People can't seem to get enough of superheroes. Spider-Man has already webbed his way to another box office record this summer, and the Fantastic Four will soon clobber their weekend competitors.
However, the best place to get your Marvel superhero fix is not on the silver screen, but the bargain bin of the PlayStation 2 games section.
“Marvel vs. Capcom 2” collects almost 30 characters from the beloved comic books and pits them against the stars of the game developer's most famous properties, such as “Street Fighter 2,” “Resident Evil” and “Mega Man.”
The result is quite possibly the most vibrant video game to grace a television. Each character is rendered in all their technicolor glory, but the manic tag-teaming of six fighters in each battle stirs up a sensory overload of color and sound.
Swirls of light wipe out the 3-D backgrounds as half the screen is occupied by the sheer size of projectile attacks like Ryu's Shinkuu Hadouken or Cyclops' Optic Blast. Silly techno-dance music accompanies the fights and menu screens, and character sound-bites (such as Spider-Man's “Web Swing!”) can be heard with each of their special attacks.
“Marvel vs. Capcom 2” is the last in a long line of Capcom fighting games pitting rosters from different universes against one another in a “dream match” style.
When the game was released, comic geeks could go crazy at the possibilities: Spider-Man, Wolverine and the Hulk squaring off against Ryu, Captain Commando and Jill Valentine; Magneto and Dr. Doom vying for power with M. Bison and Akuma; or the ultimate mismatch of Mega-Man versus the towering Sentinel.
To no one's surprise, the game scarcely has a plot. The final boss, Abyss, was created exclusively for this game for no other purpose than to provide a baddie against which the Marvel and Capcom forces could align.
But searching for narrative in a fighting game like “Marvel vs. Capcom 2” will sink the fun times one can find in composing dream teams from the 56-fighter selection or putting together the most devastating combo attacks possible.
New players can even adjust the controls to provide themselves with an equal chance of winning by randomly mashing buttons in battle.
In any other game with this when-worlds-collide premise the play itself might take a backseat to the dream-team dynamic, but the fighting mechanics in “Marvel vs. Capcom 2” are more than solid enough to support the presence of all those superheroes in the same game.
Staff writer David Wilcox reviews video games for The Citizen. He can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 245 or david.wilcox@lee.net
“Marvel vs. Capcom 2”
Score: A-
Parental rating: Teen for blood, animated violence
Manufacturer: Capcom
Platform: PlayStation 2, Xbox
Retail price: $19.99
Features: 1-2 players
Life span: N/A
The final boss: “Marvel vs. Capcom 2” will quench any Marvel fan's thirst for superheroes and give them a quality fighting game to boot.
“Marvel vs. Capcom 2” collects almost 30 characters from the beloved comic books and pits them against the stars of the game developer's most famous properties, such as “Street Fighter 2,” “Resident Evil” and “Mega Man.”
The result is quite possibly the most vibrant video game to grace a television. Each character is rendered in all their technicolor glory, but the manic tag-teaming of six fighters in each battle stirs up a sensory overload of color and sound.
Swirls of light wipe out the 3-D backgrounds as half the screen is occupied by the sheer size of projectile attacks like Ryu's Shinkuu Hadouken or Cyclops' Optic Blast. Silly techno-dance music accompanies the fights and menu screens, and character sound-bites (such as Spider-Man's “Web Swing!”) can be heard with each of their special attacks.
“Marvel vs. Capcom 2” is the last in a long line of Capcom fighting games pitting rosters from different universes against one another in a “dream match” style.
When the game was released, comic geeks could go crazy at the possibilities: Spider-Man, Wolverine and the Hulk squaring off against Ryu, Captain Commando and Jill Valentine; Magneto and Dr. Doom vying for power with M. Bison and Akuma; or the ultimate mismatch of Mega-Man versus the towering Sentinel.
To no one's surprise, the game scarcely has a plot. The final boss, Abyss, was created exclusively for this game for no other purpose than to provide a baddie against which the Marvel and Capcom forces could align.
But searching for narrative in a fighting game like “Marvel vs. Capcom 2” will sink the fun times one can find in composing dream teams from the 56-fighter selection or putting together the most devastating combo attacks possible.
New players can even adjust the controls to provide themselves with an equal chance of winning by randomly mashing buttons in battle.
In any other game with this when-worlds-collide premise the play itself might take a backseat to the dream-team dynamic, but the fighting mechanics in “Marvel vs. Capcom 2” are more than solid enough to support the presence of all those superheroes in the same game.
Staff writer David Wilcox reviews video games for The Citizen. He can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 245 or david.wilcox@lee.net
“Marvel vs. Capcom 2”
Score: A-
Parental rating: Teen for blood, animated violence
Manufacturer: Capcom
Platform: PlayStation 2, Xbox
Retail price: $19.99
Features: 1-2 players
Life span: N/A
The final boss: “Marvel vs. Capcom 2” will quench any Marvel fan's thirst for superheroes and give them a quality fighting game to boot.
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