Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow - Final Thoughts

If I had to describe Castlevania I would call it 'technically perfect'. The game is a conglomeration of God of War, Shadow of the Colossus, and Prince of Persia and it imitates them all near perfectly. Heck, one of the best things about Castlevania is its' combat system. Gabriel is able to easily flow from one combo to the next without a lot of down time. Plus there is a wide array of moves at his disposal that it is easy to play around with the combat system. I loved it. I had so much fun whipping enemies whenever the chance arose. I also found the secondary weapons to be highly useful. Dagger lost their usefulness pretty quickly, but I was constantly using the fairies and holy water an enemies. The crystal summon proved highly useful on many different occasions and finding crystal shards was easy enough that I didn't feel that I had to save the summons. I may not like the look of the summon but it was still nice to have.

Graphically the game is gorgeous. Many of the earlier levels really stand out with their lush green looking environments. It is a shame that later levels devolve into browns and grays just so they can have a gritty, wasteland look to them. The game is much too gorgeous to justify using those colors. Sadly the levels are littered with 'invisible walls'. I would constantly find an area that Gabriel should be able to jump to just to find that he couldn't. Why? Because someone said so. It was also a shame to see the earlier 'multi-pathed level' theme did not continue long into the game. That had me excited to explore the other path while revisiting levels for power-ups.

Now the game has two massive flaws in my humble opinion. The first is the story. Most of the story is told only through voiceover by Patrick Stewart. I never really got to know Gabriel. I never felt that Gabriel was as dark, angry, unforgiving, overworked, or devoid of compassion as Patrick Stewart implied. He did seem driven and little bit cocky. Heck it seemed to me that Gabriel was having fun during his quest. He didn't even seem to feel that badly about Claudia and I'm still not sure why she is in the game. The game should have spent more time with Gabriel. Maybe they could have gone Prince of Persia and had Gabriel talking to himself during the levels. That would have been a great way to get to know the guy. Plus, I never felt that Gabriel was the all-out murder machine that you were lead to believe he had become. Gabriel did his best to save people. He did ruthlessly slaughter Vampires, Werewolfs, Trolls, Goblins, Giant Spiders, Gremlins, etc. But any member of his Knighthood would have done the same thing. Those are unnatural creatures of darkness and therefore needed to be destroyed. It did not seem that Gabriel couldn't wait to slaughter everything in his path. That aspect was never shown.

I mean, the overall story is fine. Heaven and Earth has been separated and the only way to reunite them is to kill the Lords of Shadow and obtain their power. A nice bonus is the resurrection of Gabriel's wife. The big twist with Satan has zero impact since it tool away a fight I had been greatly looking forward to, the fight with Zobek. When somebody randomly shows up and says "I am actually the big bad guy of this game!" you kind of go "Oh. Okay." instead of being all "I cannot wait to destroy this guy. I've wanted to crush him the entire game!" You see the difference. There is only one hint of Satan and it is a very poor hint. The Witch that wants the blue rose says something about serving the 'Lord of the Angels' or something along those lines. But it is a throwaway comment at best. Besides, Satan isn't Lord of the Angels. His real name, Lucifer, means Son of the Morning. He thought he deserved to be God's equal without doing any of the work. For this was he cast out of Heaven and he took with him 1/3 of the Hosts of Heaven. Not exactly a lord of anything in the end.

The second major problem with this game? Oh you can probably guess this one. The stupid camera. Holy crap, how hard is it to hold that thing still. There is no reason for the camera to keep wiggling during gameplay. I had to build up a tolerance for the thing and even then it would still affect me. Heck, I want to get the DLC had some point but I don't want to have to deal with this dumb camera again.

Also I am so over fixed-camera games. This game would choose some of the worst angles making it very hard to see where I was going or even the enemies that I was fighting. Just give the camera back to the player and stop wiggling it. Do this and I would be very happy.

Despite these two flaws Castlevania is a very good game. I still had a lot of fun with it. I felt the opening dragged on a little bit, but after reaching the halfway point the game really took off with some interesting gameplay. So yes, I would recommend this game to anyone unless you suffer from major motion sickness.

