Wasn't expecting Ultron Sigma sitting on Odin's throne but that's the right kind of stupid for this game. I have to say that the more I see of this game the more I want to play of it. That's a bad thing too considering as I don't have the time to learning another fighting game.

Also I really want that Captain Marvel Statue.....sigh. My Marvel love is too strong.

Edit: Looks like we get to see all if not most of the confirmed heroes. No villains other than Ultron and Sigma showing up though.

@clementime: Doesn't it though?

Some of it seems OK, but at other times, it looks like there's no actual art direction at all. I really preferred the colorful and stylized look of MvC3. I'm not saying this game is a lost cause or anything, but I'm just not into the look of what they've shown thus far.

I haven't seen anything of this game since they announced it, it looks neat, shows a bunch of characters too. Never did pick up MvC3 but I liked getting excited about character announcements, and I'm definitely more versed in Marvel than the last time so might be able to get excited for those picks as well.

Hope they'll put Ammy in it again!

Ok. Sure. Yeah. Choo-choo!

More details: http://www.capcom-unity.com/combofiend/blog/2017/04/25/additional-characters-first-story-mode-trailer-pre-order-details-and-release-date-for-marvel-vs-capcom-infinite

And screenshots:

• https://www.greenmangaming.com/newsroom/2017/04/25/marvel-vs-capcom-infinite-release-date-new-details/
• https://www.eventhubs.com/imagegallery/2017/apr/25/marvel-vs-capcom-infinite-gameplay-screenshots/6/

I know this has nothing to do with anything, really, but I've always found it weird that X's canonical height is so short (5'3"!). Seeing him standing next to "real people" in all these MvCI trailers (and Zero in MvC3) has just been a real "wtf?" for me for a while now. I mean, I'm pretty short, myself, and nothing about the way X looks in his games ever made me think, "Yeah, there's a guy who's even shorter than me." I always pegged him at over six feet, at least.

But uh. For something actually relevant to the topic, happy to see that they have Command Mission X as an alternate costume (in the deluxe edition pre-order, at least), as I always really liked that design! Maybe Vile for a DLC character? MMX is really about the only IP in this game I have any childhood nostalgia for (despite Capcom's best efforts to undo that), if you couldn't already tell.

This trailer is cool and all but where is Moon Knight?

I love the fact that the setup is that Sigma and Ultron decide to fuse together to take over both worlds. Mostly thanks to the fact I love the X series and its so dumb that I can't not like it. Kinda seems like Capcom might be remaking old models with a new coat of paint. If they aren't doing that I don't see why they would reuse RE5 Chris instead of a different RE character. Overall a nice little trailer that shows me they are putting some effort into a story mode simlar to what they did with SF5.

I think that`s just the current design for Chris. It also seems like Chris and Jill are the go to RE characters they use when they want someone to represent the series. In the Project X Zone games they also used that Chris design and paired him up with Jill.

Chris and Jill are the most noteworthy characters in the series but I agree Leon and Claire are a worthy second. The issue with Leon and Claire is that don't have as good of a villain as Wesker. Ada is less a villain and more anti-hero but it would still work. You could also do Hunk or Tyrant as the RE Villain as well as I think they would also be a good RE Villain characters.

I prefer the X design of Megan Man over the traditional series. Which is funny considering that the changes are subtle but I feel X looks more heroic than standard Mega Man. Sigma was also a better guy to me than Wily. It would be fun to have Wily as a playable or assist character though.

Have some gameplay

Is it just me or does the colour palette look really muted? Maybe I'm just too used to looking at UMvC3 which had a really distinctive art style but the characters here really aren't popping against the background and look sort of dull as a result. Just not really digging the look of this game so far but maybe I'll get used to it.

Kind of anxious that I didn't see any DHCs in that gameplay video but also that mid combo switch mechanic they have going on looks...bad? Like maybe it's just a wonky gameplay video but they don't show it being used to continue a combo even once and the position of the incoming character seems sort of wonky. Also looks like it happens in like maybe 1 frame since it was used to punish Ultron early on in the video which is a pretty interesting change from how raw tagging used to be I guess.

Interested to learn more about the infinity stones. That space one where the opponent was boxed in with walls seemed really cool and it looks like the time stone has a combo breaker usage which is...different. Could be cool I guess.

@imhungry: Combo breakers seem to just cost 2 meter, don't think it's stone specific.

