Morrigan Aensland FTW! :D (TvC Review)

You could probably guess what made me buy Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, right? (Look to your left. No your other left!) I honestly did not care if this Versus game was coming to the states or not because I have not heard of the Versus series until who knows when. Yes, I’ve heard of Marvel vs. Capcom, but only Marvel caught my attention though I haven’t played the game at all. In fact, I knew/know as much about as Capcom as people do with Tatsunoko when playing TvC. I haven’t even heard of Morrigan Aensland, Alex, Ryu, or Chun-Li, until I played TvC. And guess what? This same exact experience is what I got when I first played the N64 Super Smash Bros. (which introduced me to the Metroid series).

So as you can probably tell later in this review, TvC is like playing Super Smash Bros. 64 all over again, only this time the fighting is taken to the next level:

Graphics 10/10: Sure they look cartoonish, but very, very shiny! My favorite graphics engine only second to Nintendo’s. The developers took out the animated movies at the end of the other versions (only the Japanese version has them) when porting over which is a real bummer.

Sound 10/10: The music is top notch; my favorite theme is Burning Wasteland’s. Every character except Frank West speaks in Japanese, which will be difficult to understand, but it’s kind of cool to hear Japanese in an American port. I just with I knew what the heck the characters were saying!

Controls ?/10: Why the question mark, you wonder? Well, like Brawl, TvC can be handled with many types of controllers for the players’ own comfort. So being a newbie, and coming from the Smash Bros. series, I expected the GameCube controls to feel the exact same way in TvC as, you guessed it, like Brawl. And…it’s not the same. Unlike Brawl, where you can press one button to attack in many different ways, TvC requires the use of multiple buttons for Low, Medium, and High attacks. So you can probably imagine how confused I was when playing with the GC controller. I tried with the Classic Controller, same thing only worse. I was just not used to having multiple attack buttons, and I’m still not. Fortunately, the Wiimote-and-Nunchuck served almost the exact same purpose as the Brawl GC controls and I stuck with them. Yes, it may be the cheapest control scheme to use, but remember TvC was designed to introduce the new audience to the Versus series. And I am one of those people. (whoop de doo)

Gameplay 8/10:
What really made me interested in buying TvC was not because of who the characters were or the company brand/brand loyalty. This was a fighting game that was chaotic, over-the-top, and an all-out brawler, like Super Smash Brothers Brawl. Hyper Combos that played out like Final Smashes; unique and regular special attacks like the regular and special attacks of Brawl; multiple controllers to use and configurations like Brawl; a training mode for newbies like Brawl; a huge character roster to choose from like Brawl; and crazy background stages…like Brawl! XD

The only differences are that TvC has from Brawl is TvC has a health bar and Brawl has a damage meter; Brawl has items and TvC does not; and the concept how four fighters are used in TvC is way different than what Brawl does. Unlike Brawl, fighting in TvC is more of a tag team fighter than an all out Brawler with four characters. If your character is low on health, you can switch to your partner using the partner button to recover while your partner takes care of your opponent. In Brawl, you and your partner fight together rather than tag, and whoever has the most score wins by knocking people off the stage with high damage. The concept in TvC is simple: like many arcade fighting games I’ve played (like Mortal Combat and Soul Calibur III) whoever’s health bar goes out first loses and the other wins.

There’s an Arcade for each character you use and you can unlock multiple colors, icons, backgrounds, and movie for each character. There’s Survival which is pretty easy, and offline Versus so you can play with your friends on the couch. There’s even a small little extra shooting game that’s really fun to play, but hard. The only gripe I have is that I wanted a lot more content like Brawl has.

Multiplayer 5/10:
At first, the multiplayer was really fun to play though I died several times at the beginning; I managed to get better overtime. However, after playing for numerous amounts of time, I began to realize just how unbalanced the online and the character roster are.

In the offline, the A.I. even on the highest difficulty would actually leave you an opening for attack and would actually let you have a chance to fight back with all you can muster. The A.I. wasn’t dumb though, and would fight back when necessary.

In the online, it’s more like “Let’s drive and trap the opponent to one of the sides of the level and use cheap moves with a cheap character to bring him down without a fight!” It’s literally like that. What makes it even worse that 2/3’s of the time you meet someone online they’re either an easy newbie (fair for you, but unfair for him), or someone who’s ridiculously higher ranked than you are (unfair for you, but fair for him). It’s rare that you’ll come across someone who’s at the same level as you are (fair for you and him). Add lots of lag in between fights, and people who use cheap characters all the time, and you’ll be left wondering where your character was 10 minutes after the time you pressed the attack buttons.

The ranking system does not help either. It works in reverse of what you would normally see in XP/Point/Scoring Systems: the higher the rank you are the lesser the points you get, but the more you lose when losing and vice-versa. Even when someone is an even match for you, you won’t lose/gain the fair amount of points your opponent gained/lost.

Even worse is that when you’re defending from an attack using Guard, you will still lose health regardless only slower. This is a mostly a problem online battles. It’s not even possible to counter when you’re trapped on one of the sides and your opponent is kicking you left and right. It’s times like these where I really wished there a counter button installed. There is a “Mega Crash” button to help you get some space, but you’ll have to wait until your Special Meter is at Level 2, and while you’re waiting for it, you’ll most likely be getting butt-whooped before you’ll have time to use it.

Overall 7/10:
TvC is a great fighter for the hardcore to handle, but the unbalanced online is what really irritates me when half the time I see a Zero/Ryu or Zero/Kaijin Soki. Honestly people, if you want to fight for real, choose the character you love and stick with it instead of following others who use the cheap ones!

This is probably going to be my last review on this forum until the new forum arrives.
Once that is taken care of, and everyone gets settled in, I'll review Monster Hunter 3.