This game has you picking a team of 3 players from the Capcom and Marvel universes. It has a tag system which is actually a good thing and makes for very competitive matches when you are low on health slamming the two buttons down for a crutial tag in. This game also has more than just Street Fighter characters for the Capcom side, they have Captain Commando (a character made for the Capcom company, the first three letters of Captain and Commando make up Capcom), Jin, Hayato from Star Gladiator, Sonson, and Mega Man with two other characters from that series. I am sure you can guess who the Marvel side is represented by the most, but they also have other random super heroes from different backgrounds which really can fill out the roster very nicely. Speaking of the roster it has a total of 56 people to choose from which is a big list. All the fighters can do their own super combos when your super meter is full but if you want to destroy with full potential you will figure out the way to have a team super combo which will destroy the other trio you are trying to make it past. The thing you need to do is experiment to find the best team with the best combo and I think that I might have found a few of them in my own right which I will talk about later in this review. Each player has their good and bad sides and if you spend enough time playing it you can easily find out how to be technical, speedy, powerful, or a cheap little bitch of a person with your team.

Mind you I am sure when this game gets released in the USA again that the character select screen will not be in Japanese.

I have to review this game for what it is so I can give you a preview of it in case you somehow have not had the pleasure of playing this game yet. This game is pretty…and I cannot say that enough. The art on every single person is nothing short of straight up beautiful. The backgrounds are artistic and they are perfect for this game. If the background had a clock in it, it would actually sync up with the clock in the machine to give you the correct time which is a nice touch. Every single animation is done perfect down to a T, they even include a 2-d version of Jill Valentine and the damn Tyrant that she fights in the Resident Evil series and that looks great as well. They spent alot of time getting all this together after they made the original Marvel vs Capcom, more or less because the fans wanted it and I am glad that these superpowers in the industries they are in decided to give the fans what they want.

Now as far as characters go this game is ridiculous with the amount of different styles that are in this game so I will have to discuss them in a pretty big scope here. There are very few street fighters that were in the series that were not involved in this game such as T-Hawk and Dee Jay, and they were not in this game I would guess to popular demand saying that they do not need both those shit-holes in the game to take up space and be terrible. See a lot of the characters are pretty similar to other characters in the game. Cammy is a fast yet not powerful character, so her speed makes her good against slow characters. At the same time Spiderman has the same type of style, him and Cammy even share a super combo that is pretty much identical, his being the Maximum Spider and hers being the Killer Bee Assault. Then again you have your standard middle of the road fighters such as Ryu and Ken who are just like they are in street fighter 2 except that Ryu’s fireball is fucking gigantic compared to Ken’s and even Akuma’s. There are also big ass slow guys that join the fight and can be awesome and terrible at the same time, for example Juggernaut is the most powerful person in the game but is by far even slower than the Hulk or even Sentinel which is incredible with how slow they are. Look for the sake of this I will discuss a few characters in more details just to tell you who to look out for and who to play as.

Gambit is fast, very fast in fact but obviously his power will be a little less than the average person. He makes up for it though with his super combos and even with his regular special move that freezes the opponent in place if they get hit with his “Kinetic Cards”. If you can stand to use a speedy person then he is one of the people you need to look for. Speaking of X-men there are two versions of Wolverine in this game, one being bone claw, and they other having his standard Adamantium  claws. Both characters are fast, and can do quite a bit a damage although Bone-claw Wolverine is slightly faster and not as powerful, while both of them can take a lot of damage….too bad he can not regenerate his health as fast as he does in the comics though. To finish off the speedy characters that I enjoy I have to say that Cammy is badass. In this game you can dash and it is not very hard to take advantage of this with her because she might be the fastest person in the entire game, if you are against a person that cannot avoid a rush all you have to do is go and dash towards them then Cannon Spike, dash back and repeat….if you want to be a cheap bitch about it all. I am a street fighter fan-boy, and I love Ryu and Akuma…but in this game based off a overall basis I have to give the advantage to Ryu. Akuma is powerful yes but they did dumb him down for this game so people could not just destroy constantly with him like they have in other games. Once again I must say that the fact that Ryu’s fireball takes up 3/4th’s of a character model when thrown gives you a great weapon to keep people at bay with. On the same level as him I think is Captain Commando, who actually is slightly faster than Ryu, and is probably  a little more powerful but to do combos with him is slightly harder than one would initially think. Up next is Jill Valentine from the Resident Evil series. She is quick and actually can rack up some damage if you know how to use her. She uses dogs and zombies from the RE series to actually perform special moves, one of her super combos actually has her call up the tyrant to destroy your ass with three gigantic slices from his big claw. In my opinion her best move is how she has a counter attack where she pulls out her Beretta and as long as you keep hitting the strong punch button she will fire up to nine shots right into the person who tried to hurt you. Venom is a badass in this game and yes he is slower but his attacks are actually quite quick for a man of his size. His specials can do a lot of damage but you really have to get used to his style to use him effectively, Iron Man (and also War Machine) in this game is the same way so if you choose to use them be careful. Out of the slowest characters I can only stand Sentinel and Juggernaut. Juggernaut I will use almost never, but Sentinel is a very good character. When you are up against someone who must dash in and attack, or someone who cannot fight from a distance then you can be the worlds biggest bitch with Sentinel. He shoots out a laser from his mouth which can go the full length of the screen but nevertheless.

