Once You Pop, You Can't Stop, Part 5

Welcome back! It occurs to me that this is a good moment to do something I probably should have done at the beginning of this series of posts. Even if you have played other fighting games or have played MvC2, depending on how closely you have followed the scene, you may or may not know what many of the terms being usedf in this blog mean. Allow me to clarify a few acronyms and nuances of MvC3 so that I dont sound like I am just spewing acronyms.

HC - Short for Hyper Combo. These are the MvC3 equivalent of "super" or "ultra" moves that you see in so many fighting games. A normal HC costs 1 bar of hyper meter, and the more powerful level 3 HC's cost 3 bars.

DHC - Short for Delayed Hyper Combo. When one character does a hyper combo, the next character on the team may jump in and perform a hyper combo of their own after which they replace the character doing the first hyper combo. This can be done again for a total of 3 consecutive hyper combos. Chaining HC's in this way is called a delayed hyper combo. It is useful for making big combos, but it is just as important for the fact that it can be used to tag a character out safely since doing a regular tag out can be punished severely by a decent player.

X Factor/XFC - X Factor is a special mode in MvC3 that can be triggered once per match by the player. While it is active, the currently controlled character has increased speed and damage and also begins to regenerate their red, healable, health. There are multiple levels of this, and they correspond to how many of the players characters have been knocked out at the time it is activated. If no characters are down, its level 1, one character down gets you level 2 and two characters down gets you level 3 x factor. At each subsequent level, the buff gets magnified and the duration of the buff lengthened.

Additionally, using this in the middle of a move instantly returns you to a neatral state and ready to act again, allowing you to perform combos that would ordinarily be impossible. This is called an X Factor Cancel or XFC for short and can lead to big damage combos.

A, B, C and E buttons - These are the buttons in MvC3 and they correspond to weak, medium and strong attacks. The "E" button is the "exchange button which is used as a universal launcher to start air juggles, and other select special moves.

Point - The character who is currently active in the battle is referred to as the "point" character. Some characters are ideal for this position while some others are better suited to being assists.

OTG - Short for Off The Ground. This term refers to moves capable of hitting opponents who have been knocked down. Also, characters who are in a state where they can be hit by such moves are said to be in an otg state. Moves that hit otg are useful since they can be used to continue combos after an opponent has been knocked to the ground.

Block string - a series of attacks that are linked in such a way that if an opponent blocks one, they are forced to block the rest or get hit., because there is no time in between to interrupt with an attack.


Thats really it. I will add these to the first post so people reading from the start will know what they need to know going in. Sorry if I have been speaking in tongues for some of you! Now, onward to Crimson Viper.


Crimson Viper

Much like the last character I wrote up, Crimson Viper has big time potential for the highly skilled tournament level player. I fully expect her to be on many winning teams during this game's tournament life and for many of the same reasons as Chun.

To get away from tournament level discussion for a second, I just want to say that I am in love with what they have done with Viper, but that should suprise no one who has been reading this series because I have been really pleased with every choice Capcom has made where character interpretation is concerned. Of all the characters they could have brought over to represent Street Fighter 4 they couldn't have chosen better than they did. Her design is modern, striking, sexy and badass all at once. With jet boosters and flamethrowers in her shoes and an electricity generating exoskeleton lining her gloves she could just as easily be a Marvel character as a Capcom one. As seems to be par for the course, she also brings with her, all the unique nuances that make her an execution intensive terror in her native game.

In my section on Chun, I outlined how dangerous the combination of a good 8 way air dash and jump cancelable low attacks can be. Viper hits that same perfect storm. Her 8 way seems nearly as good as Chun's and just like in Street Fighter 4, she can super jump cancel her seismic smash, which is a low hitting special move. So low block strings ending with a seismic will be quite abusable when people start super jump cancelling out of them and then instantly 8 way dashing back in for an overhead attack. Shenanigans ensue. Watch Marn show a bit of it off in this vid:

Marnito putting the pieces together.....I sense danger

Super jump cancelled seismics are not the only trick she remembers from SF4. She retains the "focus attack" mechanic from that game as well, though it works a bit differently. During her focus attack, she can't be knocked out of her attack animation, but she takes damage normally. When she unleashed her focus attack, if it hits, the opponent will be put into a crumple stun state to be combo'd.

Other things she retained include here ability to "feint" her special moves to fake out opponents, and like all the members of the SF4 cast, she can do "EX" versions of her special moves (COOL!!!). This actually expends HC meter. Her EX Thunder Knuckle has full screen range and causes a crumple stun to set up for combos. Once the inputs for all this stuff are mastered, SF4 Viper players should be able to play many of the same mind games in MvC3. The original reveal trailer for Viper shows all this stuff in action, and also confirms she has her awesome music theme from SF4 as well:

Viper comes over from SF4 and brings her unique mechanics and awesome theme with her!

There is one more thing that makes Viper very unique and dangerous that is worth mentioning. Her Burn Kick assist hits overhead, meaning it must be blocked high. This means that if you start a low block string with your point character, and call in Burn Kick Viper as an assist, the result is an unblockable situation since you will be hitting your opponent both low and overhead attacks at once. While i am not sure how one might follow this up, having a reliable way to open up your opponents defenses is invaluable and will make Viper a very attractive addition to any team.