Didn't see any DHCs although there is definitely a tag cancelled super near the end of the video which is interesting. Also given how severe hitstun/damage scaling seems to be and how easy it seems for every character to OTG and extend their own combos, I'm guessing the smart use of tag won't be to extend combos for damage, but to set up resets at the end of combos by tag canceling a lockdown special from your point character into a guaranteed 50/50 or something similar. Getting a real MvC2/Skullgirls reset-heavy vibe from what limited gameplay we've seen.

Also the tag system is straight out of SFxT and I'm sure you will be able to get proper extensions out of it once you know what you're doing and are setting up your combos specifically to capitalize on it. The people that provided this gameplay clearly are not high-level players.

Man, MvC hasn't managed to craft any sort of visual identity since going 3D. Capcom art department keeps disappointing.

Looks cheap. When you bring together a massive range of character's with incongruous art styles you have to have some sort of unifying aesthetic. They used to re-imagine all the marvel characters in the Capcom house style, this just feels like a bunch of low budget 3d models mashed together. MVC 3 was ugly but they at least tried something. Also, the gaudy maximalist backgrounds were an interesting contrast with the simple 2d sprites, now with detailed characters its just messy and hard to read.

I'll agree with this and the sentiments that the overall visual tone feels very off in this trailer. I kind of wish they would of just ditched the heavy art aspect of the Capcom characters and leaned more into the "realism" 3d aspect they seemed to want to keep with the Marvel characters. Rocket Raccoon next to Mega Man highlights just how bad the contrast is. It very much feels like an 3D anime game mega man sitting next to basically CGI rocket raccoon from the movies. Maybe different skins will enhance this? I don't know though.

Otherwise the game looks alright. I was never worried about how well it would play, for me it was just a matter of modes. The fact that there is a story with recorded dialogue and what seems to be cutscenes seems promising. I wonder if they go the same direction Netherrealm has, and give us a story mode similar to that with multiple characters? You'd hope so with such a narrative focus and so many characters.

So the art is basically Marvel's fault because they wanna keep to the MCU, right? They're taking art direction from a series of washed out, Hollywood realistic live-action movies for their colorful comic book/cartoon characters mashup. MvC3 looked better than that, and having gone back to look at those old X-Men games, the style they used for those sprites just looked amazing.

@redhotchilimist: What are you even talking about? They look like the comic book characters. Also Marvel has been pretty good about the movie characters resembling the comics. The game looks fine.

I agree that the game looks fine. The only change that is super noticeable to me is that Captain Marvel in the comics has short hair and this version has long hair reminiscent of Ms. Marvel days.

Well, at least the story will be one disc this time around rather than paid DLC for the future (SFV), right? As someone who got into Marvel vs. Capcom 3 for a bit, I'm happy some of my mains like Hulk and Chun Li are back, even though they're safe roster picks. I guess besides Strider, many of those character confirmations in the trailer felt pretty safe overall actually. I'm just hoping for She Hulk and Sir Arthur and then my interest in this game will skyrocket.

What I find funny is that Marvel and DC are now at it in the fighting game scene and while folks on Marvel probably know about Injustice 2, people from Capcom's Japan office probably don't know much or anything at all about DC's fighting game since its developed by Netherrealm.

@mocbucket62: SFV's story mode wasn't paid DLC, I mean unless you count the cost of the game. It was free but released a few months after launch.

I don't love the art style but think it is fine. For those saying it doesn't look like the comics I would disagree. A lot of the modern Marvel comics are not that highly stylized and the characters shown so far fit the style fairly closely.

@zella: Whoops, sorry my bad. Should have checked on that first before typing. Thanks.

@zirilius: @ungodly:

If you don't see a gravitation towards the MCU live action realism and less comic booky look then compare it to how the characters were portrayed in the last game. Like, take Hawkeye and Rocket here and tell me that they are not more movie and less stylized in the videos they've released for Infinite. It's fine if you guys think it looks good, but you've gotta admit there's a difference, and personally I like the more stylized approach better. The MCU adaptations of costumes is mostly fine with me, but that's in the context of them having to be worn by real people, and I don't want that to influence how the media that doesn't involve live action looks. I'm under the impression that the comics are already well influenced by the MCU, but I was hoping to get some classic designs and a more distinct artstyle in the games at least.

I'm sure Capcom will be delighted to sell me costumes.

Yeah I mean that's just how Rocket and Hawkeye look in the comics now. I'm sure they'll sell us plenty of classic costume DLC but it's hard to argue against making their modern looks the default.

This game looks like trash. The art design is straight up Contest of Champions mobile F2P slapped into a $60 package and they'll be happy to sell you skins and DLC characters at exorbitent prices.

@hippie_genocide: Well if you hate the way the game looks that will free you from any temptation to buy DLC costumes eh?