Jill summons the tyrant to completely obliterate SonSon and her little friends.

Personally I cannot stand any of the Darkstalkers characters in this game because they are not the people I used when I used to play the game in the arcade. Where in the Hell is my Jon Taliban, he is a werewolf and he is not in this game. I also hate a lot of the other characters in this game that are part of the Marvel side. There are so many generic characters that are useless unless your going to exploit the game which is what a lot of these people that play the game do. Mega Man is in this game and he is such a little bitch…I am sorry to say it I never was a fan of Mega Man but even I realize that Capcom has finally spent all their time making sure that he is between the ages of roughly 8-10 and that he is the biggest pussy in the fighting universe. B.B. Hood has more balls then Mega Man ever could. I will say this about my favorite fighting game of all time, there is something that I can easily gripe about.  Damn near every character has a infinite combo, which would not be so bad had they not been so easy to pull off. A little while back while I was at an arcade with a group of friends, I found a MVC2 machine and decided to play it. While kicking a huge amount of ass I had a random guy come up and ask to join me, and low and behold all he did was exploit the shit out of this game and yea he beat me but I actually held my own until about 10 seconds left in the entire match so to me that is a victory in itself. If you are going to play anyone in the arcade beware that your ass will get exploited more than likely, or even if you play this against a decent player on X-box Live you will have this happen as well.

The final boss in this game is hard, and if it’s your first time going up against the bastard named Abyss…you will lose unless you pull off a huge amount of bullshit. He has three forms and each form is crazier than the last. His first form has him dressed like a huge metal samurai, which throws lightning bolts and tridents at you, while he can also fire a huge laser from his chest. Fast characters are really good against him if you can just figure out exactly when to block and when to counter an attack with a super jump to just go over him completely. If you get past him you will face a green goo like substance that looks like it’s made of Slimer from Ghostbusters. This form will actually shoot lasers, and taunt you the whole time…attacking him with a close ranger character is not a good idea at all because of the damage he can cause so you really need someone from long range like Ryu or Gambit. The third form is a huge dog like demon from Hell. This thing is the length of 75% of the screen and the entire height of it if he is on screen at all. He constantly teleports and has the ability to keep shooting things from across the screen so your best bet is to constantly back up so you can block if he attacks and then just keep going for him. You must be careful though because if he hits you with a super combo he can kill all three of your players so fast that you will not even be able to react to what you just witnessed on the screen. I have not lost to the boss since the first time I went up against him actually. Once you figure out his pattern of all three forms he is not difficult but that first time you face him will be a monstrous  task to say the least.If you have a team with a good super combo it makes it a lot easier as well…any team with Gambit has an advantage because he can freeze the first two forms with his super combo. Honestly I still think the best super combo team I have found is Gambit with his cards, Ryu with a gigantic fireball, and to finish it up Iron Man with his cannon shooting a crazy amount of ammo at the sad sap in his way.

Example of the “Iron Man” Tony Stark owning face with his cannon.