Dante

It seems rather superfluous to write an impression piece on Dante at this point. The legendary son of Sparda has more hype behind his entry to this game than perhaps any other character on the roster. Every good gameplay vid you have seen on the web seems to have Mr. Showtime himself. It's like you can't get away from the guy. Not that I am complaining. Devil May Cry sits behind only Street Fighter and Mega Man as far as my list of favorite Capcom properties go. That it took this long to get him into a fighting game is criminal if you ask me, but fortunately, Capcom has made the wait more than worth it. From the casual passers by to the hardened professionals, the verdict is unanimous: Dante is a bonafide , hyper stylish beast!

Similarly to the treatment of all the other "first time contestants" on the Capcom side, the devs gave tremendous love to Dante, furnishing him with purportedly over 40 special moves, all pulled from the exhaustive move list he has compiled across his three award winning (and one not so award winning) games. Hard to say if that number is a matter of "creative marketing", but according to Keits it may be possible I guess we will really see when we head into the lab with him but based on even just what we have seen, its clear his array of moves is vast and varied.

Dante's got moves for days and we haven't seen the half.....

Nailing down his overall style is fairly simple, but communicating its individual elements is difficult, both because there is so much we have seen and because there is apparently so much we have not. While he is definitely a rushdown character with dizzying levels of combo and damage potential, he accomplishes it with a motley mix of fire arms, sword play and varying forms of elemental and dark magics....oh yeah and demonic guitars. To watch him in action, even in the hands of an average player is to behold a wild fireworks display of hacks, slashes, spells and explosions. Following it can be difficult, but describing it proves impossible.

The truth is that right now, even the game's best player (for whatever that is worth after one casual tourney 2 weeks before release) is playing the character in a very linear fashion. Marn's Dante is extremely aggressive and in constant forward motion. His goal is to make you retreat, get in, catch you not blocking and pull off his big money combo. Then he just traps you in the corner with the massive hit boxes on Dante's normals and makes you panic so he can find another opening to hit his combo again until your character is down or you tag out, which doesn't really change his approach. It isn't so much high art as it is like watching a lion devour a zebra after catching it.

Marn uses his signature Dante combo to take out two characters

This is in no way to take away from Marn. On the contrary, the fact that Dante has so many specials and that Marn can put together such a scary combo with just 2 of them speaks both to his ability and to the potential of this character. It's both exciting and frightful to imagine what a fully figured out Dante using all his tools will look like in the hands of an execution savant like Marn. Until we learn what all the moves do, or heck, even what they ARE, we can only speculate as to which roles Dante will be able to effectively fill.

As a quick snippet, it is worth noting that Dante is able to burn a meter to activate Devil Trigger mode, which any fan of the Devil May Cry series is familiar with. This powers him up for a period of time, but in exactly what ways is unclear to me right now. I have seen him fire streams of electricity down towards the ground from the air in this mode, an ability he had in the first DMC game. Like all other "buff" and "debuff" status conditions in the game, he retains the buffs from Devil Trigger when tagged out, where the countdown timer on it freezes until he is put back on point. How exactly this affects his assists is something I have not seen tested or spoken of anywhere yet so that will be a lab visit when I finally get the game in my hands.

While I loathe to say it, Dante seems so invitingly usable, fun and charismatic that he will definitely be MvC3's answer to SF4's Ken. One of his moves is innevitably going to become our next "Fierce DP", and I expect online matches to be overrun by extremely one dimensional, exploitative Dante trolls for the first 2 weeks at least. If it takes longer than a month for someone to make a Dante flowchart then I will retire from the interwebs.

But thats all fine, because Dante, unlike Ken in SF4 is the perfect face for MvC3. With combos that will have stream monsters furiously typing "SO GDLK!1!1!" in their livechat windows, infectious style, layers upon layers of complexity and a metric ton of undeniable swagger, Dante truly embodies everything great about this franchise.

Once You Pop, You Can't Stop, Part 4

Hello again all. Going to try to power through two more characters for you so let me get right to it!

Chris Redfield

To be honest, its hard for me to do the same kind of impression of Chris as I have for the other characters so far. I have made some observations but nothing overly earth shattering. He is one of the first people I am going to take into the lab when I get the game because I feel like I understand him less than most of the other characters. However, that wont stop me from sharing what I have learned.

The thing I like most about Chris is that he is the closest thing we are going to get to The Punisher, a Marvel character I love who didn't make it into MvC3. Chris has almost every piece of traditional military hardware you can imagine in his back pocket and it's all pulled from the Resident Evil series. He's got a combat knife, a 9mm pistol, sub machinegun, magnum revolver, a shotgun, a flame thrower, an RPG launcher and some land mines and frag grenades to round it out. We dont really see characters like this in fighting games too often so I m looking forward to playing with him. He isn't as adorable as B.B. Hood, but he has more guns and thats a trade off I am willing to make.

I want to say that Chris is a keep away character, but that doesn't really do him justice. While he has tons of projectile attacks, they aren't all longe range. In fact many of his projectile attacks have limited range, like his flamethrower and shotgun. In fact I think just his pistol and sub machine gun have full screen range. His land mine is the only tool he has to deter someone from pushing in on him but it's easy to jump over and Chris has no good way of dealing with arial threats. Pairing him with a character with a good anti air assist will help this, but short of that, characters with strong 8-way air dashes or double jumps will have an easy time getting in on Chris.

