Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 nailed it in 2011 with great gameplay and all of it still stays relevant and fun five years removed. I wish more fighting games took heavy notes from this title and started to craft their own experience after it because this is how you make a fighting game.
That time you wished that Capcom would go take a hard look at what made their fighting franchise great and they did — and it became great again thanks to a 2011 title. Definitely a firm reminder that sometimes things were made better in the past.
Just last week I had broken out my Sega Saturn Japanese import Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter and pined for the days where more focus laid on gameplay rather than visuals. Visuals are nice and all, but there’s nothing quite nice as having a fantastic button-masher that caters to both the novice and hard core fans out there. Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter did this nearly 20 years ago, and still does this. With that said, honestly speaking, the most recent Street Fighter games have never matched that game’s intensity, gameplay design or pure focus on the fighting experience. Street Fighter IV, in all its greatness, feels like you’re fighting in mud, as its gameplay is so darn slow , as well as the fighting moves. The controls are stiff and the players look ridiculously oversized, but appropriately sized for the speed of the game. The same can be said for Street Fighter V, which certainly sped things up, but still felt like it carried over the same type of gameplay.
I know, some of you have stopped reading by now, but this is just the opinion of someone who cut their teeth on a Street Fighter game in the arcades that featured two gigantic punching buttons. I’m far more old school when it comes to fighting game experiences. That doesn’t make me an expert, mind you, rather it just makes me old and dated, as well as grumpy when it comes to my fighting game experiences.
Sad realization aside, I honestly expected Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 to follow the same suit as the previous Capcom fighters. Thankfully, it did not and I couldn’t be happier to return to a fighting game that feels beautifully loose and fun at the same time. I missed this one the first time around, which makes me sad because I think at that point in 2011 I had all but given up on fighting games (there were a lot of crap games out there), so I’m delighted to experience this fighter for the first time on a good system (with all its parts intact). I’m impressed that the game is this much fun and enormously impressed that it completely and utterly outshines its cousins in both the gameplay and visual department. It feels like an old fighting game and looks like an old fighting game, so there’s a lot to love about it.
Let’s get right into it.
The gameplay in UMvC3 is quick and furious. The speed of how you can get into the match, how fast you can fight in it and how fast you can restart once you’ve been defeated harkens back to a time where you would actually had to pop quarters into machine to play. It’s quick. Speed is so vital in games like this, if not merely to get the adrenaline going and for giving everyone a chance to win through an insane amount of button mashing. The more sporadic the gameplay, the better chance everyone has to win. I know that sounds like a ludicrous statement, but novices have better chances of winning when gameplay is going 100mph. For example, my son has beaten me senseless more times in this game than he did in Street Fighter V. He is eight years old and a button mashing fool. I can’t get him to stay still, or at least in one area long enough to beat him like a rented mule (see our times in Mortal Kombat for other examples — well, you can’t, but trust me). The kid picks Wolverine on his team and it’s pretty much over. He tornado claws the hell out of me. Santa will be bringing this gamer coal this Christmas in retribution (kidding, but I’m eating his candy in his stocking without remorse). Anyway, the speed of the game helps him out, as well as its ease of use button mashing.
The control scheme is certainly patterned well. Finding the right moves to perform over and over again weren’t difficult — and that’s in ‘normal’ mode, not ‘simple’. Simple mode is supposed to help out a bit more than normal. Anyway, unleashing moves, such as Wolverine’s tornado claws or Iron Man’s repulsor blast, is easy-peasy in the game. It’s seriously just like the control scheme in the old Saturn game and just as fun. The special moves are equally as easy to pull off, hitting a few buttons when the time is right and unleashing hell on your opponents, as well as switching characters to help you and then eventually replace you. The additional leveling of special moves and the inclusion of multiple characters in pulling them off is also quite nice. There’s a lot to love about this game’s ease-of-use in the control scheme department. It gives me faith that someone on the Capcom developer team for Street Fighter is taking notes out there for the next title. I hope they are taking notes.
As for character balance, well it’s not exactly balanced. There are some great characters in this game that have been brought over from previous titles in the series and then there are some new characters that are just firm reminders of other games. For example, Phoenix Wright, in all his humor and glory, is one of the more useless characters in the bunch. He basically is stiff and tough to control. His moves are more close-quarter-combat oriented, so it’s difficult to gauge exactly how he works without getting one’s ass kicked thoroughly. His one big move is sending Maya out to attack. Humorous? Definitely, but that’s about as top tier as it gets. There are other characters, not a lot, that feel more like advertisements than viable options for teammates, which cause an imbalance in some of the characters when paired against each other. That’s not to say you can’t find good ways to use them, but not all characters feel like they have something to offer to the fight. In my opinion, that is the biggest flaw of the game.
With that said, the game is still fun as hell to play. Getting through levels with the characters, fighting 3v3 and going up against Galactus at the end is an entertaining experience that is tough to get through, but also repeatable using different fighters. When you have a fighting game that makes you want to go back and play it over and over again, then you know its longevity is going to be pretty solid. This game was made in 2011, re-released in 2016 and it still is fun as hell to play over and over again. That’s saying a lot.
As for the upgrades in visuals, Capcom did a great job of bringing the game up to today’s standards, and somewhat beyond with the 60fps (not a lot of games can reach this mark, regardless of system power). I’m incredibly impressed with how Capcom maintained those arcade-y visuals, mainly with the backgrounds that are ridiculous as they are beautiful, and how much I have missed arcade visuals in the fighting genre. The character models are not overblown muscle heads. No one looks stiff or moves slowly to attack. Everything that was brought over from 2011 maintains the heart and soul of arcade fighting games from the 90s, while sporting a thin coat of shimmer to make it look more finished for this generation of consoles. There’s a lot to love about the visuals and how Capcom treated the upgrades.
One other point to note is the inclusion of the DLC that was released for it back in the day. I know that was a point of contention with the original release in 2011, but it’s all packed in with this one release. That should certainly make some people happy. Maybe. Probably not, this generation complains a lot.
Anyway, let’s wrap this up, shall we?
