Marvel vs. Capcom 2 (Arcade) review "Ladies and gentlemen, may I now proudly present to you, a Vegita Fireside Chat. "

Ladies and gentlemen, may I now proudly present to you, a Vegita Fireside Chat.

"Hello, folks. I know, I've been away from reviewing for quite a long period of time. That is simply because I had gotten so sick and tired of reviewing and the concept of reviewing games itself. But that time has passed, so I now bring you: MY FIRST ALL-NEW REVIEW IN AT LEAST 3 MONTHS!!!

::Dramatic drum roll as he pulls up a card that lists the name of the game he's reviewing::

"May I present-

::Card gets stuck in the chair. Vegita yanks hard, only to send the card into the fire::

"Aw, screw it. You can see, from the title of the page, that the game I'm reviewing is none other than Marvel vs. Capcom 2. Yes, this wonderfully-violent, action-packed, fast-paced...

::looks at hand for some more adjectives and adverbs::

"Er...coffee-flavored (what DID I write there?), poly-saturated, Super Princess Candy-Pants GlucoseJoe (ok, just get on with the review) has its ups and downs. I would give you a background to the game, but instead of going off on a rant that would take several days, I will instead give you a 1-line description of the game:

"And on the 7th day, God created Marvel vs. Capcom 2; and it was good."

::adjusts tie, crosses 1 leg over the other::

"Now, to give a short summary of what's good about this game.

::lifts card, showing bar graph::

"As you can see, the graphics, sound, and gameplay in this game have been turbo-charged, boosting their efficiency to very high levels. In other words, this game is eye candy, the voice work is superb, and the gameplay, c'est magnific. Meanwhile, on the downside of this game-

::flips up another card, this one showing a different set of bars::

"Yes, gameplay is again on this one, as is its drug use content. I'll get to both in a second. Let's digress on the finer points of the game!

::holds up a picture showing the character-selection screen::

"As you can see, this game offers a WHOPPING 56 playable characters! Each one of these characters have different colors they can pick (outfits and such), and they all hail from either Marvel or Capcom games (duh!). I don't know if it's split down the middle or not, but I can safely say that counting that many characters has given me a headache, and playing as all of them has given my bank account a surgical maneuver called 'The Money Drain'.

"To compensate for the absolute massive amount of characters, you get to pick 3 of them. Yeah, 3 out of 56. By the standards of Street Fighter II, where you had to pick 1 character out of 8 (12.5%), this game gives you 3 out of 56, thus giving you a 5% playability rate. You play as 5 percent of the characters in the game, all told! Now I'm just throwing numbers at you to make you think this game is even bigger than it really is!

::turns the picture around, showing another picture, this one showing 3 different characters on screen at the same time, whooping each other around::

"Seriously, though, this game has quite a bit of diversity. You pick 3 characters, and each one of those characters get to pick 1 of 3 different 'assists'. You have a special button now that calls in one of your 2 partners, and they perform this assist for you, be it a special move, a regular move, or even the healing move. Each character also has at least 1 super hyper special ultra move (SHSUM, or 'Shushum!" as I like to slur it), a myriad of regular moves, and lots of other abilities that they were unable to use in either the game they starred in or the comic they appeared in. Wow.

"Allow me to give you a brief example of my first impression of this game when I first came upon it.

::rolls in a TV and presses 'play' on the VCR::

It is a warm summer's day, and Vegita is walking inside the arcade of Cool Crest, having thoroughly trounced his friends at a round of mini-golf. Suddenly a wall of new and interesting sounds get his attention.

Vegita: What is this?

This strange, new machine has gotten his attention. He is intrigued. He pulls 2 tokens out of his pocket, inserts them into the machine, and grasps the control stick.

Vegita: That is TOO many characters. I'm going to have to pick them at random!

He picks a very poor combination of characters, but they are all very-well animated and voiced.

Vegita: HOLY CRAP!

"This is generally now it went. Now, to talk about the downsides of this game! The first one - the 3 character idea. In Marvel vs. Capcom 1, you used 2 characters versus 2 other characters in massive brawls. These made for some pretty hectic battles, since you could also use special 'helpers', random characters that came in and performed a certain attack for you. In Marvel vs. Capcom 2, however, you get to use 3 characters. 3 players! That means that the time limit of 99 (which is FAR more than 99 seconds...why can't people count past 99 anymore?) is going to get down near about 30 by the time someone wins the fight. 3 players. That means it is possible to have 6 people one the screen at 1 time, shooting, punching, blasting, eating, smashing, dancing with, playing poker with, and biting each other AT THE SAME TIME! Wow...

::holds up a picture of the character Amingo holding creating a plant-like object::

"I would also like to talk about the drug use of this game. What exactly IS that Amingo used as his 'healing' assist? It doesn't look like anything I'd be ready and willing to eat in the middle of a fight, I can tell you! I think it is some kind of wierd drug that he plants with the hopes of causing a chemical imbalance in one of the other characters, rendering them useless. And how do we know that 'peach' SonSon offers isn't really something much more sinister? Then you have the character Jill Valentine who offers you a potted plant. I think it would be easier for me to say she offers you some 'planted pot'!

::uncrosses leg, crosses the other one::

"So what have we learned today, kiddies? We have learned that this game has a lot of characters, each with superb animation, excellent voice actors for each of them (I love Spiderman, Wolverine and Jill, by the way), and the gameplay is very tight. Unfortunately, the idea of more characters shouldn't carry over to the actual fighting as it has. Battles can run longer and longer, until you just don't feel like carrying on anymore, and want to jump up and run towards the nearest window with the intent of jumping out and ending the misery once and for all because that stupid computer is really, REALLY cheap with Guile, and I've ALWAYS HATED Guile, even though his names rhymes with style he still irritates me, and I....AUUUGGGGHHHH!!!!!!"

::gets up and jumps out the window, screaming something about getting 'beamed' to death by a "One-eyed X-Man, a Mutant with a lot of guns, and a Street Fighter"::

We now return you to your regularly scheduled life.

Community review by reverend (September 12, 2004) A bio for this contributor is currently unavailable, but check back soon to see if that changes. If you are the author of this review, you can update your bio from the Settings page.