But thats not really so bad. Chris is fine at close range and really, REALLY strong in the mid range with his smg, shotgun, land mine, flamethrower and frag grenades. His normal chains are much better than any other character who has as many projectiles as he does. Characters like Arthur, Dormammu and M.O.D.O.K. have a few decent normals, but not very fluid or consistent chains. Chris has as many projectiles as those characters, but a chain game just as solid and standard as say Captain America. He has a close range HC that does good damage and combos very cleanly with his basic combo strings.

Guns, LOTS of guns......

He has a couple of other unique little moves that give him some flavor too. He he has a unique preset attack string (kind of like a "target combo" from SF4). He charges forward a bit and does a series of body punches. From the way some people were talking about it it seems to have a unique input and timing to it, kind of like Cyclops's attack rush in MvC2. I dont know if it will be terribly useful, but it looks cool and is different so i figured I would mention it. He actually does it in the video above.

He also has what seems like a stance. I dont know the input, but he actually gets on the ground and goes prone and takes out his 9mm pistol. While in this state, he is lower to the ground than even Amaterasu which means pretty much any ranged attack is going to just go right over his head. While in this state he can crawl forward or just take pot shots at his opponent with his pistol. It's possible that in certain matchups, or with certain assists this stance could really fluster an opponent.

All told, Chris is what I would call more of a zoning character than a rushdown or keep away character. While he can play keep away with the right assists, and can be a threat up close in a rushdown role if properly supported, he is definitely at his best from mid-screen and can really give opponents a lot to deal with at that range. All his hardware will make him fun to play with and with the right assists around him he can play a variety of roles.

Chun Li

It must be said, Chun-Li is just a beast. I am going to call it now, whoever wins EVO is going to have Chun-Li in their team.

For casual players, Chun will be exactly what you expect. Capcom did not re-invent the wheel here. She looks really great in this game. Anyone who had a problem with her "thunder thighs" look from SF4 will be happy to know she is back to normal proportions. She is speedy, easy to combo with and her lightning kick is extremely spammable with a lot of priority and huge hit box both vertically and horizontally.

The intermediate/advanced players are going to be murder with her though because of several details to how she plays which I will now go over.

"I feel like if you are going to be randomed out in a tournament, its going to be by a Chun-Li player spamming legs." -Keits, http://www.shoryuken.com/

I know I mentioned this above, but it needs to be re-iterated: lightning kick (aka "legs") is totally insane. It comes out really easily, and just continues to combo for a number of hits and from a distance that is far beyond any other incarnation of Chun Li. But I said all this already. Wanna know whats even sicker than legs?

LEGS AS AN ASSIST!!!

So you know legs rocks. But the legs assist is hilarious. The key is the position Chun takes on the screen. One would expect her to jump in right where your character is standing and kick right in front of you. But she actually jumps out in front of your character, creating a wall of kicks that keeps anyone not super jumping from getting in on you for around 3 full seconds. Yes I said 3 full seconds. If someone gets hit by, or must block it, they are locked down FOREVER. It makes so much possible that would not normally be.

The applications are too many to discuss here. Lets just put it this way: anytime you ever try out a move, or try to create space between you and your opponent or try to get in on a turtling opponent and you think to yourself "if only I had more speed/time/opportunity to do this manuver..." that's something that having Chun-Li legs as an assist will make possible. The combos, mix-ups and manuvers this assist will facilitate will blow minds once advanced players figure it out. Watch Justin "Marvelous" Wong abuse it against Keits at the CES 2011 tournament in the Capcom suite:

"DO-DO-DOO KICK!"

Back when the game was first announced, Seth Killian said that the version of Chun-Li in this game is the fastest character they have ever put in a fighting game. They have slowed her down since then in the name of balancing but she is still lightning fast. If you pop level 3 X-Factor with Chun she is actually too fast to even control properly unless your reflexes are off the charts. Pros are going to abuse this so hard because she has nasty low/mid mixups for MvC vets to use.

If you watched any pro MvC2 or played competitively at an intermediate or higher level, you remember that Storm and Magneto were scary rushdown characters because of their 8 way air dash. For those who are unfamilar, with those (and other) characters you could press in any direction and press both punches you would suddenly dash in the pressed direction while in midair. This meant that you could be neutral jumping or even jumping back, and then suddenly change direction and dash in unexpectedly to attack your opponent. Since jumping attacks must be blocked standing, iff you threw out some low attacks and then jumped away, then air dashed back in with an air attack, you could catch someone blocking low still and they would get tagged. This was a staple of high end MvC2 play.

Chun is the new queen of the 8 way air dash. Hers is very fast and her air attacks are perfect for starting combos on your opponents. Making it even crazier though is the fact that her crouch+C attack is jump cancelable! So she can throw a whole low block string ending in crouch+C, jump cancel out of it and then quickly air dash back down to attack. With the right timing on the air dash, you could cross up instead. This all happens so fast that reacting is VERY difficult. Anyone who has good enough execution to pull this stuff off while X-Factor is active is going to just ruin people.

