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What's the biggest release for Marvel Comics this year? Movie buffs will argue between not one but three 2011 blockbusters based on the imprint's biggest names. Avid readers pin hopes on the forthcoming Fear Itself crossover comic book series, the rare kind that sees distant heroes teaming up against impossible odds. And late night hosts will surely vote for the comically epic Spider-Man musical.
From that list alone, Marvel's in for its biggest-ever year of publicity, barely a year after being purchased by The Walt Disney Co. Yet before those books and films see the light of day, a little scrapper of a project launched last week with nearly every superhero imaginable on its cover: Marvel vs. Capcom 3, a fighting video game.
Big whoop. Marvel characters get the gaming treatment pretty often, whether tied to films or simply living out the comics' greatest storylines. But MvC3 is a rare bit of a perfect nerd storm, in terms of fan service, production value, and, er, being rather complicated. Nothing else Marvel makes this year will tap nearly as many geeky pressure points, for better and for worse.
Eighteen superheroes (and 18 characters from the Capcom gaming family) have run into each other for some reason. A volcano erupted, or Stan Lee lost a bet, or something. Doesn't matter. Point is, they all have to fight each other, in teams of three, in the Street Fighter tradition of punching, jump-kicking, and blasting to victory.
MvC3 comes from a hand-drawn legacy, but this is the series' first to give full 3D a shot. Perhaps the game took so long—11 years since its predecessor—so that the tech would befit the shift. Truly, the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 are brilliant canvases for this game's animated world. Tiny webs glimmer as Spider-Man blasts them. The Hulk seems to put all the weight of the world into his elbow swings. Six heroes can fill the screen at once without slowing the action down. And the voice acting befits such a melee, lead by dark fan fave Deadpool's jokes and snide comments.
Good thing, because the game has to look and feel just right to match its obsession with power. Every attack and maneuver comes super-sized—typically filling the screen with leaps, lasers, and an explosion of color—as if trying to outdo all other fighting games. Those other games don't have Iron Man or Wolverine, after all, so delivering on the promise of controlling the strongest men and women in the world has to click. Visually and aurally, it does. But what about the sheer act of slapping buttons to put such craziness in motion?