Here more stuff:

• http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-04-27-marvel-vs-capcom-infinite-makes-big-changes-in-the-name-of-accessibility
• http://www.gameinformer.com/games/marvel_vs_capcom_infinite/b/playstation4/archive/2017/04/27/50-details-marvel-vs-capcom-infinite.aspx
• http://www.ign.com/articles/2017/04/27/marvel-vs-capcom-infinite-first-hands-on-feeling-the-influence-of-the-mcu
• https://www.gamespot.com/videos/everything-you-need-to-know-about-marvel-vs-capcom/2300-6438423/

Bleh, even the game design sounds bad. Not a popular opinion but extreme accessibility and fighting games just don't mix well, there's a sweet spot and it feels like we passed it already. Rising Thunder took this to its logical conclusion and the result was several hours of fun before the majority of players went back to more involved fighters.

Player expression is paramount. Removing complexity, streamlining depth out of a game does not make your game more appealing to anyone (regardless of what they say, this is what they are doing and have done in prior games), mashing a single button to do a combo is low quality entertainment. Casual fighting game players come for the single player and the odd VS party then move on. MOBA's prove that difficulty is not the issue, the problem is fighting games have stagnated, it's stale, floats on nostalgia and has entered an inescapable niche, you don't get out by watering down your product. Make the game interesting enough that people want to improve.

I get the feeling we only see new fighters because they are cheap to make and easy to attach a licence to. The more they chase the approval of people who don't actually like fighting games the worse they get. Just make a good, niche fighting game or evolve/ exit the genre if you want mass market appeal.

I think accessibility and depth mixed pretty well in the Smash series. That's still popular among both crowds.

I'm not sure if automatic combos are gonna help, because the game when played still just looks incredibly crazy. The reason I was able to get enjoyment out of Skullgirls for years, which is a pretty Marvel-like game judging from streams by players better than me, was that you had the opportunity to play that game entirely like Street Fighter. You could limit it to a single character and as such ditch assists entirely, and the buttons were Street Fighter style three strengths of punch and kick. It helped that they had pretty simple commands for attacks, yes, but there was nothing automatic in there.

I can't tell if the control changes they've made here are gonna help other people who thought Marvel VS Capcom games were incomprehensible, but they aren't what I was looking for when they said they were gonna try to become more accessible.

@starvinggamer That before/after image isn't half bad. Anything that was more contrast would be an improvement, and I think those hard, black shadows work well.

@spacefish: None of the accessibility options they're adding to MvCI diminishes the strategic depth. The fact that a bad player can mash LP to get the most rudimentary BnB out or DD+P to get an unsafe and almost always 100% a bad idea DP (people never DP in MvC unless they're Morrigan and can fly cancel it) shouldn't have any impact on how cool it feels when you set up a meaty Unibeam and tag cancel it into a double cross-over empty low mixup. The reason fighting games died is because people stopped buying them, and MvC is a series that has a notorious reputation for being impenetrable to beginners. Disney isn't in the business of doing bad business so I'm glad Capcom is going out of their way to make the game more appealing to a wider audience. Then maybe the game will sell enough copies for Disney to actually authorize support of the game beyond the initial DLC plans and maybe Mahvel actually gets to exist in the competitive scene as a game with active developer support like all the other major releases have enjoyed in the modern fighting game era.

A few things we know of, 3 character teams >> 2 character teams, removal of assist moves (seemingly replaced by a few infinity stones), mashing A to combo but unlike all other games with auto combos it seems there is no damage reduction, reports of special move motions being left out for some characters. This is the obvious stuff but im commenting on a general trend of streamlining fighting games and making them less interesting, it's a trend present in every single major fighting game franchise. Lets look at the last Capcom game, SF 5, it's just less interesting to me than prior entries, its not as fun to play and much, much worse to spectate. It's about the mentality that the developers hold when making design decisions, they are deathly afraid to introduce new variables and keep snipping existing ones out, slowly turning chess into checkers in major and more subtle ways (removal of special moves, simplification and removal of combos << this makes 1 button combos more of a problem, forcing strict, pre determined play styles onto characters, removal/ normalizing special move properties, promoting simpler character types/ morphing everything into shoto, neutering defensive play, promoting only aggressive "fun to watch" play). The changes made to SF V are going to be minor when compared to what they have in store for marvel, this is obvious, the reach of the license almost makes this inevitable.