Something that will make these kinds of mixups even crazier, is that there are people with overhead and low hitting assists. Mix that in with her natural overhead/low mixup and you will be able to force unblockable situations on your opponents. If you don't feel comfortable with using advancing guard when Chun starts a block string on you, good players WILL open you up with these traps. You must keep her out at all costs or pay the price.

I didn't even mention her HC's, which are great too. I do not know if Kikosho hits otg like it has in some other games, but it certainly can be combo'd into. Her lightning kick HC can be combo'd into AND out of. It actually ends with a launcher and you just jump up after that and keep the combo going like any other arial combo. This is going to make it great for tail ends of DHC's. I cant wait to do a three part DHC, where Chun is the last one in with lightning legs HC and then go into an arial rave, and cycle back through my whole team with a series of air tag combos. Imagine the rage of opponents when each character in your team gets tagged in twice during ONE COMBO!! I can almost taste the tears!

I could keep going but I am going to stop. If you are a low level player just going into it for fun, you will have a blast with the Chunsta'! But if you are a serious player looking to play competitively or just an intermediate level player looking for a character who has advanced tools that you can grow into, Chun-Li is where you need to be. She is the new Magneto. Don't believe the hype? Watch her run it back all alone in this vid from the Capcom Fight Club that was held in Birmingham earlier this month:

THIS is how you run it back!

Here's to a decade of Chun-Li dominance! See you all tommorow!

Once You Pop, You Can't Stop, Part 3

For those of you getting to the party late this is part 3 of my on going series of impressions on the cast of Marvel vs Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds (arriving on February 15th, 2011 to fine retailers al over the U.S). Feel free to back up nd read the previous entries for my thoughts on Amaterasu, Albert Wesker and Akuma.

Lets continue the list!


Arthur

Say "huzzah!" for the new king of keepaway

So between the awesome rock remix of some Ghosts and Goblins music, the sweet Ghosts and Goblins themed stage and Arthur's unique gameplay quirks, we have another example of Capcom's commitment to making this title feel like true crossover fan service. In fact, some may find that Capcom went a little TOO old school with Arthur but there certainly seem to be rewards for sticking with our little boxer short wearing knight.

First the bad news, and mind you it may actually be really cool/good news depending on your perspective. Arthur plays so much like he did in his iconic Ghosts and Goblins series that it has become popular among those who have played him to say that "If you knew how to play him in Ghosts and Goblins, you will know how to play him in MvC3.". As a huge game nerd who spent many hours playing Ghosts and Goblins, Ghouls and Ghosts, and Super Ghouls and Ghosts as a kid I find this to be beyond cool. As a fighting game enthusiast, I find this to be really fun.......mostly because I hate myself and am a complete gaming masochist.

Allow me to explain. In the old days, Arthur had a double jump. Unlike the jumps of other popular platform game characters of the day (like Mario) once he jumped, the player had no further control of his jump trajectory. You couldn't slow him down or make him jump just a bit farther my continuing to press in the direction he was headed. The only way to change this was to use his double jump to change or stop his lateral movement. He could change which direction he faced mid jump to shoot where he wanted, but could not EVER alter his jump distance or trajectory in any way besides using his double jump to switch directions. This is EXACTLY how his jump (and super jump) behaves in MvC3 and if you haven't played Ghosts and Goblins, you will likely be fighting the impulse to put Arthur back down and never play him again.

Oh and it doesn't end there intrepid readers! He is the only character in the game with NO GROUND DASH!! Yes, a character in a super fast paced fighting game where everyone runs at you or away from you at crazy speeds lacks the most basic and fundamental movement option in the game. No, his walk speed does not in any way make up for this. Make no mistakes, playing as Arthur simply means having to live without the fluid mobility that even the slowest charcters in the game enjoy. But in exchange, Arthur recieves some extremely potent and unique tools that really make him stand out.

For one, some of his normals are just crazy. For instance his command normal, forward+C. For reference, A is weak attack, B is medium attack and C is strong attack. After watching tons of vids, this seems to be standard nomenclature for these buttons so expect to hear a lot of it in the coming weeks/months/years. So forward+C has Arthur charge forward with his javelin pointed straight out. This is as close as he gets to a dash. It isn't as fast as other dashes, but its faster than his walk speed. The key thing here is that it has FULL SCREEN range. More than that, he can combo a launcher after wards and start comboing off it. Especially if you cover him with a good projectile assist, this will be a good way to move up on your opponent and take space so you don't always end up in a corner due to his keep away tactics.

His crouching C attack is also nuts. It hits low, knocks down, has about half screen range and also combos comfortably into a launcher. During a jump, pressing down+C will have him point his javelin straight down. The nice thing about this one is that it stays out until he lands or hits someone and the hit box extends VERY far below him, making this a very difficult "death from above" type move. You combo off it if it hits as well. This should make his super jumps very safe from attacks from below and allow him to get out of corners and just move in on his opponent pretty effectively.

With a dragon punch (DP) motion and A you get a move where he sticks out his shield. This is a purely defensive move. If anyone attacks Arthur directly with the shield out, he takes no damage and they attacker staggers back, vulnerable. I am really eager to test this move out a bit to see what it will work against. It remains to be seen if it has an effect on projectiles or if the frame advantage gained when parrying a physical attack is great enough to combo after. I am also curious to see how it affects jump in attacks. Depending on the answers to these questions, the combination of the shield defense and his long range, combo friendly normals will make Arthur deceptively dangerous to approach without cover fire from an assist. You can see all this and more thanks to Keits and UltraDavid of shoryuken.com and their series of "SRK Explains" videos they shot at the Capcom Suite at CES:


See Arthur's strange jump properties and threatening normals in action.


