"This truly is the new age of heroes"

Allright. I'll admit it. I hate fighting games! I don't understand them. I don't react fast enough to evade combos. I don't even understand how to make combos. I am just not good at them. However, there are a few fighting games that I greatly enjoyed. Marvel vs Capcom 2 is one of them. However, it has not always been like that. I was walking down the isle in the arcade, heading for the Dance Dance Revolution machine, when suddenly, I saw someone playing a new fighting game. I wondered aloud what that game is. Someone then told me it's new and it's called Marvel vs Capcom 2. I thought to myself ''ughh, this game looks like crap. It's never gonna make it. Capcom has made a good series gone bad, again''. But just a few hours before writing this, my friend (after a lot of begging), convinced me to invest my spare change into trying this out. The result? I became addicted! I ended up turning the spare change I had into hours of fun and $10 in debt.

Marvel vs Capcom 2 is a fighting game like no other. In a lot of ways, it follows it's roots set by the original Marvel vs Capcom. It follows the same basic fighting structure. However, there are quite a number of changes. First of all, the number of fighters that a person can controll has ben increased to three. The two buttons on the right are used for different purposes now. They are used to call in your other fighters to serve the same role as special helpers did in the original Marvel vs Capcom. The fighting structure in terms of basic punches and kicks follow the same structure set in the 3D fighter ''Rival Schools''. Only the 4 buttons on the left and middle are used for basic punches and kicks. Now, all three fighters can use a hyper combos at the same time. Many new characters are in the game. There are over 55 characters. Fighters from previous fighting games make their expected return such as Wolverine, Spiderman, Ryu, Akuma, Ken, Megaman, and many more. But there are also many new fighters such as the main character of Resident Evil 3, Jill Valentine (who ever thought she could fight hand to hand combat). Overall the gameplay is fairly confusing for beginners (like me). But if you're not a beginner, than the gameplay is next to perfect!

Challenge wise this game is quite high. Although some of the earlier stages are easy where your opponents do nothing much more than stand around, the latter stages are quite a challenge. Plus the last boss is quite a task to defeat. This game offers a mild scaling difficulty, but a steep learning curve. The player is required to learn the game rather quickly. The controlls in this game is harder to use than the original Marvel vs Capcom. But it being harder is not necessarily a bad thing. The controlls are quite good, although it may take a while to get used to.

The graphics is where this game excels. They are one of the best yet. There are no lags in the graphics what so ever! Even when all six fighters are on the screen at the same time! That is truly amazing. The character models and movements are done very well. They are all so much better then those of the original Marvel vs Capcom. All of the movements look authentic, as though they were real people. The backgrounds look amazing, and the background changes to an amazing 3D background when your character performes a hyper combo. Also, after each battle, the background is quite nice, perfectly 3 dimensional. Amazing!

The audio, I think are the worst part of the game. The music did not really sound like fighting music at all. Although the music is quite entertaining, I just didn't feel like I was fighting while listening to the soundtrack. The sounds, on the other hand are all very good. The voicing of the game is excellent. A lot of the sounds were taken from the original Marvel vs Capcom.

The fun factor is quite high. I was immediatley hooked on my first time playing, even though I hate fighting games. This game is one you can take your aggression out on. Beating up video game characters has never been funner. The replay value is quite high because there are so many different fighters. It will take quite a while for you to play them all, let alone master them. Plus the combinations of fighters will affect the difficulty, assuming you havn't mastered all of them.

Overall, this is a great game. Nuff said.

FINAL RANKINGS:
Gameplay:9
Challenge:8
Controlls:9
Graphics:10
Audio:8
Fun Factor:9.5
Replay Value:9
Overall:9

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 08/03/00, Updated 08/03/00