Fun fact and public service announcement: as I write this, my preorder of Marvel vs. Capcom 3 from the Capcom Store has still not arrived, one week after release (when I cracked and bought a copy from Best Buy instead) and two weeks after the game broke street. A lot of people are in this boat right now. Capcom promises compensation of some kind, but whatever it is I'm not likely to be pleased with it. I'm never using Capcom's store again, and you shouldn't either. That said, if you're looking for a Collector's Edition copy (they only made one shipment and it's gone forever), I'm selling it to the highest bidder as soon as it gets here.
In any case, I've been playing MVC3 for about a week now. It's a really heavy game, and all my digging has only gotten me an inch or two below the surface. That said, I have a confident handle on the game and I've definitely made up my mind about a couple of things. The first thing I've made up my mind about is that this game is not finished.
This is different from Street Fighter 4, which was a living game that grew to over double its size by the final (we all hope) Arcade Edition update. The difference is where the increments were at as games when they came out. That first arcade version of SF4 was a complete game, and MVC3 is only at about 80%.
MVC3 is a rushed game. That's not speculation, it's fact. It shows. A lot of what I previously complained about-- the dearth of single-player content, the severely flawed online interface, the fact that nobody had time to think about Sentinel for five minutes-- can be chalked up to Capcom needing to get this game out the door fast. I've heard speculation that it's an "end of the fiscal year" thing.
What I take as proof that this game was pushed hard through the door is what's going on with the DLC characters. These extra characters had been slated for inclusion at some point, but eventually it was determined that they wouldn't make it in on deadline. What had been cobbled together of Jill Valentine and Shuma-Gorath (not a lot) was found on the disc by hackers, but rather than delaying the game, Capcom opted to release it now and sell these characters later individually for $5 a piece. (Buyers of the Collector's Edition, which cost $10 more, recieve a code to get both characters free along with the rest of the extras in the package.) Kind of a dick move.
(4/3/11 update: The "DLC" for both Shuma and Jill came in the form of 100KB unlock codes, suggesting-- if not proving outright-- that these characters were essentially done and simply held back before release as a cash grab. This decision goes from "kind of a dick move" to a "complete asshole move".)
(The identities of two DLC characters who weren't almost done, Frank West and Psylocke, have already been leaked, and the shape of the character select screen suggests four more characters at least.)
My speculation of a Hyper MVC3 in a year with 20 more characters stands. Right now we are beta testing for the real Marvel 3. For a game in its infancy, it's really very solid: more so than most complete fighting games. Sentinel stands out as a design issue, an infinite combo has inevitably been found, and I think the level 3 X-Factor damage boost is kind of silly, but overall the game's going well.
If the game wasn't already so packed with content, such fun to play, and so full of possibilities in its present state-- in other words, if it was King Of Fighters XII-- I'd have a problem with the fact that we're playing a beta. As it is, I'll stick to learning a different character every day for the hell of it. But I think I'll be maining Felicia. Her corner rushdown is pure fear!
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