The real meat of Arthurs game is his keep away and those long range normals are only the start. He has a whopping 6 different projectile attacks, each with varying speeds, number of hits, hit box sizes and flight paths. From what I have seen, all of them can be done in mid air as well giving him a ton of ways to vary the angles he is attacking from and the regions of the screen he is covering. Its worth noting that his quarter circle back projectiles (like fire bottle) all seem to take slower, more round about ways to the opponent and have short recovery times while the quarter circle forward ones are more direct and can fire multiple projectiles (like dagger and javelin), I imagine it will be possible to do something like fire bottle, jump and then in midair, call an assist and do javelins or daggers, land, fire bottle etc. With the right assist and mixing up which projectiles you use you could probaly keep opponents pinned down and blocking almost constantly.

Arthur's HC's are all really good looking and all pulled lovingly from his games. He has a fire dragon HC that seems to hit the whole screen and as shown in the first Arthur vid I embedded above can hit otg, making it a great way to finish an arial combo after slamming an opponent to the ground. He also gets to use the Goddess Bracelet from Super Ghouls and Ghosts which allows him fire a rapid stream of fireballs while the player continues to control his movement. This will be great for safely DHCing him in as he will be able to pick where he wants to end up on the screen while the opponent is stuck blocking. However, his Gold Armor HC is by far his most interesting mechanic.

By burning 1 meter, Arthur can upgrade to gold armor. It lasts a limited ammount of time only, but while it is active, all of his 6 projectile attacks are buffed and/or altered making his keep away more flustering and far more deadly. Of particular note are his gold mode fire bottle and crossbow. Fire bottle takes up huge ammounts of vertical and horizontal space with gold armor active and adds several more hits giving Arthur even more of a frame advantage against an opponent blocking or getting hit by it. His gold mode crossbow gets upgraded from 2 shots to 3 and they actually home in on your opponent instead of travelling a set path.

Aside from the obvious advantage of Gold Armor, there is another interesting attribute to how it works that is actually true of all similar "buff" and "debuff" moves in the game. While there is a time limit on the ability, if the character posessing the altered state tags out, the timer stops, but they retain their new properties, good or bad, whenever they come in as an assist! The time limit on the altered state will not start back up until the character is tagged back in. So for instance, if you chose fire bottle as Arthur's assist, upgraded him to gold armor and tagged him out, he will come in and do the buffed up gold armor version of fire bottle whenever you call him for an assist. I havent seen his other assist moves, but rest assured, gold armor fire bottle is already looking like a "must have" assist like Ammy's Cold Star. It should open up all kinds of possibilities for setups and traps for your team.

All this coolness comes at yet another steep price though. Once the timer runs out, Arthur's armor shatters and he is knoked to the ground, clad only in his signature boxer shorts. While in this state, he has extremely low health and cannot take many hits. The only way to end this state is to spend another meter to give him back his standard silver armor. Having to spend another meter to bail him out of trouble can suck, and I am sure skilled opponents will be looking to time big attacks to come out as he is being knocked down when the armor shatters. Smart players will cover him with an assist during this time or simply tag him out as he is about to lose gold armor and then tag him back in during the pause that occurs after downing an opponents character. Failure to do so will mean a very dead Arthur once the gold armor breaks.

Fighting bad guys in his boxer shorts since 1985!

I feel like the combination of some great long range normals, a counter special, a full screen HC, a super safe DHC and great projectiles and assists with Gold Armor are going to make Arthur a very strong point or assist character for keep away and any other "lame" style of play. Whether or not the strengths he posesses out weigh the ways in wihich he has remained, *ahem*, "faithful to his roots" will only become clear after a few months of competitive play. Either way, Arthur is another unique, well fleshed out character on the Capcom side who really brings his franchises flavor to bear. No matter how viable he ends up being, the game is certainly better for having him.


Captain America

Cap is back. Great as this is though, this impression piece is going to sound quite a bit different from the one I have done to this point. So far, the characters I have previewed have been new additions to the MvC cast except Akuma, who was so far enhanced over his previous incarnations in this series that he may as well be a new character. Cap is the first example in the roster of a returning character who hasn't really changed much. While there are many characters who have mile long move lists and unique, nuanced gameplay quirks, Cap is by comparison, very "simple". I guess I have a personal bias towards more complex characters, but given all the love Capcom put into so many of the characters, it's hard not to be a bit dissapointed by how straight forward Cap plays.

Not to sound all doom and gloom, Cap looks great. He just happens to have the same exact move set (from normals to HC's) that he has had since Marvel Super Heroes. Thats 15 years with the same exact moves. Now none of the builds to this point have had an actual command list in game so its possible there are moves no one has found so we shall see. This is actually more likely than you may think. Look at a character like Dante who purportedly has over 40 special moves. If you went by vids he has about 3. So there may be more to Cap than we currently know, but if not then for better or worse, veteran Cap players will know exactly what to do with him the second they pick up the controller.

