I'm not sure if I can really spoil Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite other than revealing what the last boss is like (It's Sigma and Ultron combined together). So Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite lead up to its launch with criticism and controversy from the community. None of the X-Men were going to be part of the roster, a lot of the characters looked ugly, the roster felt uninspiring and the lack of female representation made it that much worse. And like always, they asked fans to pay for a season pass for 6 additional characters with only one of them revealed. I've always hated the idea of having to pay extra game content when you don't know what you're going to get. But the roster was leaked and proved to be quite accurate up to that point, and one of the characters was "Monster Hunter" and I really wanted to play as that character.
Before it was announced, I discussed with a friend on who I would like to see added in as a character. I said I wanted to see Samanosuke Akechi from Onimusha, Yukimura Sanada from Sengoku Basara, The Arisen from Dragon's Dogma, and/or Leon S. Kennedy from Resident Evil on Capcom side. None of those showed up. For Marvel, I threw out some names: Captain Marvel, Black Widow, Scarlet Witch, and/or Squirrel Girl. Surprisingly, the first two characters are part of the roster. Sadly, they're kind of boring.
Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite had a lot to live up to because I absolutely loved Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and even then fans of the previous games didn't like it. So you could imagine how a lot of those fans felt about MvC:I. With the inclusion of X from Mega Man X and Monster Hunter, I was too excited to wait for a future discount and pre-ordered the game along with the season pass. Playing through the game, I just kept feeling.....disappointed.
Things that disappointed me in MvC:I
- Ugly character models; it's like Capcom forgot how their characters looked like
- Only 6 out of 36 of the characters are female (13 out of 50 for UMvC3 - 16% vs. 26% ratio)
- Uninspiring character roster (I really like Gamora and Monster Hunter though)
- Music makes me mad, sad, and angry. I don't like any of Marvel character's themes.
- They changed Marvel character's awesome themes to generic film like ones.....
- The art style is boring; more detailed and realistic compared to UMvC3.....but boring
- Story is contrived and seems to focus on making Marvel look better than Capcom characters
- Poor representation of characters: Marvel = generic with no souls; Capcom = A Joke
There's probably more, but I don't remember them all. But least they got the most important thing right: The gameplay. Combat is closer to the original two games and the inclusion of the Infinity stones does add a whole new layer of strategy and options. Combos don't feel overly complicated, movement feels fast and free-flowing, and the comebacks are still really exciting to watch. I feel thankful that there's an arcade mode and a solid local/online versus mode after experiencing both those things go wrong in Street Fighter V, but I have to remember that they're standard things that should already work right from the beginning. Despite the many disappoints I've had with the game, I can't deny the fact that its base game is a lot of fun. So I would say that it's a "fun" game, but not a "good" one. They can still continue to improve the game by adding more characters, add in an extra mode like Heroes & Heralds from UMvC3, or simply revamp the entire game's graphics (some modders added some thick ink lines on character models and they look really cool). Story mode was pretty dumb, but I can still find enjoyment in playing Arcade mode and Versus. I can only hope for a fun mode to be added in for that extra incentive to keep playing the game.
Wednesday, December 13, 2017
Let's talk about Metroid Samus Returns [SPOILERS]
Oh man, I didn't expect to be so incredibly busy these last two months. Right after finishing the Super Mario Medley Remix, I started working on the Ghosts 'n Goblins Medley Remix and it took a lot of work. Here it is:
It originally had 3 more songs than this, but I wasn't sure if I was able to meld it in well while making in interesting and short. It was the first time I worked with sidechaining and I'm glad I finally have that skill in part of my repertoire. It was a nightmare balancing and mixing the tracks this time around as it reach up to 32 tracks. But now that it's done, I'm taking the rest of December off from working to catch up on other things and relaxing. One of the things I need to catch up on is writing about games because there are a LOT of games I want to talk about. I think the only way I can reasonably do this without taking all of December to write about them is by keeping them short and writing many at a time. In fact, it'd be great if I can finish them all today so I can focus on playing and finishing up some games for the rest of December. It will be difficult to write about most of the games in detail anyways as the experience and memories of them aren't as fresh as when I had finished them.
So first up is Metroid: Samus Returns for the Nintendo 3DS.
I was obviously excited for the game as it has been over a decade since the last 2D Metroid game and I absolutely love Metroid. But when I saw that MercurySteam was co-developing the game, I got worried because of their work on Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate on the 3DS. I also really didn't want to compare the experience to the fan-made game Another Metroid 2 Remake (AM2R) released last year, but it's impossible not to since both game's objective was the same: to recreate Metroid 2. Having played AM2R kind of set the bar of expectation and what I wanted out of a Metroid game.
