So I guess I wrote a fucking book about Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite or something.


Hey there, people. It's your good buddy, Zen. If you know me even a little bit, you probably know that I like fighting games. Like a lot. One series I really like in particular is the Marvel vs. Capcom series. I played a lot of Marvel 2 with my brother back in the day and and Marvel 3 is what really got me watching fighting game videos and streams. When they announced Marvel Infinite was happening, I was ecstatic. All the way from its announcement to its release, this game has been an emotional roller coaster of being excited to being horribly disappointed. So how do I feel about the game a week after its launch? Let's dive into it, shall we?

When I sit down and look at a game through a somewhat analytical lens, there are 5 major categories I like to look at and 3 subcategories in each one. Each subcategory gets a score out of 10 and then average the numbers out. When all 5 category scores are added up, the resulting number is taken out of 100. Depending on the type of game, I shift parts of the template around and assign different values to certain categories. So, with a fighting game like Marvel Infinite, I'm going to use:

Visuals: 20
Audio: 20
Gameplay: 40
Story: 10
Other: 10

Now, let's finally get into this.



VISUALS: 15.1/20

GRAPHICS - 8.2/10
It doesn't take a genius to figure out that what you see in Marvel Infinite looks a little weird. However, this isn't something to chalk up to the graphics in the game. The graphics, while not amazing, aren't too bad. The actual quality of the game's graphics aren't bad at all I'd say. The textures and what not leave me with little to complain about, but you won't find me saying they're amazing by any stretch of the imagination.

ARTSTYLE - 7.0/10
This is where one of the real visual problems with the game comes in. While the graphics aren't necessarily bad, the artstyle leaves a lot to be desired. The artstyles of older MvC titles were strong enough to define them, while this game has easily the weakest art of any game in the series to date. Whether it's the vibrant and lively sprites that decorated the early MvC entries like Marvel 1 and Marvel 2 or the comic book styling of Marvel 3, the bland and empty artstyle of Marvel Infinite makes it stand out as the black sheep in this regard.

DESIGNS- 7.5/10
When it comes to design, things sadly aren't much better. The three things I want to focus on here are the character designs, the stage designs, and the game's UI and interface.
With character designs, most of them are right from their looks in Marvel 3. With the few new characters added to the game, I actually really like the preservation of Jedah's and X's looks. I'm also quite fond of Ultron's look. However, there are certainly some designs carried over that I think should've been changed. Spencer, Chris and Firebrand in particular stand out as characters that should've seen some redesign considerations.
The stages of the game are mixes of places in the Marvel and Capcom universes, which I think is a neat idea, but the execution feels very unimpressive. Most of levels have quite uninteresting color palettes, but my main problem is that there's so few examples of the mixed concepts. There's only like 6 examples of the idea, leaving what I find is wasted potential.
Finally, with the game's UI, there's really no other way to say it but it's ugly. The health bar setup is pretty generic, but that's not a mortal sin. The wheel for the stones is rather uninspired as well, but that's far from my biggest issue here. The length of the super meter at the bottom will never not hurt my eyes. It's so claustrophobic in how short the bars are. It really does give off that 'mobile game' feel other aspects of the game let off.