Cap returns and his move set is all oldies but goldies.

Just because Cap's move list is identical to his MvC2 incarnation does not mean he didn't improve or that he has been left in the dust. In fact, he has seen some enhancements that I am sure Cap players will be happy with.

The most significant alteration to how Cap plays is, by far, the improvements to his shield slash. It appears there is no longer any way to lose his shield as far as I have seen. No matter how much jumping around I have seen after throwing out a shield slash will result in the shield falling to the ground, it always homes back in on him perfectly.

Secondly and most importantly shield slash hits twice, once going and once coming. This makes it more advantageous as the opponent needs to keep blocking for longer. With the shields new super homing on return, you can do some interesting things by throwing a shield slash in mid air and then landing, or throwing one on the ground and then jumping before it returns. This results in the shield threatening along a different path on return than when you threw it out which can catch opponents off guard. It also makes combos possible that just weren't before. More frame advantage, plus trickier attack angles, plus increased combo possibilities equals a more high powered offense for Cap.

Cap also benefits from a key engine difference between MvC2 and MvC3. MvC2 had all preset magic series that were set in stone for a character. MvC3 is more open and what can link into what is more about the actual frame data and hit properties of your moves. This really helps a character like Cap who has very good normals and can put together good long block strings due to their speed, range and good frame properties. You can actually link a few low jabs, then combo up to his double leg hand plant kick from quite a nice range and still combo into his launcher. In general, his normals seem sped up from what they were, while retaining their good range and large hit boxes.

It seems like Hyper Stars and Stripes goes higher into the air than it did. Instead of 2 regular height ones followed by a higher one, all three are as high as the third one was in MvC2. It also doesn't seem to travel as far forward. This means it will be harder to combo into after long ground strings, but you have Hyper Charging Star for that. What the new height gives you is the ability to combo into it after launching someone into the air.

Speculation abounds that Hyper Charging Stars has huge ammounts of projectile immunity but I haven't been able to verify from any of the footage I have watched.

Cap has lost his double jump. This is no doubt to keep the new properties of the shield slash from making the move too powerful.

Last but not least, by way of the X-Factor mechanic, he can actually combo into Final Justice without the use of any assists. Final Justice is now a lvl 3 HC so it will cost you three bars.

If you haven't heard about X-Factor yet, it is used for, among other things, cancelling the move you are in the middle of and returning you to a neutral state, allowing you to perform combos you would normally not be able to do. Additionally, it gives your character a temporary buff to speed and damage as well as allowing you to regenerate red health without tagging out. The buff gets bigger and lasts longer the more characters of yours have been knocked out. This can only be used once per fight.

So going back to comboing into Final Justice without an assist, this is perfect for late game comebacks. If Cap is the last character standing and he has x-factor and 3 meters to burn, it is concievable he will be able to knockout a character from full health with one combo. Here is a video of Cap and The Avengers in action, ending in Cap doing an attack chain, cancelling into a charging star and then X-factor cancelling and then hitting Final Justice. It looks great and it will make him a scary anchor:

The First Avenger delivers his iconic hyper combo in dramatic fashion

Overall, Cap is in better fighting shape than he has been in since the original Marvel Super Heroes from what I can tell. His damage potential is well above average, the strength of his normals are much more impactful in this fighting engine than in others he has been in and as always he has a solid all around game. He is voiced terrifically, looks snazzier than ever and has more combo possibilities than ever. While he plays in a very standard, familiar fashion compared to some of the super complex characters on this roster, Cap fans will be pleased, and new comers will find him easy and fun to pick up and play.

Once You Pop, You Can't Stop, Part 2

Before I start my next batch of impressions of the the cast of Marvel vs. Capcom 3 I just want to throw couple of things out there:

Keep in mind that it has been publicly stated that some pretty significant balance changes have been made throughout this games preview life. Please resist the impulse to get out the torches and pitchforks if there are moves/attributes/features I mention here that aren't in the retail version of the game. I am basing my opinions and observations off of play experience and footage that spans several different builds of the game.

Going forward, I am going to do my best to include video to give you all some reference for the observations I am making, partially so you all don't think I am full of shit, and also so you all can have access to lots of great MvC3 footage as there is ALOT of it out there. That all said, lets jump back into it!

Amaterasu

If you read my entire list of impressions, you will hear me say the following a lot: Capcom really went all out to have characters from their different properties bring their game's unique flavor into a fighting game seamlessly. I have always felt that even characters from other fighting games have felt watered down and out of their element when coming to the Marvel related games. When I heard they were putting in characters like Arthur, Amaterasu and Viewtiful Joe I was excited, but worried. My concern was that they would just throw them in, give them a move or two related to their game and leave them to rot. I could not have been more wrong and Ammy is possibly the best example of Capcom's success in this regard.

From just a presentation standpoint, Amaterasu (Ammy) is a complete triumph. It truly feels as if they pulled her right out of Okami, trimmed off a few moves that weren't relevant to fighting games and then just added a thing or two to make sure she had all the necessary tools to play correctly in her new context. Some examples are in order:

Her air dash actually animates with hand drawn looking floral vine that shoots out from her and pulls her to her destination. This is a move pulled directly from Okami.

