Shun Goku Satsu

Hey! I can post! Blogger started freaking out yesterday, gave me all sorts of error messages, wouldn't let me post. Glad that's resolved. Anyway, as I kinda hinted earlier, I wanna talk about Marvel vs. Capcom 2, and why it is the best fighting game ever.

Or, at least, the best fighting game for people who don't enjoy memorizing intriquite move lists... that isn't Super Smash brothers. Let me start again. In my mind, there are three kinds of fighting games. 2D fighters, 3D fighters, and the... let's call them brawlers- Super Smash Brothers, Power Stone, and its ilk. I think the majority of people think brawlers are boss. Super Smash Bros is certainly popular enough... they're simple, they're fun, easy to learn, hard to master kinda deals. Regular fighters, 2D or 3D, are quite different from that. They are difficult to learn, and difficult to master. They are a pain in the ass, frankly. I'm not a big fan- I enjoy watching skilled players duke it out, but I don't really find it fun to play. And so generally, I avoid them. I own Street Fighter Alpha 3 for PSP because I felt like I should own a Street Fighter game, Tekken for PSP because it was really cheap, and Soul Calibur 3 because I do like Soul Calibur a decent amount. And now, I own Marvel vs. Capcom 2. A pretty decent number of games for being a genre that I don't like. I respect it, though. That's the main reason. Anyway.

So of those games, I haven't played any of them for at least six months, except of course MvC2 which I just got. The thing is, though? I DON'T suck at MvC2. I'm terrible at Tekken, suck at Street Fighter, shitty at Soul Calibur, but somehow I'm actually ok at Marvel vs. Capcom. Not great, not even good, really. Just alright. But that's way more than I am at any other fighter, and I've only owned the game for two days, so odds are I will get better still.

What is different about MvC2? Well, for starters, each character's move list is maybe a sixth the size of a character's in most fighting games. This helps tremendously. They're also pretty similar to each other, so the end result is that you can learn one character's basics pretty quickly... and then adapt to a new character even quicker. It's also, I think, relevant that there is just an overwhelming number of cool characters to choose from- a factor that makes it more encouraging to try and learn to play skillfully.

The only discouraging factor is the terrible character balance. Cable, Storm, Sentinel... these characters just tower over the rest. There is really no question... and just as unquestionably, Servbot and Roll are a joke. The game has been out in one form or another for... what, nine years? And there has been no work at rebalancing it. I appreciate the deference to tradition, but seriously, it NEEDS it. The game is not balanced. The best characters (the so-called "God Tier") are known. There is no debate. So why not fix it? Ah well. My team {Akuma, Wolverine, Gambit) may not be top tier, but I have fun, and I'm no pushover. Well, unless you're really, really good, heheh.