AUDIO: 15.4/20

MUSIC - 7.3/10
Music in games is something that matters quite a bit to me. People tend not to realize just how important music is till its messed with. The music in Marvel Infinite is interesting, because the divide down the cast is also a divide across the music. The music on the Capcom side is radically different from the music on the Marvel side. In general, both sides are rather mediocre especially when compared to the OSTs of the older games.
On the Capcom side, the music is odd in its own right. The general style of the music is very electronic or EDM-esque. It makes me think of knock-off Tekken music I guess is the way to put it. I'm not the biggest fan of modern Tekken OSTs, but I don't think their bad. However, I find that this style applied across the Capcom cast indiscriminately is a poor choice. For some characters, it works. X's theme is a pretty good rendition of the intro stage from X1. Personally, I would have wanted Variable X for his theme, but that's just nitpicking. For a lot of characters, it doesn't fit at all. Firebrand's theme feeling like some random nightclub shit doesn't feel remotely appropriate. Most themes tend to be worse versions of their themes from Marvel 3. Dante's theme is just a not as good version of his Marvel 3 theme, same goes for Frank and Zero. In general, I find that a lot of the Capcom themes remind me of Juri's theme from Street Fighter 5. That's not a good thing.
When we get to the Marvel side, it's a whole different ballgame. For returning characters, their old themes are just ripped away from them and replaced with generic movie music because MCU. Some of the best themes of the series, like Captain America's and Nova's, are just gone in favor of themes I legit have trouble telling apart they are so generic. Ghost Rider's and Ultron's themes aren't too bad, but everywhere else is just a bunch of disappointment.

VOICE ACTING - 7.3/10
The voice acting in Marvel Infinite is actually in a similar state as the music. The VA situation for the game is very interesting, because most of it is rather dull while it has rather reputable voice artists. The caliber of voice acting in the game leads me to believe that the only way it could be as it is is the voice direction is absolutely terrible. Returning characters with returning voice actors are rather telling of this, as there is very noticeable differences in the quality of their performances between games. It's a general theme across the entire cast, where most characters have very awkward or strange voice acting. Some voices stand out as being pretty good, like Jedah especially. But most are just puzzling while a couple reach out as being just bad. This goes mostly for Firebrand, who sounds like a Saibamen now, and Ghost Rider, who sounds like Warwick from LoL now. It just baffles me with some of the takes they went with honestly.

SOUND FX - 7.8/10
There's very little to talk about with the sound effects in Marvel Infinite. For the most part, it's just kinda basic stuff. Not much to write home about, it's mostly just some standard stuff that serves its purpose. There's a couple hit sound effects that sound weird and don't have a lot of impact, but it's mostly just very middling stuff.



GAMEPLAY: 35.7/40

MECHANICS - 10/10
Now we get to the stuff where this game shines and shines hard. Marvel Infinite's general gameplay and mechanics are stellar. The game's gone back to a Marvel 1 style 2v2 as opposed to the more recent entries using 3v3 with liberal assist use. The mechanic that really ties it all together is the tagging and the freedom around it. You can tag during just about everything in this game and it opens up an untold amount of combo potential. It also opens up some incredibly dirty options that are befitting of a MvC game. The stones also present some filthy stuff that feels right at home in the franchise, both in surges and storms. The mechanics are easily the part of the game that makes it worth giving the time of day. It really saves the game for sure.

ROSTER - 7.6/10
The roster of a fighting game is very important since it's how you interact with the gameplay of any given fighting game. Roster is also something incredibly subjective, so it will vary from person to person. For me, Marvel Infinite's roster by itself is like a 5.6/10. I like the inclusion of Jedah and Ultron, but the cast is made of mostly returning character with a lot of choices I begrudgingly accept or loathe. Characters like Spencer, Chris and Arthur stand out as the worst offenders, and they seem to garner the most ire from people overall. On the Marvel side, it becomes obvious real fast that they are just going for MCU stuff, which quickly leaves me disinterested. The cast ends up being too safe for my taste, though that's probably because I usually like the freaks and geeks of fighting games. The game also lacks much in the way of new blood, only having 2 new Capcom characters and 4 new Marvel characters in a roster of 30 characters, a pretty small roster for a modern MvC. So the roster is a 5.6/10 for me, but I give it 2 points more because the roster in terms of gameplay still does offer lots of variation and the characters all play radically different. You'll be safe picking pretty much any character you want knowing they fill a spot no one else can.

NETCODE - 9.2/10
A very welcome change to Infinite over Marvel 3 is the netcode. Marvel 3's netcode is down at the bottom of fighting game netcode, and Marvel Infinite rectifies that. The game handles connections rather well and running into a game with a wonky connection is more the exception than the rule this time around. It makes good connections feel as good as they can be, almost offline in a sense. Very happy to see good netcode on a Marvel game, I will say that.



