Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite Betrays the Legacy of Its Series

 

What I say here comes from a place of love. I love the Marvel vs Capcom series and I only want what’s best for it.

Signed,

An Impassioned fan

What’s Missing

Deadpool, Phoenix Wright, Wolverine, Storm, Jill Valentine, Wesker, Viewtiful Joe, Amaterasu, Iron Fist, Vergil, Tronne Bonne, MODOK, Psylocke, Viper, Felicia, Trish, Phoenix, She-Hulk, Dr. Doom. These are just SOME of the characters that were lost in the transition between Marvel vs Capcom 3 and Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite.

The long-running, cult-classic fighting game franchise has hit an all-time low in its newest entry, exemplifying everything wrong with the anti-consumer practices of triple-a game developers and publishers in the 21st century, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Marvel vs. Capcom’s History

To understand why Marvel vs Capcom Infinite is representative of a series on decline, we should first look at the franchise’s roots. Marvel vs Capcom is a series that, technically, was first conceived as, and spurred by, the game X-Men vs. Street Fighter back in 1996. It was something that started as a game placed in arcades all around Japan, and later saw worldwide release on the Playstation and Sega Saturn in 1998. X-Men vs Street Fighter was a monumental game for its time and is still important now despite the fact that it hasn’t aged well. It proved that something as budding as the video game industry could do a collaboration with something as huge as the comic book industry and still create a stellar product. It merged some of comic’s most iconic figures with those of video games and it was a hallmark of fighting games in its time.

Not only was it an essential title because of the inherent statement it made, but it also paved the way for the Marvel vs Capcom series–one that’s now beloved by both hardcore fighting game fans and even casual gamers. Marvel vs Capcom has X-Men vs Street Fighter to thank for its existence although it’s become a much bigger license than its predecessor will ever be. Fast forward to 2017, and every single one of the X-men is missing from the newest Marvel vs Capcom game.

Why? What would cause the series to lose the heart and soul that it built its foundation on? What would cause Marvel vs Capcom to betray the history of its series?

Modern Capcom Woes

It begins with Capcom’s growing mindset that they only need to give its consumers the bare minimum in order to have us buy their product. For Capcom, this is a company practice that has been blooming for years now and it’s been showing itself to be more prevalent now than ever. Take Street Fighter V, for example. A game that launched with less content than any other street fighter game to date, even missing a basic arcade mode. It was a game whose main selling point was its ranked multiplayer, which was impossible to use for the first week of its release because of broken servers despite months of Capcom doing beta tests just to prevent that from happening. Now, this business model–the type of Capcom giving its fans an unpolished mess of a product–has infected its way into Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite.

Not only is Marvel vs Capcom: Infinite missing dozens of characters from Marvel vs Capcom 2 & 3 alone, but it has the second lowest roster in any Marvel vs Capcom game to date (with just the first title falling behind). Capcom has seen it fit to deliver only 4 new characters to the game on-disc, at release, and compared to Marvel vs Capcom 2’s 41 new characters, and even Marvel vs Capcom 3’s 21 new characters this is nothing short of an embarrassment.

Capcom Giveth and Capcom Taketh Away

What new characters were introduced? Well, MvC:I introduced the series to Marvel’s: Ultron, Gamora, and Captain Marvel and Capcom’s Jedah, from the Darkstalkers series. While these characters are fine additions, they came at the cost of all of the X-Men and other series favorites like Deadpool, Resident Evil’s Wesker, Devil May Cry’s Vergil, and even Phoenix Wright.

Why is this? Why does Marvel vs Capcom: Infinite have the weakest initial roster since the inception of the series? Presumably because the most interesting new characters in Marvel Infinite are all being saved for release later as DLC, in an entirely new way for Capcom to price gouge its consumers. These DLC characters were announced the day that the game released and are: The Monster Hunter (from the Monster Hunter series) Marvel’s Black Panther, Black Widow, Winter Soldier, and Venom, and Sigma from Mega Man and they’re all going to be charged as extra content before the end of 2017.

…But They Mostly Taketh Away

Wait… They have the audacity to charge players extra for Venom? A returning character from Marvel vs Capcom 2… and… and they’re charging extra for Sigma?!?? But he’s on the box art and is the main villain of the story. How much is this DLC going to cost, you may ask? Well the character pass is $30. Capcom are asking for half of the price of the vanilla game for 6 characters. This is nothing short of frustrating for consumers when Marvel vs Capcom: Infinite sports the lowest new-to-returning character ratio in the series history as it is.