She has a HC that slows time down on screen while she continues to move normaly. Again, this is an actual ability she had in Okami and here, the same exact full screen "mist" filter is used along with the 4 kanji symbols appearing on screen.

Her basic attack strings use nearly the identical animations to her basic attack combo in Okami.

Her screen filling HC that blasts the opponent with fire, ice and lightning uses the exact fire, ice and lightning effects from Okami. Its so strikingly different from the rest of the game's aesthetics but in a really invigorating way. Each elemental flourish is accompanied by a musical cue that is also pulled right from Okami's original musical score. Its like a 5 second clip from Okami just happens on your screen. Its so unbelievably awesome!


Ammy shows off her elemental Hyper Combo for us twice!

I could really go on and on with more examples of how Capcom pulled in tons of presentation elements from Okami to make Ammy come to life, but I dont want to ramble on for a whole page here. Besides, I am happy to say that just as much time was spent on making Ammy play well as went into making her look good.

Ammy is a very versatile character who already seems to be popular in a wide variety of teams. Whether as an ssist, on point, keep away or rushdown, you can find a reason to include her and it will never feel like a wasted slot.

As an assist her most popular option is her Cold Star where she appears in the air behind the player and shots a series of about 6-7 ice projectiles downward at a 45 degree angle. It does great chip damage and locks down the opponent FOREVER on hit or block. Like "Doom rocks" before it, this assist is so good, it makes her worth reserving a spot on your team no matter what your strategy.

Tapping down twice and hitting one of the three attack buttons equips Ammy with different weapons, each of which is pulled straight from her game. Each endows her with different moves suited to different styles of play. Though I have heard it can be difficult to do, you can apparently switch equips mid combo to try to get creative, but no one has really cracked how to make truly effective use of this just yet. Even if that ends up being a dead end, the fact that she can switch stances to suit a particular style of play makes her extremely malleable to the play style you are going for.

She has really sick damage potential it seems, due to this one particular attack string that Worst Gief Ever of NeoEmpire found that does crazy damage on its own even without any fancy DHC/X-factor/assist shenanigans tacked on. Once people start building around it, Ammy is going to be a damage dealing god! Check it out:


That DAMAGE......

In that same video you also get a look at her suite of defensive moves. Those floating papers look great for covering a retreat and just controlling space. Those reflect/counter barriers are going to make people think twice about how they attack a skilled Ammy user too.

Overall, it's clear that once players start putting all these pieces together Ammy is going to be a real force. She really is going to please Okami fans as well as fighting game fans whether they be casual or competitive.

Well this ended up being a big one so thats all for now. Check back for at least 2 more character profiles tommorow!

Once You Pop, You Can't Stop

Well its been a year and a day since I last posted and for that I apologize. I'll be sure to fill everyone in on why I have been gone so long in next year's post (see what I did there?)

Sometimes people write because they feel they have something important to express that will change the world. Some people write because it gives them the opportunity to square themselves with some of the darker questions rattling about between their ears. I am writing today because I have an itch that needs scratching. I have caught a serious case of Marvel vs Capcom 3 fever and the only thing that can quell it is writing about it!

When I was younger and became fixated on some new game coming out I would sit in class and write lists that related to the game; a list of features, a list of characters, of moves/weapons/stages/ninjas/cyborgs/peacocks etc. that I knew to be in the game. It was all very fruitless (as I personally promise this post to be) but it gave me something to do to kill the wait until the game was released. In some strange way, making these lists and recalling every detail about the game I could was the next best thing to playing it, kind of like many people remember reading an instruction manual of a newly acquired game to kill time during the torturous ride home to play it for the first time. This will be just like that, except way before the game comes out, and way more OCD.

So the list I have a hankering to do is a full list of all of the characters featured in MvC3 and my overall impressions of them from a variety of standpoints (mechanics, design, utility, visual etc.) based on the 30 or so matches I played at NYCC 2010 and of course the tons of footage that has been all over the web for the last six months. I am just going to write as many impressions as I feel like right now and will continue in parts until I have covered the whole roster. As of this writing 34 characters have been confirmed (not including the 2 confirmed DLC characters Jill and Shuma Gorath) and strong speculation points to us seeing 2 more characters, namely Hsien-Ko and Sentinel, announced right before the game's February 15th release. Here we go! GET HYPE!!!

Here's to ten more years of hype!

Akuma

Akuma was just announced this week as one of 2 characters that will have to be unlocked before playing. Several sources have indicated that as you play the game you earn Player Points (pp) and that certain things will unlock as your pp rises. While its being said that an averag player will earn roughly 2k pp from one arcade run through and that the unlockable characters become available at 2k and 8k pp this seems a strange move. If a few quick runs through the sure to be easy arcade mode is all it takes, why make us play to unlock them at all I wonder? Especially after how people applauded Capcom's choice to have all 35 characters in Super Street Fighter 4 unlocked from the start, you would think MvC3 would follow suit. Its far from a big deal, but is odd enough to mention.

That said, Akuma is a total beast. I must admit that I am one of those shoto haters who was moaning that I didn't want another character slot to be taken up by one, but after seeing the reveal trailer and a few full matches, I can't stress enough that all you doubters (myself included) need to put the Haterade down and slowly back away.

