Review of Marvel Versus Capcom 3 for PS3

I have been a fan of the Marvel vs. Capcom series since I played the first game in middle school so I was really excited for the release of the 3rd installment. I was definitely not disappointed, the game is fast paced and really delivers on the action however there are a few points that could have been improved on.  The game only has a few drawbacks which I will quickly highlight.

One of the drawbacks is that Capcom had promised a "deep" story, of course as with nearly every fighting game the story is next to non-existent.  A few villains from the marvel and Capcom decide that they want to rule the world or something and so they enlist the help of Galactus, that's it.  While this doesn't particularly detract from the game I still found it an annoyance that Capcom had the balls to say it would have a "deep" story and proceed to flesh it out about as well as the SNES' Street Fighter II. Another problem is the online match finder takes a few tries to find a match and each time it fails to find one you are sent back to the menu which is a minor annoyance.  Another thing that should have been addressed is the online lobbies, you wait in a virtual line to play against someone, and while you are waiting you are just stuck staring at the menu screen rather than being able to watch the match.  Again this is only a minor annoyance. 

Other than these few minor drawbacks I have to say this game is pretty much amazing. The graphics look great and while I miss the hand drawn sprites from the first MVC the cell shaded look that this one is sporting is amazing.

 The cell shaded look of MVC 3

  The online play is completely seamless, out of around 100 matches I can only remember experiencing lag in 3 matches, and even then it was not enough to even annoy me.  The game play is extremely well tuned, the characters are well balanced for the most part and while it is simple enough for a neophyte to pick up and play, it also has enough depth to challenge the hard core fighter fan with advanced combinations, air combos, cancels, and some tricky button inputs.  The final boss Galactus is a great choice, and whats more that dude is hard enough to kill that you feel a serious sense of satisfaction when you finally do it.  The gameplay itself is so addicting that I continue to find myself saying, "one more match" until my fingers are sore.

Overall this game is amazing and I plan to play the crap out of it, the online matches are what really makes the game shine and I recommend it to anyone who may be a fan of fighting games and who has the patience to play a game with a moderately steep learning curve.

While I listed some of the drawbacks to the game earlier I have one more complaint but I have saved it for the end because this, unlike my other complaints is a mainly subjective complaint.  I am a little bit disappointed in the roster that was included in this game.  While some of the old favorites return, others have not and some of the new additions I find to be a little perplexing.  Why take out Megaman and add Zero in?  How about removing Tron Bonne and adding Zero instead?  I'm sure that someone has played a game with Tron Bonne in it and thought it was great but honestly I couldn't give a crap about playing a character that has stupid lego-looking robots hitting people with squishy carnival hammers. Also why does Darkstalkers get 3 characters in the game? Has anyone outside of Japan given a crap about Darkstalkers since the mid-ninties? Why not cut it down to 2 characters or just 1 and drop a character from Onimusha into the mix? Some of the Marvel characters are a little baffling to me as well, MVC2 had Gambit in it and he was awesome. He is one of the biggest fan favorites among people my age because of his appearance in the X-men cartoon show and was pretty damn fun to play in the second game so why take him out? Why take out Gambit and add in M.O.D.O.K. of all characters? And where is Venom at? he was amazing in both of the original games unfortunately he is conspicuously absent.  Taskmaster and Superskrull are two other characters that I think were bad moves, If you want some villains add in some timeless and iconic villains that may be a little more accessible to people. I think Doctor Octopus, Green Goblin, or Red Skull would have made better villains, even Silver Surfer could have been added in as one since the developers decided to add Galactus into the game.  Anyway that is my very subjective rant about some of the problems with the roster in this game, it is still a great game however and should definitely be played.