It's not every day I get to play a wii game for any length of time, so I figured write ups for Dante and Bioshock could wait a day or two. Almost out of the blue, I was invited to a Tatsunoko vs Capcom tournament at a friend of a friends house, and as a result came into contact with the game having missed out entirely on the bias the gamer web inevitably provides on a game. The result was pleasant, to say the least. Far less tournament than semi-organized get together hinged on a fighting game, I was allowed ample time to play and observe the game being played without the hostile environment true competition usually demands.
In the same vein as Capcom's previous efforts with Marvel, TvC is a totally over the top look at a make believe conflict between martial artists, super heroes, giant robots, succubi, samurai and even a photo journalist. If the game has a plot I don't know it because we only played vs mode, but there is no post fight dialogue, and the instruction booklet includes only basic bios. The games introduction is similarly vague, presenting a bright and colorful mashup of all the characters shouting and posing in front of starburst and hyperspace backgrounds to an infectuous j-pop rhythm that haunts you long after you're done listening to it but little else. This sort of presentation permeats the entire product, with characters flashing and glowing and shouting and posing before even the most simplistic of actions. This manifests most comically in the games combo counter, which often reports a two to three hit combo of jabs has delivered something on the order of 4.76 billion damage.
The gameplay takes a similar "less is more" attitude towards execution with few characters having to execute more than a qcf or dp to accomplish any of their moves. If your character does have a more complex notation in their movelist, its probably some situationally specific or otherwise overpowered technique that they just don't want you whipping out at the drop of a dragon punch motion (i'm looking at you Karas). The knee jerk impression is that the whole game is some sort of MvC2 light because of the big VS in the title, but its far more kin to Rival Schools. That is to say, besides super jumps and dashes, the combat never gets truly bonkers until somebody expels some super meter. There's tagging, partner assists, air combos, and a guilty gear style combo breaker, but its all very low rent in terms of raw devastation.
The super moves, on the other hand, take center stage at all times. Coming in level one and three variations, your single objective in battle is landing any other move and linking it into a super, and then doing it again, and again. Because a great many of them are single hit all or nothing type affairs and even less are safe on block, very few of them have true fire and forget use. If you want to win, you need to learn some combos. The good news is, with the exception of a select few everyone in the game can do a basic weak to hard chain into a super. Once you get that down you can start styling it up with assists to pressure, or mid combo partner swaps, or even Baroque cancelled juggle strings, but none of those mean anything when your opponent pulls a lvl3 combo off a jab and takes 75% of your life away.
Not to say that's a bad thing. There's really no way to highlight the hyper cinematic nature of the Tatsunoko guys combat repetoires without laying it all on bodacious super moves. Projectiles and sword slashes are one thing, but if you want Gold Lightan to pull out somebody's soul and still call it balanced it has to be a glorified cinema. Then once you've got the giant zippo lighter pulling out souls, it only makes sense to have the little maid robot mopping up tsunami sized tidal waves and the vampire firing homing missiles from her wings. And lets be honest, isn't that the sort of absurdity a crossover game like this needs?
In short, TvC is not going to light your world on fire unless you've never played one of Capcom's Marvel games and you have a penchant for 20 year old japanese cartoons. As much of a japanophile as I once was, I can still only say with confidence that I knew maybe half of the Tatsunoko cast. Similarily, the Capcom side is full of guys who aren't exactly classics (The guy from the crappy Onimusha?) or even traditional fighter fare (PTX). But that shouldn't scare you away from it, especially if you own a Wii and love fighting games because there aren't a lot of other options. Extra content wise, the game doesn't seem like it offers a whole lot besides providing a vehicle for these characters to beat the snot out of each other, but that alone should keep you entertained for quite a while.
-F.
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