Marvel vs. Capcom 3 - Or, "Fighting Games Exist Only to Serve Me My Alloted Portion of Humble Pie"

[Judgement101]

So I got Marvel vs. Capcom 3 today. After not playing any fighting games really since DOA4 SSFIV, I was quickly reminded of why;

Because in every fighting game except DOA, the only way I could get any worse a them is if you cut my hands off and made me play with the bloody stumps.

And it drives me insane. I mean, I'm by no measure exceptional at video games, but damn, why is that I can at least hold mine own, or deliver an ass kicking or two of my own, but in fighting games (DOA being the lone exception) I still manage to lose to the computer on Very Easy.

I mean seriously, it gets embarrassing. And what's worse is that I can't figure out how to get around it.

So what of you Escapist? You seem to know about fighting games? How do when you play them? Or is all the bravado I've seen about fighting games around merely just people covering for their pride at getting their asses kicked too?

I play them for fun truth be told. I go in for combos not spam projectiles. I use characters that most people wouldn't use.
For example.
Enjoy

I nearly died from laughter. Spencer is used for spamming grab, Cap spams shield throw, and Tron spams rocks. The person in the video picked some of the most spammable characters.

 

[Irony's Acolyte]

Well I'm not that amazing at most fighting games, but I will say I've got some decent skill in Soul Caliber IV and SSBB (shut up, it counts). Thing is when I picked up SSFIV it requires quite a different set of muscle memory. I had to get used to the control stick not just moving your character, I also had to use it to pull off combos and the like. The amount of times I was jumping around while spamming a button trying to pull off a combo once, you'd think I was in WoW. So while you might be good at one game, you could need serious improvement at another simply because the controls are so different. That and I think that SSFIV might just be rather hard to get the hang of.

So yeah, I feel your pain. It would take me quite alot of tries to beat even the easy mode (or was it very easy?). It's one of the few games that has made me rage.

 

[mitchell271]

I know where you're coming from. When I got TvC for Wii, I was terrible. But after a few hours of play, I slowly got better and tried different combos with different people.

It just takes practice. I got good at Brawl, Tekken, vs. Capcom games and SFIV through practice. Start off easy using the simplified controls then work your way up.

 

[Irony's Acolyte]

Well I'm not that amazing at most fighting games, but I will say I've got some decent skill in Soul Caliber IV and SSBB (shut up, it counts). Thing is when I picked up SSFIV it requires quite a different set of muscle memory. I had to get used to the control stick not just moving your character, I also had to use it to pull off combos and the like. The amount of times I was jumping around while spamming a button trying to pull off a combo once, you'd think I was in WoW. So while you might be good at one game, you could need serious improvement at another simply because the controls are so different. That and I think that SSFIV might just be rather hard to get the hang of.

So yeah, I feel your pain. It would take me quite alot of tries to beat even the easy mode (or was it very easy?). It's one of the few games that has made me rage.

Though soul calibur is complex, the inputs are not as awkward as they are here. There's very few joystick angles and motions of the kind capcom love.

Agreed. In SC you can pull off different moves by pushing the control stick in different directions in different ways (just a nudge, holding it in that direction) but in SSFIV you're doing quarter circles with the thing. Which usually ends up with me jumping straight up alot because my muscle memory hasn't attuned itself to the control scheme of SSFIV. And you block by moving the control stick away from your opponent- quite different than the dedicated block button of SC. Different games, different systems of play.

 

[MelasZepheos_v1legacy]

Best I've ever done was Soul Calibur IV on medium. And even then I can't defeat the Apprentice.

I'm not the best, but then I'm also not that big a fan because of the limited gameplay, often lack of an engaging story for me, and a lot of smaller issues which just niggle at me all the time.

I used to be pretty good at things like Tekken on the PlayStation back in the day, but I never kept up the skills.

 

[malestrithe]

I am proficient at fighting games in general. I can get to the final boss in most games without too much difficulty on any mode. I usually have problems with the final boss and I would have to burn tokens to get through him. Except Jinpachi for some reason: I never had problems against him.

If you can't tell, I am much better at Tekken than Street Fighter, but I can do fine on Street Fighter with some practice.