The strangest thing behind the issue with this roster was the excuse that associates at Capcom made about the lack of appearances from certain fan-favorite characters. When asked about Magneto’s absence in an interview with GameSpot, Capcom’s Peter Rosas had said “ If you were to actually think about it, these characters are just functions. They’re just doing things. Magneto, case and point, is a favorite because he has eight-way dash and he’s really fast, right? Well guess what, Nova can do the same thing, Captain Marvel can do the same thing. Ultron can do the same thing.”

This is a bit of tone deaf marketing that is exemplary of this company losing passion in creating something that its fans are passionate about. Sure, when we boil it down, video games are just numbers, functions, inputs on a screen–but the reason that we play them is to immerse ourselves in in the worlds we love. And Marvel vs Capcom is a series that built itself on people watching their favorite characters beat the crap out of each other. To many they are much more than functions.

 

Exceptions to the Rule

I understand that video game development nowadays is expensive, and making a quality product isn’t easy, but it doesn’t excuse Capcom’s actions here when many other companies are giving its fans much more with their fighting games. Take two recently released games: Tekken 7 and Injustice 2 for example.

NetherRealm studios’ Injustice 2 not only added 16 new characters to it’s roster with a total of 28 characters in the initial roster, but that game boasts what are arguably the most realistic graphics in any video game period and includes one of the best story modes in any fighting game to boot. That’s not to even mention the community driven multi-verse events. The gear system–which lets you customize the look and play style of your character. Or the game’s fan involvement in choosing what DLC characters make it into the game. Tekken 7 is in a similar boat, giving players a roster of over 35 characters along with a robust story mode for each one.

That’s not to imply that things like a story mode aren’t in Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite, they’re just… lacking comparably. Capcom has seemingly understood the backlash they received after not including an Arcade mode or Story mode to Street Fighter V at its release last year, so they’ve opted to include both in Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite.

 

Low Quality Product

The problem with Marvel vs Capcom Infinite’s Story mode though, is that it’s cringe inducing at worst and garishly odd at best. I never thought I would see the day that Sigma and Ultron would fuse together, but now that I have I want to unsee it. This, along with the many other strange character interactions just feel forced. Like Iron Man fist bumping Devil May Cry’s Dante, or Darkstalkers’ Morrigan flirting with Ghost Rider. It doesn’t help that these scenes are bogged down by voice acting that’s laughably poor and dialogue that’s filled with hackneyed clichés and one-liners. The story also only took roughly 5 hours to complete and it wasn’t very challenging or unique. It felt more like a string of fights sewn together by 10-minute cutscenes. It just wasn’t much of a substantive or memorable experience.

Along with this, Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite has some of the strangest looking character models I’ve seen this year. Of course, there was the huge scandal with Chun-li, whose face looked like that of a character from Lazytown in the game’s promo trailers–though they’ve since fixed that.

But other characters look odd even still. Ryu looks like a deformed Jim Henson product, Captain America looks like The Tick, and Sigma looks like the in-between of Buzz Lightyear, Zerg, and a Neo Nazi. What’s even odder is that some of the new characters in the game look fantastic despite this, with Monster Hunter, Jedah and Captain Marvel as good examples.

 

What Works, Though?

But graphics aren’t everything, especially in a fighting game. Here, gameplay and combat is most important. How does it fair? Well, I’m glad to say that this is where Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite shines. Think of any insane combo that you want to try and it probably works. The amount of flexibility and choice in how you can play your favorite characters here is stunning and with the added mechanic of the games’ infinity stones–which grant a static special ability to the user–there are a myriad of ridiculous combos and play styles at your disposal.

But good gameplay doesn’t change the fact that fans of this series have been waiting 6 years for a new entry and yet they get significantly less content than what they were given before.

 

A Bleak Future

Nothing gets me more boiled than anti-consumer practices, and Capcom, at this point, are just blatantly drawing on the wallets of their most hardcore fans in order to make a profit. Maybe it’s because their last big fighting game, Street Fighter V, didn’t meet sales expectations–so they’re trying other means of siphoning cash from their loyal followers. Maybe it’s because Capcom has been teetering closer and closer to bankruptcy with each poor business decision they make. Like in 2011, when they canned the development of Mega Man Legends 3 and blamed it on the fan’s lack of support–when more than likely it was because the series creator, Keiji Inafune, was kicked off the development team a year before.

Capcom is banking on the fact that brand recognition and soft-ball critics will save them from any suspicion of doing something wrong, but I don’t think it will. Fans are taking notice and people are starting to lose trust and hope in Capcom as a corporation. The last thing I want is for Capcom to fail, I don’t want to see some of my favorite gaming franchises disappear because they’ve been refusing to change ways. But regardless of this, it’s nearly undeniable Marvel vs Capcom Infinite is a spit in the face to fans of the series. It’s a depressing notion, because underneath piles of terrible corporate business practices, tone deaf marketing, and refusal to listen to fans lies a genuinely fun fighting game.