out they had didn't help much. On the few stations that have 360 Controllers (MUCH shorter lines) the face buttons are the three attacks and the Air Launcher and the top bumper buttons are for partners, just like playing on a Dreamcast controller. (With a much shitter D-Pad) Capcom has said they will have a MvC2 style button layout for the game along with the new Simple option to help ease new players into the game.

Here's my impressions of the characters I had a chance to play with.

Chun-Li-Very much like TvC. She's fast, hits hard and has a boat load of combos. Her kicks do a ton of damage and her second hyper pops up for more hits into the air.

Trish- Can't really say. Played against Super Skrull. Trish can do some great chip damage with her "Devil Shots" hyper. People on the main stage kept spamming them. Her scythe hyper is great because while it auto locks on, your free to run around to set traps or keep the hits coming

Dante-Same as Trish. Didn't get to use him due to the Super-Skrull player kicking my ass. He's got an assist where he comes out and strums his guitar and makes a column of energy. Much like Captain Commando's but slower and smaller, but very combo friendly since it doesn't knock back. Everybody went right for the guns, just like Deadpool. But if you do the other Hyper to power him up he gets REALLY dangerous.

Super-Skrull- Could be tops. Very strong. The damn stretchy hands are like a mix of Honda and Dhalsim. People were abusing the hell out of it, what's worse is you can do it after you knock somebody on the ground after an air combo and go right into a Hyper Combo

Captain America- My favorite character of this build. The Hyper Charging Star has short range but can go through a Shinku-Hadoken. (REALLY pissed the guy off I was playing) Plays very much like he did in past Marvel games.

Deadpool- Another fan favorite. Shit loads of crazy moves, but seems to get hurt fast. EVERYBODY went right for his rapid fire gun hyper combo, but his other one with his swords does a ton of damage. I really need to figure out how to use him. Like Dante he's got a lot of tools to fuck people up with.

Iron Man- Just like Cap, plays a lot like he did in the old games, smart bombs, repulser blasts and he can hover. The Proton Cannon does shit tons of damage but takes a while to generate, so he'll loose out in a beam war with Dante/Deadpool and Ryu. Only has the Proton Cannon and level 3 Hyper. No War Destroyer.

Hulk- Very slow, but if you liked him in the other games, you'll like him here. Does a lot of damage but if you miss with his hypers he's open season for a beat down.

Doctor Doom- Much like his MvC2 counterpart. Has the jump in the air laser gun attack, fingers hyper and also in the air. I like how his other hyper will rain down if you happen to miss it in a combo, so if you don't get hit you may surprise the other player. His "Doom Rocks" assist is still really helpful and can help you jump in to get some extra hits

Atamarsu- Very small and quick. Her slow hyper makes her able to run circles around people, most just cower back and block till it goes away. Her three elements attacks can hit through almost the whole screen and does some good damage. You can switch between three different weapons all with different strengths and weaknesses. Since I only used her once I didn't exactly know how to switch them and which one was good to use.

Morrigan- Her missiles come out REALLY slow. Doesn't look like you can combo good with it. I rarely saw it hit. The other one that goes along the ground is much better, but very short range. Saw somebody pull off her Level 3 and really fucked the other guy up.

Felicia- Watched a guy on stage pull off her other hyper combo where her friend comes out and bounces around the screen for a good while. While her friend is REALLY slow she's unblockable. The helper was able to knock Dante out of his ultra and the Felicia player was able to do the roll hyper and kill him off, but ended up loosing anyway.

Dormammu- The new Blackhart. Lots of traps and other things to zone players with. His second hyper is really cool. He shoots out a fire ball that much like Trish's scythe you can chase the player around while it does some chip damage or get them in a vortex.

Overall while some people seem to be writing this off as Tatsunoko Vs. Capcom with Marvel characters I still had a lot of fun with it. I'm glad I got to play the game while it was new and everybody was on an almost equal playing field but that's all going to change when the game drops this spring. I'm really looking forward to picking this game up and I hope that Capcom will consider making a version of the game for arcade operators here in the US to keep the players coming back.