Marvel vs Capcom 3 - New Characters

Today is March 15th. That means those of use who got the special edition of Marvel vs Capcom 3 can finally access Jill Valentine and Shuma-Gorath.

The download is only 100kb. That means that yes, these two are DLC that is on the disk. This is a very cheap practice that has been showing up more and more recently. It's not really DLC if all I'm actually downloading is an unlock code! There was plenty of evidence of this before hand, especially after I finished the game with every character and there were still three character slots open in the Model Viewer. Two were obviously Jill and Shuma. I don't know who the third is. I'm assuming it's Galactus, but I could be wrong.

I would understand better if every "new" copy of the game came with a code for these characters. Game companies are trying to discourage players from buying used. One way they are doing this is by denying players who bought used copies parts of the game. If you bought the game new you got a special code that unlocked all of the content. If you bought it used odds are the code has already been used or is no longer in the packaging. Dragon Age: Origins had this. You got Shale for free if you bought the game new, but if you bought it used she would cost you $15 bucks.

But these two characters don't work like that. You only get them for "free" if you got the special edition and that cost $70 instead of the normal $60. If you bought the normal edition I heard that it's $5 a character. So it's really like the you already paid the extra $10 with the special edition and Capcom just threw you a little comic/art book for free. This is a very shady practice and it should never happen. Companies need to stop thinking that they can control the consumer! I have the right to demand that all content be on the disk at the time of purchase and that all content is unlocked or can be unlocked through normal gameplay.

Now that I have that out of the way let's talk about the actual characters. Jill is fun and fast. If you think along the lines of X-23 then you have her pegged. She's no longer summoning zombies to help her, she now has massive acrobatic skills and she's putting them to use. I had a lot of fun with her and she's a character that I could easily use on a regular basis.

I enjoyed her ending. She teamed up with Blade to fight off hoards of the undead. Jill's personality though has me really confused. She has the little mind control bug on her chest so I would assume that she's still a puppet. In the comic though Jill is fighting alongside Chris so I thought she wasn't under mind control. During her ending she seems pretty happy to have Blade's help and seems to once again have independent thought. But during her entrances and victory lines Jill very much acts like she's under Wesker's control. I really with they would figure this out.

Shuma-Gorath is a fine character. The multi-tentacled monster from the Chaos Dimension works just fine. He's more technical then Jill. This makes his attacks harder to use. But the character is just over flowing with personality. He's got a great uniqueness to him. Probably won't be a character that I would use on a regular basis. But I'm glad to have him in the overall lineup. Unlike Taskmaster who I would just like to kick out of the game.

His ending had me laughing. He ends up hosting a Japanese game show. That right there is good stuff. That's what more of the endings should have been like.

I do hope for more DLC characters in the future. I would love for the selection to grow until it's bigger then Marvel vs Capcom 2. But the next time I had better actually be downloading characters! Not unlock codes.