On MvC3, I can make it to the final boss without any problems. I do not get the insane 30+ Ultraaaaaaaaaaaa Comboes that I've seen some people get, but I usually win matches.

I will be the first to admit that I prefer MvC 1 over 2 or 3 any day of the week.

 

[esperandote]

I havent played the game but apparently the combos are too damn strong and easy for some characters I dont like the "the first one that hits wins" schema.

My favorite fighting games is The King of Fighters 2002 if you couldn't tell.

 

[gonzo20]

i rather suck at MVC3 im not gonna lie but it is fun getting into a ranged spammers (iron man, fuck your unibeam seriously -_- ) uncomfortable zone and doing the air combo thing where you switch your different chars and do a bit of damage.

I use ryu, akuma and ameretsaru atm and im more of a rusher, i just cant stand the fireball spamming, it bores me to death.

 

[migo]

It's the controller. You're meant to play MvC or SF with an arcade stick.

DoA was designed with a gamepad in mind. DBZ Burst Limit is another fighting game that actually works with a gamepad.

That's the problem with capcom. They design these games for a specific, and relatively, small audience and ignore everyone else.

You could look at it another way. They're supporting hardcore fans from a market that is pretty much dying out. And if you've got an Arcade stick, it's a hell of a lot of fun.

The shitty thing is you need several friends who are also fans of the game, otherwise you're fairly screwed when it comes to playing together in the same room, 'cause even if you have 2 arcade sticks, skill makes a massive difference, and unlike FPS games, you can't translate skills as easily.

 

[Paragon Fury]

I have a fight pad. Well, a fight controller[/i[, but same difference.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

I havent played the game but apparently the combos are too damn strong and easy for some characters I dont like the "the first one that hits wins" schema.

My favorite fighting games is The King of Fighters 2002 if you couldn't tell.

A few things to notice:

He caught an assist in this combo, assists take almost twice the normal damage, it's the games way of preventing the spam of assists by making them punishable.

He used the character with by far the highest attack in the game.

He used x-factor which increases damage a ton and cancels animation, allowing you to link 2 hyper moves in one combo.

His foe's non-assist combatants were Amaterasu, a small character which is hard to hit but has low life to balance it, and Phoenix, a character who has half the life of the second lowest life in the game (meaning she dies by any single one combo) but who comes back to life with full HP and powered up moves if she dies when you have 5 super bars.



This match ended thusly because the losing party spammed his assist and did an unsafe mixup which he shouldn't have, he took a huge risk and payed for it (two huge risks actually, since he used Phoenix in a team with another low-life char), is that not how fighting games should work?


Btw, if you noticed that Zangief-like move on the winner's side, yep, that's the lariat, this move is fully invincible on startup, it's one of the best assists in the game, the loser lost 2 characters to this since he actually hit him first but the assist interrupted it but he did NOT adjust, again doing an unsafe mixup with Phoenix, getting punished in an fashion that just took 2 of his characters out in a single combo just a moment ago.

If you can't figure out that rushdown on foes who can call out that assist simply is bad and that you should be guarding and waiting for the assist to come out and THEN punish it, you deserve to lose.

 

[ItsAPaul]

Play Soul Calibur until you're good. I don't bother with fighting games anymore to begin with, but that's what I had to do.

 

[FinalHeart95]

Yeah, my friend forced me to play MvC 3 with him. I think I took down one of his characters in three games.
I'm happy I got to play as Deadpool though.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

The combos are too long. The game needs a breaker mechanism.

The game has enough time outs as is, with combos any shorter or bursting in the game nearly all games which aren't completely one-sided would end in someone turtling for 20 seconds for the win.


TvC did have bursting as well as blazblue but these games were different. Here you actually gain a lot from having dead chars due to x-factor so it's not that bad if you die in a long combo as long as you know how to be fearsome with lvl 3 x-factor. An average combo that isn't too long or short does maybe a bit more than half a char's life. meaning you'll need 6 combos minimum to win (not including your foe having his char restore HP from tagging them out) and 6 combos for winning a round is about average for most fighting games out there.

Sorry, but when you are playing against someone that doesn't even let you get up without eating a hundred hits to the face you've got a game design that's failed IMO, X Factor or no.
The gameplay at times is extremely cheap and unbalanced. There's a huge amount that needs pretty serious patching IMO, the online is a joke and seems to be dead outside the US anyway.