STORY: 5.6/10

PLOT - 6.3/10
The moment I saw that Marvel Infinite was going to be dedicating a considerable amount of resources to a big story mode, I felt a part of my soul die. Fighting games are notorious for having poor stories, mostly because mixing an effective story with the formula of a fighting game just isn't very attainable. Some fighting games can work in story mode better than others. There are few fighting games I can think of that lend themselves to a big story mode than Marvel vs. Capcom. The series is built almost entirely on the fact that it's a dream match scenario. Why is it happening? It doesn't matter. It's a fighting game bringing together two things you love with fun gameplay and great presentation. So what happens when you try to make a story mode out of MvC? Turns out you essentially get Mortal Kombat vs. DC's story mode.
The plot boils down to the fact that the two universes are merging, which is already dumb as hell. How is there a 'Capcom universe'? That seems to imply that Street Fighter, Resident Evil, Darkstalkers, Strider, and Mega Man all take place in the same universe. I'm sorry, what? I wouldn't care if the game wasn't trying to make some big cinematic story mode, but here we are. So the worlds are merging and Ultron has merged with Sigma to form Ultron Sigma, who seeks to eliminate organic life. In order to do so, he seeks the six Infinity Stones. So the story is basically Final Fantasy 1 to some degree with the "go get the magic stones" and there's very little beyond that. It all starts, we find out, because Jedah wants to balance life and death or some shit so he talks to Death and then things move on from there. Then Dante hands Ultron Sigma the Soul Stone, but it doesn't really cooperate with him and he turns into a Mega Man X final boss and then the good guys use a spirit bomb from X's buster to kill him. Then the worlds stay converged and the heroes decide to watch over the stones. The end. Very thin, very barebones, very lackluster in every regard.

CHARACTERS - 5.0/10
A story in a game like this is carried by the characters that inhabit them and how interesting their interactions and reasons for actually fighting are. The characters in Marvel Infinite's story mode seem like they're trying to emulate the annoyingly quippy nature of the MCU movies, but add to that a bunch of really awkward pauses added into the scenes for no reason and the aforementioned questionable voice acting. Most of the Capcom characters are just there to be in the background till a fight happens and the Marvel characters are there to be MCU. Lots of character interactions are very unexplored or forced, with little in between. You have things like Dante throwing his guns to Rocket Raccoon in such a manner and written in such a way that it pains me to witness. Then there's parts like Dormammu and Firebrand showing up for one fight and then never appearing again in the entire thing. The story spends so much time trying to make it seem like the characters know each other well across universes for some reason, but we never get an idea of how they know each other or to what degree. We just know that they know each other because they blatantly spout out each other's names in an incredibly stilted way.

STORYTELLING - 5.5/10
The already insufferable story is conveyed in a very dull and interesting way. It's pretty much very straightforward 'character goes to place, they talk before a fight, fight happens, character gets thing, character returns to neutral'. Very little is done in the way having anything interesting in terms of conveying story. Everything is just blatantly said or shown to you and that's it. There's nothing more to what the game gives you and it becomes boring very quickly. The storytelling makes the whole story feel even more like a corridor than it already is. There's no illusion presented. The story is a straight line and the game is very uninterested in showing you otherwise. I usually wouldn't care too much, but the fact that they put so much into this story mode and this is what it turned out as leaves me with little mercy in this regard.