Pros of Metroid: Samus Returns:
+ Beautiful 3D graphics, environments and creatures
+ Sound effects were of high quality
+ Combat has a nice flow to it
+ Interesting new abilities and uses for them
+ Not particularly short or long gameplay time
+ Had speed running in mind for level design
+ Last boss almost ruined the experience for me, but the true last boss made up for it
Cons of Metroid: Samus Returns:
- Few and unmemorable boss fights
- Music were high quality and had some familiar tunes, but was mostly unmemorable
- Melee counter gets old and tedious half-way though and free-aiming can be annoying
- Area Themes were weak; it made everything kind of meld and feel the same
- Backtracking had little purpose and felt more tedious than rewarding
- Boss fights are tedious and drawn out unnecessarily
- Hard mode offers nothing new except for enemies doing more damage
Things AM2R did better:
+ Quite a few memorable boss fights that were challenging and exciting
+ Strong sense of area themes and atmosphere
+ Smarter level designs that made exploration interesting
+ Metroid fights were fast-paced, exciting, but still challenging
+ Controls were nicer with better air movement
+ Lots of "moments"
+ A true challenge in Hard mode with new AI movements, less resources, and higher damage
I played through Samus Returns three times: Casual run on Normal Difficulty, 2nd run on Hard, 3rd run as speedrun on Normal. I felt iffy about everything the first run, more sure the 2nd run, and certain on how I felt about the game the 3rd run. To boil it down in general terms, I found the game to be mildly entertaining and enjoyed it, but it was sadly an unmemorable experience that seems to be outclassed by the experience I had with AM2R of which I played 5 times. Invincible enemies that need to be flipped with melee counter or invincible indefinitely, Metroid fights with invincibility states, the digger bot with a few repeating patterns with a small window of vulnerability and the Metroid Queen having long attack patterns with invincibility state made everything feel tedious like it's wasting my time. If it weren't for the True Boss fight with Proteus Ridley at the very end of the game, I would've been pretty angry about how the game ended because the fight against the Metroid Queen was long and boring. I liked the fight against Proteus Ridley in terms of presentation, from its familiar and exciting music to the fast-paced combat that didn't involve invincibility states. In all honesty, the actual fight itself wasn't spectacular as it's pretty easy to learn his pattern after a few tries and he becomes really easy. So while I'm glad they finally made another 2D Metroid and having enjoyed it, it was honestly the least memorable 2D Metroid game in the series.
It originally had 3 more songs than this, but I wasn't sure if I was able to meld it in well while making in interesting and short. It was the first time I worked with sidechaining and I'm glad I finally have that skill in part of my repertoire. It was a nightmare balancing and mixing the tracks this time around as it reach up to 32 tracks. But now that it's done, I'm taking the rest of December off from working to catch up on other things and relaxing. One of the things I need to catch up on is writing about games because there are a LOT of games I want to talk about. I think the only way I can reasonably do this without taking all of December to write about them is by keeping them short and writing many at a time. In fact, it'd be great if I can finish them all today so I can focus on playing and finishing up some games for the rest of December. It will be difficult to write about most of the games in detail anyways as the experience and memories of them aren't as fresh as when I had finished them.
So first up is Metroid: Samus Returns for the Nintendo 3DS.
I was obviously excited for the game as it has been over a decade since the last 2D Metroid game and I absolutely love Metroid. But when I saw that MercurySteam was co-developing the game, I got worried because of their work on Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate on the 3DS. I also really didn't want to compare the experience to the fan-made game Another Metroid 2 Remake (AM2R) released last year, but it's impossible not to since both game's objective was the same: to recreate Metroid 2. Having played AM2R kind of set the bar of expectation and what I wanted out of a Metroid game.
Pros of Metroid: Samus Returns:
+ Beautiful 3D graphics, environments and creatures
+ Sound effects were of high quality
+ Combat has a nice flow to it
+ Interesting new abilities and uses for them
+ Not particularly short or long gameplay time
+ Had speed running in mind for level design
+ Last boss almost ruined the experience for me, but the true last boss made up for it
Cons of Metroid: Samus Returns:
- Few and unmemorable boss fights
- Music were high quality and had some familiar tunes, but was mostly unmemorable
- Melee counter gets old and tedious half-way though and free-aiming can be annoying
- Area Themes were weak; it made everything kind of meld and feel the same
- Backtracking had little purpose and felt more tedious than rewarding
- Boss fights are tedious and drawn out unnecessarily
- Hard mode offers nothing new except for enemies doing more damage
Things AM2R did better:
+ Quite a few memorable boss fights that were challenging and exciting
+ Strong sense of area themes and atmosphere
+ Smarter level designs that made exploration interesting
+ Metroid fights were fast-paced, exciting, but still challenging
+ Controls were nicer with better air movement
+ Lots of "moments"
+ A true challenge in Hard mode with new AI movements, less resources, and higher damage
I played through Samus Returns three times: Casual run on Normal Difficulty, 2nd run on Hard, 3rd run as speedrun on Normal. I felt iffy about everything the first run, more sure the 2nd run, and certain on how I felt about the game the 3rd run. To boil it down in general terms, I found the game to be mildly entertaining and enjoyed it, but it was sadly an unmemorable experience that seems to be outclassed by the experience I had with AM2R of which I played 5 times. Invincible enemies that need to be flipped with melee counter or invincible indefinitely, Metroid fights with invincibility states, the digger bot with a few repeating patterns with a small window of vulnerability and the Metroid Queen having long attack patterns with invincibility state made everything feel tedious like it's wasting my time. If it weren't for the True Boss fight with Proteus Ridley at the very end of the game, I would've been pretty angry about how the game ended because the fight against the Metroid Queen was long and boring. I liked the fight against Proteus Ridley in terms of presentation, from its familiar and exciting music to the fast-paced combat that didn't involve invincibility states. In all honesty, the actual fight itself wasn't spectacular as it's pretty easy to learn his pattern after a few tries and he becomes really easy. So while I'm glad they finally made another 2D Metroid and having enjoyed it, it was honestly the least memorable 2D Metroid game in the series.
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