"The best Capcom fighting game ever? Hardly, but still pretty good."

Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes
Review by Tailspower5

It was the year 2000. Capcom has just made 3 vs. games that combined their popular cast of fighters with that of the popular cast of Marvel comic book characters. But they needed more....and since Capcom vs. SNK was still a while away, they made a sequel to Marvel vs. Capcom, and entitled it Marvel vs. Capcom 2. And that's when, in the first two in nearly 2 years, I actually bothered to play a Capcom fighting game...

Story Line? We Don't Need No Story Line!

Story line? What is this, a RPG? Seriously, there is no storyline to this game: it's just a game where Capcom/Marvel duke it out on 3-on-3 matches. Ater 7 rounds of CPU opponents, you beat up the boss of the game, the powerful and challengeing Abyss, and win.

The cool part about the game is the HUGE number of characters you can play as: over 24 from Marvel and Capcom! There's the usual characters like Ryu, Ken, Wolverine, Spiderman, Akuma, Chun-Li, etc., along with some cool new additions, like Cable, Ruby Heart, Tron Bonne, Jill Valentine, Son-Son (from a Japan-only NES game of the same name...talk about digging out old characters!)....even a Serv-Bot from Mega Man Legends that looks lind of like one of those Lego people. Lots of variety here, folks.

And that's not all. After you choose 3 characters, you get to choose different abilities called 'types' for each of them, like an Anti-Air Type that allows a character to jump out and attack an opponent in the air, a Heal Type to restore damage, and a Projectile type to give your opponent some extra damage. And speaking of ectra damage, 1, 2, or even 3 characters can attack together with strong combos called 'Hyper Combos', which could do MASSIVE damage to your opponent...sometimes it can defeat several fighters in one blow. Unfortunately, these Hyper Combos make the game extremely cheap, and you'll have a hard early on beating oppoenents without using them. Once you learn them, though, the game become a lot more fun, and that's what the fun of mastering certain teams of characters begin. For example, can you beat the game with a trio of putrid fighters like Dan, Roll, and Serv Bot? If you try hard enough, you can!

2-D Good, 3-D Bad

The 2-D fighters look, as usual, very good, with many frames of animation and a great usage of colors. The 3-D backgrounds, though, don't fit in quite well. It was good in a game like Super Smash Brothers, but here....it's just funky. Also, not all the characters look great...some, like Roll, seemed they jumped straight out of a Super Nintendo. Overall, it's a mixture of the good with the bad.

The music and sounds are nothing great. The Japanese voices are annoying and all sound the same, and the American voices somehow suck even more. The only decent voices in the game are for the X-Men characters and Spider Man....the rest will make you wish you could mute an arcade game unit. And if the voices don't annoy ya, the bland, crappy music will. This is definitely not a game you want to play for the music.

Fun means Number 1

Despite graphical/audio problems, the fun, addictive, easy-to-learn gameplay will keep you hooked, as will the variety of all the characters you have at your disposal. If you're looking for a great 2 player fighting game, and you don't mind a little button mashing or cheapness, Marvel vs. Capcom 2 is for you. All the others who whine about the lack of depth this game has can play their stupid, lackluster sequels like Tekken 4 and Dead or Alive 3 and leave the rest of us alone.

Graphics (7/10): Some characters look great, but the 3-D background don't clash very well, and some of the fighters look old and bland.
Sound and Music (4/10): Ugh, turn it off!!
Control (8/10): Only 4 really used buttons and a fighting stick, sweet! Die 6-button arcade games, DIE!!!
Gameplay (9/10): Lots of characters, but lack of anything hidden or extra lowers it a point.
Replay (8/10): If you got quarters and a friend, you can be entertained for hours, especially if you liked the other vs. games from Capcom

Overall (8/10): Fun game. Try it out at least once!

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 12/14/01, Updated 12/14/01