OTHER: 7.7/10

REPLAYABILITY - 8.5/10
Replayability is always a weird thing with fighting games. In a sense, they are infinitely replayable by the very nature of the genre. The way I define it here is how much the game leaves me wanting to come back to it. A lot of this stems from fun factor. I find Marvel Infinite is a game that leaves me wanting to play it quite a bit. When I'm at work and nothing's happening, I'll pass the time by thinking of new ways I can utilize and synergize Nemesis and Jedah. However, I do find myself with less drive to come back when compared with Marvel 2 or 3. When I started playing Marvel 2, I'd come home from school and I would sit down and pour hours into learning Blackheart combos. When Marvel 3 came out. I remember spending entire weekends tempering some Wesker/Akuma/Doom against my brother and his friends. With Marvel Infinite, I want to go back and play it, but I find myself less scrambling to play it and more playing it when I have the time. That could be just adult life getting to me, but I also find it much easier for me to put Infinite down. I feel content with a play session after only like an hour or two, when Marvel 2 and 3 would make 6 hours feel like 10 minutes. It's a noticeable difference.

PRESENTATION - 6.7/10
Let's just take a tour through a regular match to explore the game's presentation. We'll start at the character select screen. The screen itself is lifeless and bland as hell, the appearances of the characters as you cursor through them are these incredibly static pictures of them that lack any sense of style. The versus screen is just those static pictures standing against the stage you're about to play on. Character intros are very similar to how they were in Marvel 3, complete with a lot of reused animations, but there is so much less in the way of unique intro quotes that really deliver the character interactions you want out of a crossover like this. The match starts, the announcer is actually not too bad in this game, and then the gameplay starts. Once you start actually playing it, the game becomes much more enjoyable. However, the presentation over that gameplay isn't great. The artstyle leaves the flashy nature of an MvC game with much less impact, and the rather limp voice acting dampens the hype even further sadly. A lot of returning supers maintain most of their presentation, but some, like Ghost Rider's Penance Stare especially, are actually made worse in baffling ways. The rather unimpressive music in the game hurts the spectacle of Infinite even more. Often times I find myself having trouble telling what theme is actually playing because I find so many of them blend together. There was a moment where Captain America and Hawkeye were on the screen and I couldn't tell who's theme the music was. That shouldn't be a problem between those two characters. Marvel themes blend together because they're unrecognizable generic movie tracks, and the Capcom themes blend together because they're all this weird EDM techno shit that has lots of really quiet build up moments that barely lead to anything and leaves the music barely audible in an actual match. I could go on, but we'll leave it at that. I think you get the picture here.

MEMORABILITY - 7.9/10
So I use this category to give my personal score straight from the heart without really putting 15000 words behind it. I feel that, off the top of my head, the game is around a 7.9 out of 10. So much of the game is lacking in any style, which is kind of the series' calling card. Almost all the components of visuals and audio feel like a severe downgrade from previous entries. However, the gameplay of Marvel Infinite salvages what would be like a 6.8 and brings it up to 7.9. The gameplay manages to keep the spirit of Marvel alive in this game and convince me the game is more than just a hollow shell. The most apt metaphor I think is imagine there's a horribly disgusting week-old McDonald's bag dripping with grease, but when you open the bag, there's a pristine plate of filet mignon waiting for you. The outside makes you want nothing to do with it, but when you get inside, something special and delicious is waiting for you. At the same time though, there's no way to get that filet mignon out of the bag without it getting tainted to some degree by the bag.





OVERALL: 7.9/10
Thankfully, all the numbers came together to meet up right with my gut feeling. This game has something special hidden in it. Beneath all the shit that I loathe about this game, there's an incredibly fun fighting game that's exactly what Marvel vs. Capcom is about. Flashy combos, expressive tools, dirty shit permeating every part of its gameplay. In terms of the raw gameplay of the game, I couldn't be happier. It feels like Mahvel while being its own thing. But it's absolutely impossible to look at the raw gameplay and not have it marred by everything else around it. Presentation and all its components are really what got me into the Marvel games. The games were fun to play, but you also had cool looking characters that moved in cool unique ways with rad music to back them up. It created a completely unforgettable experience that set the standard for fighting games in my eyes. So while this game has gameplay on its side through and through, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't sad to see Infinite without much of what made me fall in love with these games in the first place. Bittersweet I find is the perfect word to describe this game.

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