This game is crying out for a decent tutorial mode. I don't see why that woudl be so hard to do: you coudl set up a number of in game situations, explain what to do, and then have the player do it. These could include zoning/spamming, rushdown, approaching opponents etc.

As an inexperienced player what you actually have is a £40 training mode since that's all you will be able to do (other than get massacred online - where you can find a match). even then, as i've said before, the trainind mode is terrible.

I really really would love to hear from Capcom what they intend to do or not do about the state of this game. if there's one thing that bugs me more than broken or badly designed games it's the publishers responsible refusing to communicate. Ultimately that's why i gave up on treyarch and sold my copy of BO.

The Capcom fighters really rely on secret knowledge - secret because they don't tell you what these techniques or aspects are, such as crossups. Most of them are exploits and all of them are exercises in a wall of input. They are the complete opposite of the sort of interaction you might assume fighting games would be about. That wouldn't be so bad if these things were exlained, taught or just plain easy to do (even in MVC3 it's not always easy, i've given up trying to decipher timing isses in mission mode). But a game that forces me to boot up my pc, use google or youtube to find the answers (where you can) is just not a well made game.

You need to get your mind out of this "they're not letting me do anything" place and put it in a "I'll cut my path through your face" mentality. Nobody is going to ever let you do anything, you're supposed to advance guard, use moves with invincibility and corner your foe, just like he did on you. If you can't do that, you deserve to lose and the fact that you lose to 100 hit combos just means that your foe wasn't messing around, has seriously worked at the game and deserved to win.


The knowledge is not secret but it is esoteric, the difference being that if you've played any fighter (not just capcom ones either) for any extended period of time you'll know these things but if you're completely new it'll sound alien. It comes with the territory of depth.

If all a game is is "here's a gun, shoot with R1, kill they ass!" you obviously don't need to work at it to have fun but if a game is more like a reflex test, instrument play and memorization quiz all blended into an anime styled over the top action fest you can expect the whole experience to take a form quite a bit more demanding from the player.


I don't disagree about tutorials though, Blazblue continuum shift had some great work in it's tutorials and it is my favorite fighter ever so yeah, something like that would be good for newcomers...if only we could have Rachel insult you through it all .

 

[Wolfwind]

I used to be pretty good at fighting games, but that was back when I played them quite a bit. Now there are so many good games on the market, it's like, who has time? I still like to try them all out though, but I'm pretty much just decent or average now. High level players will kick my ass more often than not.

For me though, MVC3 is a strange beast. I was actually really good at the first one. I didn't really like the second one too much, and thus never got good at it. And I like MVC3, but I seem to have trouble adjusting to the 2.5D graphics that it and games like Tatsunoko vs Capcom and SFIV use. For some reason, estimating the distance between characters, the way they move, and the moments of openings feel foreign to me.

I guess the only tip I got is to just try to pick one character (or one team) and start from there. Eventually you'll start to learn the timing and ins and outs of the fighting system, and after that, they just kind of become instinct and muscle memory. I like to try every character at least once to give them all a chance, since you might be surprised who you end up feeling comfortable with. Like in MVC1, I knew I'd like Strider the second I saw him, but I never imagined my best team would be pairing him up with Jin.

And in the end, if the game is frustrating you, then the hell with it. Nobody has the time or talent to be good at everything, right? Personally, I rock at Guilty Gear, but put me in a BlazBlue match and even most mid-level players can give me a beating. I don't really have the time or dedication to get good, so I just stick to what I'm naturally comfortable with.

So I dunno.... keep enjoying DOA, but don't torture yourself with something that's not fun.

ALTERNATIVELY though, if you don't want to quit, then just keep practicing. That's really all the advice I got, but it worked for me. I constantly got my ass kicked when I first started playing MVC1, but I kept playing because I enjoyed the game regardless. After a few months, I realized that while it took me longer than my friends and rivals at school to get good at the game, my potential was higher than theirs and I eventually surpassed most of them.

So I don't wanna say "just quit" when you might still be having fun with the game regardless. As long as you're having fun, keep playing, and you'll eventually start winning.