Time for a new game then. Boy this game seemed to take forever.

Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow - The End Of The Long Road

Chapter XII, there is a TON to be said about Chapter XII. This is the final battle of the main game and with it all of the twists are turns are to be revealed.It's got drama, fighting, betrayal, and true love. So I should stop wasting time with the intro paragraph. It is time to crack into this game and reveal all of the dirty little secrets that hide at the end of this tale.

Behold The God Mask

The Chapter starts off with the longest cutscene in the entire game so far and boy is it a dozy. Gabriel acquires the final piece of the mask and with it he can put the God Mask together. Once done Zobek magically appears. I'm serious, the guy is just suddenly standing there and Gabriel is just too stupid to question where he came from. Instead Gabriel is all like "We have the mask now we can bring back my wife." To which Zobek replies, "No you can't. I have betrayed you!"

That's right, be surprised. Zobek is actually a bad guy and I bet you didn't even see it coming. Oh wait. You did see it coming? From over a mile away? Really? It was that stupidly obvious? Yes, yes it was. Zobek's betrayal comes as a surprise to no one except for Gabriel. I mean, come on. The guy suddenly shows up out of nowhere, happens to have the right tools to help Gabriel. Tells Gabriel how to bring his wife back so he will go on this stupid quest. He is constantly pushing Gabriel but the entire time Zobek does next to nothing to actually help. Instead he follows Gabriel around and waxes poetic about the man from behind a bush while holding a shaky camera. He was very obviously evil.

And here is the Devil Mask

So Zobek shows up holding a different mask. This mask is not identified in game but it is called the Devil Mask.It looks sufficiently creepy and if you've been paying any attention it might actually look a little familiar. But I will cover that a little bit later.

Zobek dawns the mask and he turns in to the real Lord of the Necromancer. Now if he is the real Lord then who did I kill? The butler? And speaking of that how did Gabriel get the final piece of the mask? If Zobek is the third Lord of Shadow then the third mask piece should not have appeared until Gabriel killed him. But here is Gabriel with an intact mask. That kind of ruins the entire setup for the story in case any of the dev team is reading this.

So Zobek reveals that he has been the mastermind the entire time. Now if you were paying attention you should have recognized the Devil Mask. It was the mask that Gabriel was wearing in Pan's temple when he was shown killing his wife. Again it is not a big surprise to everyone except to Gabriel that it was Gabriel who killed his wife. But he did so under the influence of the Devil Mask. Gabriel also killed Claudia, the stupid mute who wouldn't shut up. So I can't condemn him for that. She had it coming.

So Zobek's master plan in a nutshell was, kill Gabriel's wife and use this to send Gabriel on a quest to kill the Lords of Shadow so he could resurrect his wife. Doing this would unite the God Mask that Zobek would then take from Gabriel and use to rule, well..... everything. I guess. *shrug* So far so good.

At this point Zobek kills Gabriel. (Ok, first off, Zobek rambles for a very long time. I was pretty bored by this point so I'm not going to cover every minute detail of his speech.) So Gabriel is dead and Zobek is congratulating himself on his victory when suddenly the real twist is pulled.

Zobek is hearing voices and the voice is claiming that it put all this entire idea into his head. Zobek then bursts into flames. Wait a second. Zobek is dead? And I didn't get to kill him. That is just lame. Alright, who stole my battle against Captain Picard? It's some veiny guy with yellow eyes and long, black, greasy looking hair. And he's yelling at God, who he calls Father. Wait a second!

So Gabriel is dead. At least until Marie shows up and says he has to go back and that it isn't his time. Gabriel is unconscious during this point so he has no idea what is going on. Gabriel is sent back and he gets to confront... wait for it... SATAN HIMSELF!

Doesn't he just look evil?

So the final fight is against Satan. I can dig it. But first I must talk a moment about Satan. I really like this version of Satan. This isn't the angel who refused to bow down before man. No, this is the angel who assumes that he should be equal if not greater than God himself. Why? Because he said so. That is why. There is an air of confidence around him. A sense of self assurance that what he desires is already his. I like it. It makes me want to beat his face in even more.