Overall this game is almost perfect. I cannot think of a better fighter that I have played in my life. Even Street Fighter IV is not as good as this game in my opinion. You need to get ahold of this game on the marketplace, they have redone the sprites and made everything even prettier, you need to get it off the marketplace anyway because unless you own a Dreamcast and the actual game from 2000 when it was ported you kinda got fucked because all the other ports were apparently nothing short of terrible. I have no idea how much this game will be when it finally comes out but regardless what it costs I will purchase it. I have said before and will say it again Capcom could make me pay 50 dollars willingly to get this game all over again and relive the fun that I have had while playing it. If you play this game and you honestly do not like it, I will actually understand but will ultimately be confused at how you can not stand a game like this. It has a lot of ups and a few downs but all together this game does nothing but jut amaze me constantly every time I play it on my Dreamcast or in the arcade which is why I cannot wait to pick this up on the marketplace. Thank you Capcom and Marvel for listening to what the fans have been craving this whole time…although I hope in the future sometime that they will make a sequel to this game and revamp the series again.

I may be a fanboy but this asshole is just ridiculous.

If you haven’t played Street Fighter 4 yet, go out and get to it. By far my favorite game in the series. One of the things that makes this game so badass is the soundtrack. Enjoy this double take today, with 2 songs! I’m sure I’ll be pulling more jems from this OST as time goes on, so stay tuned!

PS3 – Street Fighter 4 – Theme of Ryu

PS3 – Street Fighter 4 – VCN Stage

Wow… opinions were quite varied on this game.. And while I’ve been told that I’m the only one in the entire free world that could have a shred of doubt when it comes to this huge release, I’m gonna have to stick to my guns. So here you have it, both Keith Stidham, and I, Tom Webster duke it out over what RE5 is and could have been. Seriously people, blood is everywhere from the fist to cuffs!
Tom:
Resident Evil… when the first game came out, it revitalized and changed the way people looked at Survival Horror games, essentially breathing life into this gigantic genre that we all know and love. What Capcom did with this amazing game is recreate it. Not to say it wasn’t enjoyable, I liked RE2, I played through it, it was enjoyable. But it was basically an expansion pack for Resident Evil. Same graphics, animations, concept. This happens more often than not in this industry. Well, that game was remade and released countless times under various numbers and subtitles until that one glorious day: Resident Evil 4. At one time a true Gamecube exclusive, Capcom took up their sword to retrieve their fallen kingdom. They once again reigned as champions of a genre, truly recreating what “Survival Horror” meant to video games. Sadly enough, though, it seems this once righteous king has slipped back into his old ways.
Capcom has once again capitalized on their huge success with Resident Evil 4 and we all should have seen it coming. I was worried when I first saw the trailers of RE5, noticing that Capcom chose to use the exact same animations that were in RE4 for this new game. I threw these worries away thinking, “Ok… its just a trailer, a tech demo, a teaser, they used the same content from 4 just to show off what they have been working on… they’ll change it by release.” Needless to say, I was completely wrong. Not only have they recycled animations, but they’ve recycled all of Resident Evil 4. I’m not saying this is a crime against humanity, I loved Resident Evil 4. I love Leon kicking ass and not bothering to take names, I liked the new creatures and how everything was very do or die, but when I see “Resident Evil 5″, I expect something different. Sure, take the same concept, the amazing balls-to-the-wall run and gun action, take the terrifying “Fast Zombies”, but do something different with it. Capcom has instead chosen to re-skin Leon and make an expansion pack that adds co-op. Now I love co-op as much as the next guy, and its quite a nice change to have a computer-controlled partner behave intelligently, but the game is just Resident Evil 4 with a makeover. I don’t mind the core gameplay being the same, I think they really hit on something good with 4, but I do have a problem with reusing the same animations, voice clips, and enemy AI as the previous game in the series. It seems lazy to me. If you’re going to call this game Resident Evil 5, it should be more than a cosmetic change, there should be something fundamentally better about RE5 than RE4. Capcom should give me a reason to buy this game other than “Umm.. its in Africa (among other place), looks, smells, plays, and feels like RE4.. and LOOK OVER HERE CO-OP!”
With this demo, and that’s just what it is, a DEMO, Capcom has once again let me down. Granted: Its not a finished product. The current release date for this game is March 26, 2009. Other than basic bug testing, the game is done, they can’t change the game enough to differentiate itself from RE4 by that date. Unless Capcom pulls a Nintendo and pushes the release back another six months, don’t expect another Resident Evil game, expect an expansion pack, because that’s exactly what it is.

PS- I’m a little bitch and I take it in the butt everyday, but I use Vaseline so I only have a small rash.

Keith: