Marvelous, but overwhelming
Marvel VS Capcom fans have been waiting for this game for 10 years, and will be immediately familiar with all of its systems and feel right at home. But what about the newcomers such as myself?
The last time I touched a fighting game was a year (Maybe two?) back at original SFIV, and my god being used to Street Fighter pace did NOT help. If you are completely new to this series or don't know what the fighting system is like, you'll have to go into the Training mode and basically just get a feel for combo's by wailing on a dummy of choice - I feel a small tutorial of sorts could REALLY have improved the learning curve for completely new players.
But enough of the beginning, lets talk:
Singleplayer.
The singleplayer isn't anything to write home about. Even though you don't come to fighting games for story, I wish they at least tried. Basically Galactus wants to mess up earth, and none of these superpowered people and Capcommunists are going to let that happen. The only resolution you get at the end is a small little comic showing what your winning character does right after beating the crap out of Galactus. After you're done with that you can go into Mission Mode and learn how to do character specific combo's, ranging from simple special attacks to crazy 20 input-commands for a 38 hit combo which drains 60% of your opponents health.
Visually this game looks amazing. Especially combined with the fast pace, MVC3 is an epileptic man's worst nightmare: SOMETHING IS ALWAYS FLASHING. They actually did of making the characters look visually the same without looking like anyone doesn't belong. Since I don't think Ryu, Chris Redfield, Super Skrull and Arthur were originally intended to be in the same game.
I should also say I am completely in love with some of the character themes (Oh man Captain America.) and some are a little less impressive, but to each his own and the music does its job of setting an accurate pace and speed.
And now for the main course:
Multiplayer.
Online mode at time of writing is currently jacked up. Quick matching for a ranked match will have a 99.9% chance of failure and player-made lobbies with more then 4 people aren't interesting, because for some reason they decided it would be cool to not see other people fighting. But in a crazy game like MVC3 I WANT to see the fighting, I want to see crazy shit happening all the time so I can keep being pumped up for when its my turn and I don't really get the same excitement from watching two dudes' playercards humping while life bars are draining. The rumor going around is that they'll eventually patch this feature in, but how you ship a fighting game in 2011 without it is a bit mindboggling to me.
However when you do get into a game via Custom Searching, the experience has been enjoyable. People are using a varied pattern of characters despite some inherently evil character choices and playstyles (I'm looking at you, Sir Sentinel-Saving-All-Hyper-Bars-So-I-Can-Just-Spam-The-God-Damn-Missiles-with-XFactor-On). But personal hatreds aside, there will always be characters you hate fighting against in any kind of fighting game, and all the characters feel very different in the way they handle and play so you'll be able to experiment for a while before deciding on your final teammembers.
Overall I'm enjoying my time with Marvel Versus Capcom 3. It has quite a few moments where you put down the controller and go "FUCK THAT, IM OUTTA HERE". But the fact I'm picking it back up after an hour says something about the appeal of the game.
While MVC3 demands you invest some serious time into it before getting good, Capcom has made a fun and interesting game to play which lots of people will enjoy, albeit on different levels of skill.
Chaossebba approves of Marvel VS Capcom 3, and frowns heavily upon you sinners using Sentinel. You know who you are.