So here it is at last. The Final Confrontation. Now I would like to point out that Satan is a very solid boss fight. He is not cheap, he is just tricky. The only really issue I had came down to magic. For some unexplained reason during this fight Gabriel has unlimited magic. I didn't have that during the fight with Pan and Pan used the same concepts. The only reason I could think that the gave Gabriel unlimited magic is due to the rings that appear when Satan is stunned.Gabriel has to run through these rings and only the correct corresponding color will allow Gabriel to pass. This means you have to change magic and you have to have magic. Without it you cannot win the fight. It gets even worse the second time Satan is stunned since the rings move so changing becomes even more tricky.

Satan does have two moves I will call cheap. The first is when he places colored rings on the ground that will trap Gabriel. The are easy to break free from by using the correct magic and when you break free you can normally get a free hit. The second attack is that Satan calls in these Grim Reapers to help. These things can kill in a single hit or they just hit really hard and Gabriel was just that low on health. Either way, they feel cheap. Plus they are color coded to the magic as well. You have to use the opposite magic to kill them.

And that is the big thing with this fight. Satan will use Light and Shadow magic so Gabriel needs to use the opposing magic against him. This is not a bad idea. What cheapens the fight in Gabriel's favor is that Satan swaps often enough that Gabriel has ample opportunity to heal. This removes some of the danger of the battle. You still have to remain on your toes though. Satan can hit hard so you need to learn to dodge/block on a very regular basis. Also, don't screw up the QTEs or it's an instant death on Gabriel.

Wow, I have typed a lot and we are not done yet. Gabriel shoves Satan back into the Earth and calls it good. All of the trapped souls begin to move on. Marie shows up and Gabriel is all. "I have the Mask. Lets bring you back." And Marie is all "You can't. The Mask doesn't work that way." No, the Mask doesn't bring people back. It just makes souls tangible, so they can be touched. Probably inappropriately. Gabriel has to stay and live while Marie moves on. The guy is very sad about this. I'm sad that Dracula hasn't shown up yet. Instead Claudia shows up. She just stands there for a moment and then vanishes without saying a word. She probably figured that she deserved her death for being such a NAG!

And finally the credits role. But like any good Marvel movie you don't leave your seat until the credits have finished. There is a decently long scene buried at the end of the game and it raises a lot of questions.

First, Zobek is still alive. He enters some church looking for an old friend. The friend is of course Gabriel. But Gabriel has changed, a lot. He also calls himself Dracul. Now, I kind of guessed that Gabriel would become Dracula. I figured that Gabriel would make the same basic offering that the founders of the Order of Light did and that Dracula is what would be left behind. Doesn't appear to be the case, especially since Gabriel calls himself Dracul (The Dragon) instead of Dracula (Son of the Dragon). Not quite sure what that means.

This scene is very carefully crafted. Zobek and Dracul talk about the return of Satan. They are in a very old church. The type that Gabriel would have gone too. But it is revealed that they are in the modern day. I have no idea where. But there are skyscrapers and cars and neon signs everywhere. I must say, Gabriel really smacked Satan back down if it took him 1,000 years to recover his strength. Zobek wants Dracul's help against Satan and in return he will end Dracul's immortal life.

The scene ends with Dracul vanishing into a puff of black smoke and Zobek just walking away. There was no agreement made. Pretty bizarre ending if you ask me.

Final Thoughts are next.

Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow - In Which I Kill Death

Yes! I am getting this posted in a timely manner, that makes me very happy. I was afraid that there would be another gap and I am glad to be avoiding that. Now if only my life would fix itself, then I would be truly happy,

Chapter XI is an interesting little chapter and I mean that. The first area is one of the most tedious sections of the game. The second part is one of the best platforming sections that the game has to offer. Let's call it an odd juxtaposition shall we.

