Difficulty:

Very Hard

Time Spent:

10 to 20 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"All flash, no substance"

Being both a huge Street fighter fan, and a huge Marvel Comics fan, I really thought this game would be the beat'em up to end all beat'em ups. Unfortunately, I was very wrong.

The character select screen is huge, and boosts a massive amount of characters from both Marvel and Capcom, so there are endless choices for team arrangements. The bad news, however, is that a lot of these characters shouldn't have made it off the starting grid, never-mind making the final line-up.

The graphics on this game do exactly what you want them to. There is really a comic book/ cartoony feel. Though, that been said, this only seems to work for the character spites. The backgrounds, on the other hand, almost have a slight 3D flow to them. Therefore the sprites look like they are fighting in front of a huge backdrop, instead of in the actual environment.

The games speed is both one of the game's strong points and weak points. Yea, we all want our 2D fighting games have "turbo" speed, as it adds to the adrenaline ride that we've come to expect from such games. But when the screen is crowded with huge special moves and six different characters constantly being tagged in and out of the battle, things start to get a little messy to say the least.

The buttons don't seem to respond as swiftly as they should for a game of this speed and magnitude, leaving the player completely lost in the heat of battle. Again, trying to keep track of six characters coming and going at random intervals while your controls just ain't doing what they should, simply doesn't make MVC2 an enjoyable game.

All in all, this game reminds me of SNK Vs Capcom: SVC Chaos, which was also just a stir-fry of good ideas badly put together. Too flashy, too much happening on screen, too fast to really register what exactly is going on at any one time. Just too messy.