"fighting games died because people stopped buying them" is a meaningless statement, why did they stop buying them? Why do so many of them now rely on nostalgia or big name licences? The genre is stuck in the 90's and it's regressing, For Honor is the first game in a looong time to try something new with FG concepts. Marvel has a reputation of being impenetrable despite MvC2 already being a simplification of SF, people who don't know how to play will call every skill based game impenetrable. Marvel 2 remake sold roughly 1.5mil 10 years after its initial release, again, MOBA's prove that it's never been about complexity. Ultimately a fighting game is about skill, you will always loose against someone who is more experienced, you can't avoid this fundamental fact, it's not fun to get your ass beat constantly so people leave, those who care will remain (it's harder to care about simpler games). No matter how simple you make the game this fundamental "problem" remains, 1 button combos just mean you receive and deal a few more arbitrary hits before you rage quit.

I don't really care about DLC for a game that isn't interesting to play or watch. Developer support is a secondary concern for the FGC, simple games like MK will always be less healthy than games with real variety and depth.

@spacefish: None of the things they are doing to "streamline" the game are reducing the depth or strategy for high level play, just making it slightly less intimidating for total beginners to reach basic competency. Let's break this down:

• 3 > 2 characters - This is basically inconsequential. If you can have a depth in a fighting game where you play as one character, then it simply doesn't matter. Increasing the number of characters on a team merely increases the baseline amount of effort you need to put into the game to become competent.
• Removal of assists - This is only half-accurate. It's true that there aren't the traditional assists in the game any more, but because of how flexible the new tag system is, it might be better to think of the game as having infinite assists, where on the fly you have the freedom to improvise and choose any action a character can do in a majority of situations you would call an assist in MvC3.
• Mashing A to combo - How often do you see competitive MvC3 players use LMHS sjc MMHS as their BnB of choice?
• Simplified inputs - No charge moves? It's Marvel charge move characters are almost always crippled. Different DP motion? How often do players in Marvel DP when it's not in a combo or they're Morrigan and they can fly cancel it? Literally never it's always a bad idea. Please try to DP me more bad players I'll take the free combo. It's not like they can't churn on wakeup already.

You talk about removal of combos, removal of special moves, morphing everything into shoto, neutering defensive play etc and nothing we have seen of MvCI indicates any of this. The magic series has always existed in MvC and always has had regular damage scaling and always has been basically worthless because that's not where you get the real damage. No one has talked about some mass culling of special moves, just the simplification of inputs and, in some cases, the new attacks and abilities several returning characters have received. Defensive play has always been extremely difficult in MvC so whatever, but they've explicitly talked about Iron Man being redesigned to excel at defensive zoning so clearly they're designing the game with multiple playstyles in mind.

And my point isn't that bads will suddenly beat goods (as I thought I made clear earlier). My point is that making bads believe they'll beat goods might get more people in the door. Maybe some will stick around, and more copies getting sold means a higher chance Disney will decide the game with worth supporting in the long run, which goes beyond just DLC. You know, things like balance patches which MvC3 stopped receiving because of how poorly UMvC3 did. This also could lead to more active support for the tournament scene. And guess what, simple games like MK consistently sell many times more copies than any other series no matter how great the game is to play or watch. And lord knows Capcom needs their games to sell better.

@starvinggamer:

Yes, they are streamlining, removing "superfluous" variables and replacing systems with simpler versions. Marvel is not SF the characters are simplified, complexity comes from juggling multiple characters. There is a framework in place, if you take stuff out without introducing something equivalent it's an objective loss of complexity. Motions are a part of the balance of a game, if you normalize inputs it requires you to normalize the specials themselves, again, a loss of variety and complexity. Auto combo isn't a problem for pros and it doesn't limit depth, its just indicative of a design mentality and I would argue it's not particularly fun to perform or get hit by as a beginner.

All those specific points I made were in reference to SF V, everything I said already happened with SF V (a game that wasn't striving for as wide an audience). Both games are made by Capcom. We have seen very little of the game as of yet, I can only comment on the general direction they are taking it, they are saying the same stuff they did before SFV only with more emphasis on accessibility (for obvious reasons).

I didn't interpret what you said as scrubs will be gods, just explaining why pouring so much effort into making a competitive, skill based game accessible is a waste of time. People who don't want to learn will still lose and still quit, no delusion can combat this, lack of innovation means many have already made up their minds on these games. Make better tutorials and improve matchmaking then more people will stick around, this other stuff is pointless at best. Yes MK sells well because it has a lot of single player content, it's a boring multiplayer game for me and has a weak competitive scene despite high sales. If Capcom wants to sell well then sure, make quality single player content, no complaints from me, it's expensive which is why they keep screwing it up.