The Necromancer's Abyss starts off as a very promising level. There are two interesting puzzles right off the bat. While I liked the eclipse puzzle I do have one very glaring issue with it, there is no proper setup to solve it. The symbols that are used are symbols that I do not recognize from within the game. Without prior knowledge of the symbols you will never know what they mean. I really just messed with the symbols until the moon eclipsed the sun. Puzzle solved.

The second puzzle involves moving a line of water ( I assume it's water) by inputting a predesignated path. This puzzle is pure logic and easy to figure out but I enjoyed that aspect of it. The colored floor tiles on the ground control the flow of the water. I quickly figured out that one color meant up, one meant right, one meant left and one meant down. I was also glad that I remembered the L2 + Triangle to punch the ground this time or else this would have taken forever.

That was the fun part of the level. The rest of it involved jumping through mirrors, jumping through portals, killing Necromancers and jumping onto moving platforms. Now some of these were kind of tricky and I appreciated that but the level seemed to drag. It didn't help that every time I jumped through a mirror there was this flying scene. It wasn't so much the scene as it was the shaking camera during the scene that would nauseate me. *sigh* I really hate having motion-sickness, no matter how mild.

So the rest of the level was kind of a chore overall and I was glad when it was done.

Dracolich Concept Art

The next level is actually pretty sweet. At the start of the level Gabriel converses with Death for a little while. Then Death summons this massive bone dragon, that has the name of Dracolich Titan. Like all Titans this one requires Gabriel to climb all over it. I had an absolute blast with this thing as it soared through the air. Yes the camera would annoy me at times, but my love of the battle helped me overcome it. Now, as the fight against the third Lord of Shadow it is pretty weak (and I thought battling against Carmilla was a joke). Again, hanging onto a Titan is not complicated, just make sure you press R2 at the right moment. Beyond that I enjoyed scaling this massive beast and taking him down.

Now I don't quite understand what Gabriel did at the end of this fight. What was that orb thing that he smashed in the ground? How was that linked to the Titan? Just some questions that I would like answered.

There is only one area left. Chapter XII is just the final battle and I look forward to it. I'm hoping that I finally get to fight Zobek.

Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow - Breaking Up Chapter X (Part 2)

I meant to have this up a few days ago. I've been busy. I wish it was a good busy, but unfortunately it is a bad type of busy that has kept me away. I have few moments right now so I will go ahead and finish off Chapter X.

There are two more sections to Chapter X, The Fire Cemetery and the Crematory Oven. Both are pretty short, but the second area is far more fun to play in. The Fire Cemetery has another Chupacabra in it and I believe I've made my dislike of Chupacabra's fairly well known by now. Once again this one steals your magic and relics but then he does something a little bit different. He up and locks himself in a cage, that stupid little shrimp. Unlocking the cage becomes the goal of this level.

I actually like this puzzle. It's fairly simple, but at the same time it makes you think. I just wish it didn't have to deal with a Chupacabra. Thankfully the only enemies you deal with are zombies and they are quick kills so no major worries. Just know that solving the puzzle involves aiming one pillar at the other two pillars. I thought it was crafty. I just wish that I was allowed to kill the Cupacabra but they always disappear into a puff of smoke.

There's a second puzzle right after this one, but first you have to slay a horde of Zombies. I think there is around a hundred Zombies that spawn here. Go nuts and have fun. Zombies are easy to kill so unleash some of your inner aggravation about Chupacabras. I know I did. The puzzle involves two gongs that need to be rung at the same time. Punch - Dash - Punch, do it quick enough and the door opens. Took me a few tries.

The next area is the battle against the Gravedigger. No, not the monster truck or the lame villain from the TV series Bones, but some giant squid face who digs graves or something. There's a small group of enemies that Gabriel has to clear through to get to this guy. It felt like a wasted effort to run Gabriel through a gauntlet since he can heal and restore magic right before the actual fight. I don't mind enemies before actually encountering the boss but their purpose is to weaken the player. This should make the boss fight a little harder. If the player can heal then this has failed in its purpose.

