Capcom has been firing on all cylinders recently, with several incredible releases like Monster Hunter: World, Resident Evil 2’s remake, Megaman 11 and Devil May Cry 5 all knocking it out of the park. However, there’s still one genre Capcom has yet to cover before the full renaissance is complete: fighting games.
Since it’s not likely that Darkstalkers will ever come back, that leaves one glorious, wild option: Marvel vs Capcom. MvC has been a flagship series for Capcom for ages, back to the arcade days, and it’s consistently been hailed as a fan-favourite in the fighting game community. Except, we all know by now that Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite was… not exactly the game we had hoped for. With that in mind, let’s talk about what we wanna see in Marvel vs Capcom 4! (When/if it comes out).
BETTER ART STYLE
There were a lot of factors that hurt MvCI before its release and one of them was the art style. The “ugly characters” led to the game being written off by many casual players before it was even released. The bland backgrounds, lack of flashy effects and static camerawork for cinematics made it sting all the more.
Ideally, what we want is for MvC4 to return to its pixel art roots like in MvC2, but that’s a pipe dream that’ll never happen. So, we’ll settle for the stylish cel-shaded look of MvC3, or better yet, an entirely new art style, one that accommodates the comic-book craziness of Marvel’s characters and the gamey-ness of Capcom’s. Just not the weird, uncanny realism of Infinite.
MORE CHARACTERS
MvCI has a base roster of 30 characters, which isn’t awful by fighting game standards, but the previous game in the series, Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, had 48. MvC2 even had 56 characters and there was a lot more diversity within the cast. You had representation across way more of Marvel’s franchises, like the Fantastic Four, X-Men and Avengers. Whereas, disappointingly, MvCI is almost entirely made up of characters who currently have a movie series. Where are the off-the-wall picks like Shuma-Gorath? Silver Samurai? Not to mention that, due to the fractured nature of who holds the rights to various Marvel characters, there were absolutely zero X-Men in MvCI, which hurts.
A producer of MvCI notoriously once said that characters are just skins for mechanics, which is true, if people want to play with Magneto’s 8-way dash, they can now pick Ultron. It does the same thing so it’s just as good, right? Wrong.
It’s not just about mechanics. People are attached to the characters they love, their personalities and their stories. Just because a character is functionally identical to another, doesn’t mean they’re the same. MvC4 would win a lot of fans by bringing back the obscure characters and the missing popular ones. Doctor Doom! Deadpool! Disney owns the rights to all of them now, so let’s see some wilder picks! Is it too much to ask for Shang-Chi? He’s a martial artist, it’s a fighting game, they were made for each other! He even has a movie coming!
TEAMS OF THREE
In Infinite, the decision was made to cut out the third character slot in a team and replace it with one of the seven Infinity Stones, each of which had a range of different abilities in combat. Some of them had interesting applications, but overall, the changes they offered to gameplay didn’t really justify the removal of a whole character slot, which would have significantly opened up more possibilities in combat.
The Stones as they are, are a little bit gimmicky, especially when most people exclusively pick the Soul Stone as it allows you to use both of your characters simultaneously, so it’s kind of a no-brainer choice. Teams of three allow for combos to go on for even longer and get even crazier; plus, the character combinations are what this series is all about! To see our favourite Marvel superheroes team up with some of the most iconic video game characters in dream-team-ups — that’s what we want!
CUH-RAZY COMBAT
This is undoubtedly the most important thing MvC4 NEEDS to get right. MvCI is still played competitively now but in smaller circles and at local events, rather than the international level, and it couldn’t topple its predecessor UMvC3 in terms of sales or critical love. The simple reason for that is probably the diluted combat.
With the removal of the third character slot, no mid-combo assists from your second character, and a generous auto-combo, Capcom made it clear that they were trying to sacrifice depth to bring in a more casual audience. But it didn’t work. Marvel vs. Capcom is at its best when it’s being itself, with its insane, over-the-top tone, stylish characters that ooze personality in every attack, flashy 10,000-hit combos and Vergil loops. The answer for Marvel vs. Capcom 4 isn’t to cater to casual players, it’s to double-down on the craziness that won the series it’s fans in the first place. Just like the announcer says, “Go for broke”!