One thing I noticed very quickly is that Akuma bucks the sad trend I have noticed of Street Fighter characters looking plain compared to the other combatants in most VS series games. In fact, Capcom did a pretty good job of remedying that problem throughout MvC3 with some notable exceptions (Ryu looks horribly out of place in this game visually). While not quite as imposing as his character model in Super Street Fighter 4 (SSF4), he looks appropriately muscular and exotic as befitting a character of his infamy in the Capcom U.

Each and every one of his special moves are swathed in that signature "psycho"purple that we have seen in countless SF titles, but here it crackles and sizzles in a way that is just hypnotic. It perfectly conveys that he is dipping into a power far more sinister and violent in nature than Ryu's. From his basic fireball all the way up to his iconic Raging Demon hyper combo (appearing here in its most visually arresting form yet) exudes an evil that is both imposing to play against and utterly cool to wield. "Dark Hadou" indeed!

From a mechanics and gameplay standpoint, Akuma is all gravy. He appears to posess nearly every single move he has ever posessed in the characters history. Dive kick, demon palm, air fireball, teleports, air fireball super and his version of the Shoryu Reppa are all in. The only move of note I have not seen is his "red" fireball from SSF4. Either it just hasn't been shown or they deemed it superfluous given the size and strength of his normal fireball. Besides that, if you have been repping Akuma since the old days, you will be extremely pleased with the moveset here.

Similarly to SSF4 he is an offensive dynamo with huge damage potential, tempered by extremely low health. On one video I watched, one hit from Thor, along with a couple of fireballs had him around 50% health. Factoring in how lethal chip damage seems to be in this game, expect people to try to pin Akuma down with streams of projectile hyper-combos (HC's) to chip down huge ammounts of his life, even when he blocks. Get ready to use X Factor and advancing guard a lot with him to minimize chip/keep him healthy if you want to anchor your team with him.

His combo potential is truly rediculous. His dive kick hits otg and bounces the target back up just enough to continue a combo and it also appears to be an overhead as well, making it a great tool. His air fireball hits otg as well and can subsequently combo into his air fireball HC. His tatsu is sick too. It hits multiple times in the air as well as on the ground and you can combo into his air fireball HC from it as well. Also, whether in the corner, or mid screen, you land fast enoughafter hitting a ground tatsu to dash up and continue comboing before your opponent hits the ground, which makes it possible to finish a chain with a tatsu, dash up, do another chain and then launch them and continue to combo from there.

His Raging Demon is a lvl 3 HC, requiring 3 bars, but it is a great punishment tool. It is fast enough to punish some opponents HC on reaction from across the screen. This can be seen at the end of his reveal trailer where Dr. Doom winds up for one of his projectile HC's and Akuma activates the Raging Demon afterwards and grabs Doom right outof his startup animation. With 3 bars loaded, many characters will be unable to safely execute a HC against Akuma unless its in a combo.

All told, Akuma is a perfect storm of utility, style and badassery that I am sure will make him a popular character choice for both the casuals and the touney players.

Albert Wesker

Wesker seems like a sweet new add to me. The funny thing about him is that he is such a well known and loved villain to the non-fighting game crowd, but I can't quite see casual players making the most out of him. I see a lot of casual types choosing him because they know him and he looks like a badass and then putting him back down when they can't figure out how to use him effectively.

This isn't to say he isn't effective. Quite the contrary, I think he will become a mainstay in many tourney rosters. The primary draw of Wesker is his teleportation move. Using it, he can either put more distance between him and his opponent, appear behind them or appear above them. He also has a command normal where he pulls out his gun and shoots the opponent from afar. It isnt very threatening but he can cancel out of it into a teleport for great mind games. When you combine this with his extremely quick dash he becomes a great rushdown character that experienced players will use to confuse and decieve their opponent in order to get close and start combos.

He has other nice tools for mixups too. One of his specials dashes him forward to strike the enemy and one version of it actually crosses up on hit or block, giving him the chance to continue his barage by making his opponent block the wrong way. Lastly, he has a command throw that he can combo out of. This will be perfect for when people turtle up after he teleports. If it seems like they are guessing the right way to block after a teleport, just throw this out and then go on to combo like normal.Some people do the opposite and instead of turtle, they start doing something we in the hardcore fighting game scene like to call "hitting buttons". For players like that, you could always follow up a teleport with his HC that is a counter attack. Just activate and it absorbs the incoming attack and instantly punishes the opponent (works against HC's too!!) With the right assists in the mix on top of these mind games, advanced players will terrorize opponents with Wesker I believe.

His damage potential is not terribly impressive, but it certainly isn't bad. He can combo quite easily into his lvl 3 HC, which conludes humorously with him hurling A MISSILE at his downed opponent. He also has an HC similar to Spidey's old Maximum Spider, except it combos off of juggles very readily which I am sure will be a BnB combo whenever one gets the drop on their opponent with his teleport mind games. His normals seem to have enough range for him to threaten with chain combos from a decent distance out after a dash.

I haven't seen any truly high level Wesker play yet, but I have a feeling the more experienced players are going to have a field day with him. While I think he falls short in the fan service department, fighting game vets will get a lot out of him and he certainly has enough style and presence to hold his own against the rest of the roster.


Well thats it for now folks. I am thinking I will write a couple more every day or two until release. February 15th is only 27 days away! Get hype! It's gonna be sooooooo pringles!!