The Gravedigger himself is a simple battle overall but with a little twist. When the Gravedigger reaches the point where Gabriel can QTE-kill the guy it proves really easy to screw it up. I know, I had to retry this 4 times until I finally got it right. There are these large doors behind the Gravedigger that have to be opened before you try the QTE. I failed to notice this and if the doors aren't open then Gabriel will automatically fail the QTE and the fight will continue. If you do this right then the Gravedigger falls into a pool of lava and dies. But not until after he tries to drag Gabriel down with him.

Of course Gabriel will survive this and he will be stuck in a hole that he has to climb out of. It's simple enough to do as long as the game doesn't break on you. I had a problem where Gabriel wouldn't grab a hold of platforms. This caused Gabriel to die once because he just hit a wall and fell into the lava below. He didn't even try to save himself. Once he respawned I had no problem clearing the level. Just thought it was something worth mentioning.

Next time is Chapter XI. Hopefully I can have something up for it later tonight or early tomorrow. No promises though.

Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow - Breaking Up Chapter X (Part 1)

Chapter X is only 4 areas long, but I feel that it needs to be broken up a little bit to be properly talked about. The level has some good moments and then it has some bad moments. This seems pretty par for the course on this game.

Things start off again with a Patrick Stewart voiceover. Remember that Witch from the previous level? The one that Zobek wanted Gabriel to kill? Well Gabriel didn't kill the Witch. Instead she helped him. That right there should be a good enough reason to leave her alone. Instead Zobek decides to kill her offscreen. That's right. This feels like a boss fight was cutout of the game, so they just had Zobek kill her by narration. That was pretty pathetic thing to do.

Now when the actual level starts Gabriel is in this purple crystal room. This place looks like it has been ripped straight out of a Final Fantasy game. I was actually excited for this part at first. I loved the look of the level and I was hoping it would stay around. Sadly that is not the case, this room lasts only a few brief steps before Gabriel finds himself standing in a stereotypical wasteland. It's actually bland to look at. I had really been hoping for the color to stay around for a while.

Dragging yourself through this wasteland can be a royal pain. Especially when the camera works against you. And I mean the camera completely works against you. I got stuck in this level for 20 minutes trying to figure out where to go. I eventually had to go to Gamefaqs to get some help. Many thanks to Bkstunt_31 for his fantastic walkthrough. There is this section where the camera seems to point the wrong direction. It's almost a blind jump where you have to go. Once there, it looks like there a dead-end cave in the area (anyone who has played this probably knows what I'm talking about). The cave is not a dead-end. Instead you can actually go to the right, actually, you have to go to the right. This is a mandatory area. But the game doesn't point the way. This isn't a secret area with two fallen knights and a purple crystal. This is a normal room where you have to battle monsters for keys to continue through the level. This is very sloppy design.

The level suffers from a lot of poorly thought-out and poorly executed ideas. Jumps that look possible are not possible. Thinking that Gabriel is on an island when he is actually in the water (which is poisonous). These sorts of things just hold this level back.

The next part of Chapter X wasn't that big of a surprise. I give spoiler warnings at the top of the page so be prepared. This is a boss fight against Pan. Up to this point Pan has been a kind of adviser. He helps Gabriel get to where he needs to be and he gives Gabriel advice wrapped in riddles. A very helpful character. Here, Pan fights Gabriel to the death in an interesting boss fight.

Faun Pan and Pan looking cooler than he has any right to.

Pan normally has a very gentle look about himself. So seeing mighty armored Pan is a bit of a shock and fairly cool looking at the same time. The battle has a nice start, Pan removes Gabriel's magic and forces him to fight without it. I had hoped that this is how the battle would go. Instead over the course of the fight Pan gives Gabriel his magic back, first the Light, then the Shadow.

With the magic restored this fight almost became to easy. Pan keeps talking about how Light and Shadow magic are two sides of the same coin (no duh!). What keeps this fight interesting is that Pan will use Light and Shadow magic. Pan is trying to teach a lesson. Shadow magic is ineffective against Shadow and Light magic is ineffective against light. Surprisingly the two actually work against each other quite well (I'm kidding, it's not a surprise). The final QTE scene against Pan has one of the fastest button presses I have ever seen in a game. Make sure you're ready for it.

