Marvel vs. Capcom 2 was pretty much THE fighting game for me for a good chunk of my late teens to early 20's, coming off of the love that I had for Street Fighter vs. X-Men back on the Saturn. Most of the local places had a machine for this one, and it got quite a bit of playtime back on the Dreamcast as well. I was late picking it up on the last gen systems though, and really only ever played it on the Xbox in fact, but still, it's easily one of my favorite fighters.
That's not to say that I can't recognize the game has some issues, even before we get to the meat of this port. There are some serious balance problems, and if you're jumping into the game for the first time, you'll realize that pretty quickly. Certain fighters are definitely overpowered and cheap, so if you're looking for something more balanced out of your fighting games, then Marvel vs. Capcom 2 isn't going to be the game for you.
With that out of the way, hell, it's still a lot of fun. The roster is massive, featuring 56 characters pooled from various Capcom and Marvel franchises, featuring a roster of X-Men, Street Fighter, Mega Man, Avengers, Spider-Man, and more, and you're bound to see a few of your own personal favorites from both side of the fence make an appearance here. The game consists of single round fights involving three fighters for both sides, with ability to call in one of your extra fighters as a replacement whenever you want, or you can rely on them to provide an assist during a fight, which is one of the key things you'll want to learn about the game if you hope to make any real progress against other players.
Unlike a few other home versions, there's no need to unlock anything here, the roster is available in its entirety from the start, which is nice to see. The main modes are all present, score attack, single player, and training. Training isn't particularly robust though, you basically can reference a move sheet by pausing the game and going into the menu, and then testing those moves out on AI opponents that act as virtual punching dummies. The move list for each character isn't particularly long or involved though, and most of the moves in the game follow some type of variation on a quarter circle movement, or something similar to a dragon punch from most Street Fighter titles. Still, the pad on the 360 controller specifically manages to mess up even simple moves like this, unless you've really grown use to using it for fighters, so I'd advise you to try and pick up an arcade stick or even one of those Madcatz fighting pads that came out along with Street Fighter IV a while ago.
Visually, the game does show it's age, and while Backbone has included a few options to smooth out the pixels, it doesn't really help any. The game does support widescreen, but for the purists there's the 4x3 mode as well, and you can turn the pixel filter off to get the original sprites. The sprites are pretty damn pixelated on an HD set, but there's not much that can be done there unless someone was going to front the cash to have the entire thing re-drawn, which was never going to happen to begin with. I'm more or less happy with the end result though; it still looks better to me than seeing the visuals upscaled from the Xbox title, so it works well enough.
Finally, the big addition here is the online play, which works well for the most part, but the lobby system has a few bugs to it, and on occasion the game will refuse to find a game for you without making you host your own. There's a local mode for two players, and then there's the online Player and Ranked modes. These are self-explanatory, but Player gives you a lobby that supports up to six people, and you can act as a spectator in between matches, with one player being the host for the room. The Ranked matches are strictly one on one affairs, with no rematch option and you'll be booted out to the menu after each fight. Supposedly rank will match you up with players of similar skill levels or rankings, but I haven't put a great deal of time into the ranked mode to really put that to the test. It did pair me up with people that had low numbers at first though, so I'm sure it works as intended.
The lobby system for Player matches isn't always the best though, and I suppose part of this comes from whoever is hosting the games as well. If the host has an abysmal ping, then you're going to have a laggy mess of a game on your hands, and unfortunately there doesn't appear to be option to search for games via ping, so it's pretty random on whom you're going to get paired up with unless you're going by an established friends list. This isn't particularly surprising, but I've seen better online functionality out of recent fighters (BlazBlue comes to mind), so I know it could be improved upon. However, for a $15 port of an arcade classic that I love, I'm ok enough with the current implementation to keep from complaining too much.
Basically, if you've never played Marvel vs. Capcom 2 and you're curious as to why people seem to love it, it's well worth picking up, provided you keep your expectations about balance and tuned gameplay in check. It's a pretty over-the-top fighter, with a heavy emphasis on flashy supers and specials more than a complex combo/counter system, so it's not going to be for everyone to enjoy. If you're an old fan of the game though, you'll know what to expect, and the inclusion of online play, even if it's not entirely perfect, makes this a must download title. Crank that turbo option up to 2, pour out a scoop of Haagen Dazs, and have some fun with a goofy, old school fighter.
