Saturday, January 22, 2011

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.

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