Turns out that Pan's death was just a sacrifice that would allow Gabriel to move on. Well go on Gabriel and kill everything else that is in your way. And smile while you do it.

Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow - And that is Chapter IX

Lets talk a little bit about Chapter IX. It was short. Parts of it were entertaining. Many parts were odd and didn't make a lot of sense. Especially the part about the witch. First, why is Zobek following Gabriel around? And is he the jerk holding the camera? No matter how much I love Cloverfield, shaky cam always makes me nauseous. This is no better. So if Zobek is holding the camera tell him to put the dumb thing on a tripod.

The first section of Chapter IX is easy and straight forward. It would be uneventful except for the fact that a designer remembered the Chupacabras. One of those annoying little guys shows up in this area. He's remarkably easy to find, you just need a troll to help smash a wall. I am just glad the whole Chupacabra section was short. I despise those things. And I might even despise the designer who came up with them.

The next section is actually a little more interesting. First Gabriel meets a Witch. This Witch reminds me of the garbage lady from Labyrinth.The Witch wants to be young again and it is up to Gabriel to help her. First he has to get to the key for her music box and some mean old Scarecrows have stolen it from her. Gabriel promises to help the Witch as long as she helps him. Sounds like a winning deal. I would like to point out that Zobek is calling for the Witch's death the entire time. Seriously, the guy is pretty adamant about it.

Gabriel has to defeat some Scarecrows and he can only do that by luring crows onto the Scarecrow. Yes that sounds counter-productive and it probably is. The puzzle isn't hard. You just have to fill up all of the posts in the area with crows and this eventually forces one murder of crows to land on the Scarecrow. The Scarecrows then get down off of their perch and attack Gabriel. Do this three times to win.

The Scarecrows can be a little tough though. They are fast and they have a pretty good reach. Thankfully Gabriel is feeling a little more powerful these days so I wasn't overly concerned. I just had to make sure I was careful. There's a neutral orb fountain in the area and that can help get health back. There are also Mandragoras in the area. They are perfect for beating down and restoring life as Gabriel needs it.

With the keys in hand Gabriel can return to the Witch for part three of Chapter IX.Gabriel really needs to pay attention. The Witch specifically said that she needed the Blue Rose from the music box and to get it she will have to shrink down Gabriel and stick him in the box. Naturally Gabriel is surprised when the Witch shrinks him down and shoves him into the box. This guy needs to pay a little more attention.

So here we are inside of the music box. This area was frustrating for me. A lot of it required pretty precise timing to get through. Gabriel had to collect these colored cylinders and use them in the main part of the music box. Depending on what color was playing certain traps were disabled. Thankfully the this would match to the floor. If the red cylinder was playing the traps at the end of the red carpet would be deactivated, or activated depending on how you look at it. The yellow cylinder doesn't shut off the flames that block Gabriel's path, but it does cause them to move. The timing of the traps was pretty specific, but they were off just enough to throw me off. I kept running into them. Eventually the whole thing comes down to memorization. Frustrating, but I felt satisfied once I beat the level.

Once Gabriel has the Blue Rose he returns to the Witch and do you know what he does? He demands that the Witch help him. So she does. That's it. Gabriel doesn't kill her. There are no big boss fights at this point. The Witch just sends Gabriel on his way to the Abyss. Maybe he'll find Kratos there, that does appear to be his summer vacation spot.

Ultimate Marvel Vs Capcom 3 - Really?

Back in the day Capcom released Street Fighter IV. My understanding is that this was a last ditch effort for Street Fighter, the game was expected to fail. Street Fighter III had been a monstrous flop years before. Because of this Capcom closed out the disc. This meant that no DLC could be added later on. The game ended up being a huge success. Because of this more fighters were developed and Super Street Fighter IV game was released.

Now remember that I had said that Street Fighter IV could not be added too via DLC so this actually made sense. Of course, that all depends on if the story I read was true. You can never fully tell with the internet. The Super version was only $39.99, a $20 saving versus the initial release. Yes it could be seen as a blow to purchasers of the original. It was more content for less, but at least there was sound reasoning.

Street Fighter IV helped revitalize the lumbering fighting genre. With this new age of fighters would come a game that players had been asking for for over 10 years. Marvel vs Capcom 3. I was a fan of the second game, having purchased it for my Dreamcast (yes I own a Dreamcast). The fast pace of the game and the large variety in fighters just made the game a ton of fun. Now Marvel vs Capcom 2 had such a large cast because Capcom was easily able to reuse sprites from previous fighting games. This is where the madhouse of characters came from. The new game would not be able to reuse sprites so the cast would have to be diminished. This was expected.

Marvel vs Capcom 3 launched with only 36 (38 if you count the DLC) fighters in it. It wasn't the dream cast that I had been hoping for. Some characters felt very out of place or that a more top-tier character should've had a slot. The game was still frantic fun and that is, in the end, what matters. Now the when the game launched there was already two DLC characters announced. Shuma-Gorath and Jill Valentine. Now this set the stage for more downloadable characters in the future. I was excited about this. I wanted to grow my cast list with new and awesome characters.

Sadly all we seemed to be getting for Marvel vs Capcom 3 had been these Shadow Battles. You battled against characters that had a play style similar to Capcom employees that worked on the game. Yes, that does not sound like a ton of fun to anyone. There were some costume packs but no mention of any DLC beyond that.

It was then that rumors started to swirl of a Super version for Marvel vs Capcom 3. I was hoping that with the release of the Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition that Capcom wouldn't pull this stunt. I didn't mind paying $19.99 for a DLC pack if is was something similar to the Arcade Edition, but for Marvel vs Capcom 3 instead.

Sadly that is not the case. Instead we are getting Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3. It will include 12 new characters and will retail for $39.99. Looks like Capcom is double dipping. I'm not excited about this and as I learn what characters are being release with it I am even less excited.

First we have Strider and Ghost Rider. I can happily admit to being excited about these two characters. Very nice additions. Next up is Firebrand and Hawkeye. Hawkeye is probably in so they can push the character in preparation for the Avenger movie. But Firebrand? I barely remembered Arthur from Ghosts 'n Goblins. I can only assume that Firebrand was the big bad guy of that game.

It looks like the rest of the cast has been leaked. I am really not impressed with the choices. I will try to make this quick.

Virgil is a completely unecessary character. We already have Dante and Trish from Devil May Cry. We don't need to bog it down with another character.Especially since Capcom is rebooting the entire series anyways.

Frank West. Not the first character I would go for. Looks like he was quickly recycled from Capcom vs Tatsunoko. That is probably how he found his way into the game.
 

Doctor Strange. I love Doctor Strange. I have no complaint about his addition.

Iron Fist? Really? Iron Fist of all characters? I would have loved to have had Ms. Marvel instead. Or maybe Psylocke or Rogue. Their were better options than this. I would have preferred Luke Cage to Iron Fist.

We do NOT need Nemesis in this game. We already have enough Resident Evil characters. This is a completely wasted slot.

Who the hell is this guy? I may not be the best comic book geek on the planet but can we at least go with a familiar character? His name appears to be Nova... is it just Nova? Yep, just plain old Nova.

This one I also blame on Capcom vs Tatsunoko. Originally Phoenix Wright had been planned for the game. He was eventually nixed but there has been a fairly vocal base of fans crying for him ever since. Well here he is. I don't mind him too much. He's just not a major selling point for me. At least he is from an original franchise.

And finally... what the hell is this thing? Rocket Raccoon? Or is it Raccoon Rocket? I don't care. I just want it gone. Talk about a massively wasted spot. Where the heck is Mega Man?!






And that appears to be them. No Venom, no Squirrel Girl. No one from Rival Schools or Onimusha. Very few characters that are actually cool and actually have you looking forward to playing them. I guess I will wait until this version is cheap used. Maybe then I will pick it up. Unless Capcom releases DLC characters for it that are actually worthwhile.