Difficulty:

Hard

Time Spent:

10 to 20 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Guilty pleasure"

I found Tatsunoko vs Capcom(TvC) to be an enjoyable crossover fighting game.It's controls are smooth and allows you to do special moves,combos and massive,powerful combos called 'hyper combos' easily.The game requires a good balance of delicate timing and strategy because certain special moves such as a hadoken are a good way of getting your opponent on the backfoot or forcing them into a mistake and the famous 'Shoryuken' is good way to counter an opponent's attacks,but leaves you vulernable if you miss.Performing a move at a bad time can result in your character getting hit with a special move,combo or hyper combo and losing lots of health.

Some characters such as Tekkaman are not as skilled or agile as certain characters but they can perform powerful special moves that are easy to perform and that do a lot of damage and which don't leave them in a vulnerable position if they miss with it unlike with the shotokan style.

I'll explain more about the gameplay later,and I'll explain a bit about Tatsunoko now.

Tatsunoko are a Japanese,animation company.They've produced anime series such as Macross,Neon Genesis Evangelion,Neo-Human Casshern/Casshern Sins,Tekkaman,Gatchaman,Samurai Pizza Cats,Beyblade and many others.

I don't want to list every Tatsunoko character who is in TvC,but I'll tell you some of the Tatsunoko characters that are in TvC and which universe they represent.

Casshan(Neo-Human Casshern),Tekkaman/Tekken Blade(Tekkaman Space Knight and Tekkaman Blade),Ken and Jun(Gatchaman),Ippatsuman(Gyakuten! Ippatsuman),Gold Lightan( Golden Warrior Gold Lightan),Karas(Karas).

I'm also a big fan of the 2004 film 'Casshern' which is an adaptation of Casshan,so the appearance of Casshan in this game does fanfare service for me.

Some of the Capcom characters include Ryu,Chun Li,Alex(Street Fighter),Morrigan(Dark Stalkers),Yami(Okami),Viewtiful Joe(Viewtiful Joe),PTX-40A(Lost Planet Extreme Condition),Frank West(Dead Rising),Kaijin no Soki(Onimusha),Mega Man Volnutt(Mega Man Legends).

To be honest,I don't remember if Yami,PTX-40A or Gold Lightan are playable characters,but the rest are.

However,I was a bit disappointed that no Neon Genesis Evangelion or Macross representation is in the game.An Evangelion or Battloid would have made an awesome sub boss.

The game has 26 charactes overall(I think)and as you can see they come from very diverse universes which means they'll have very diverse fighting styles.So you can have martial artists such as Ryu or Chun Li fighting against characters in powerful armored suits who have weapons or against giant robots or powerful supernatural beings or very agile superheroes who wear capes or a 16th century samurai or even a journalist who uses everyday objects and a Megabuster as a weapon or against genetitically modified super humans.

As for more information about the gameplay,a player selects a team of two characters.They can interswitch almost anytime and the team member switched out will have their health slowly regenerate.As you would expect,the game has an arcade mode,which involves fighting a number of opponents,sub bosses and a final boss and seeing the ending for one of the two characters you choose(which depends on which character dealt the final blow to the final boss).There is other single player modes such as survival and time attack.

Your team mate can jump on the screen for a second or two and perform quick attacks on an enemy,or even chain a combo together with you or perform a hyper combo simutaneously on an enemy with you.I'm not into multiplayer gaming,but this game provides local and global online multiplayer.

The control scheme uses 4 buttons.3 to perform attacks and 1 for calling in your partner.Combos,special moves and hyper combos are performed by pressing a combination of D-Pad movements and button presses.I like the simplicity of the control scheme because it allows you to be able to perform combos without having to remember long sequences of button presses or having to delicately time long sequence of button presses like you have to in the Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat games.

The game is a 2D fighter with 3D style graphics.

I can't think of any real flaws to do with the gameplay.There's many difficulty levels,the bosses can be tough but not too cheap.The fighting is technical but the simplisitic and smooth controls make it very playable for just about anyone,but allows skillful/experienced players to use their skills/experience to their advantage.The reason I didn't score this game higher is because I'm getting bored of fighting games,but this is the type of game that I would have been crazy about and that I would have paid a lot of money for many years ago.

The character animations look natural and are brilliantly done.The graphics have a nice blend of CGI and comic style to them.I think it gives the graphics a more realistic feel(it's nice to see flowing water that flows like real water) but the graphics still have a level of charm that's present when you look at the artstyles for the anime/games these characters are in.

Also,some of the characters in this game date back to the 1970's,maybe even earlier than that,and I like how some of the characters have a classic anime style look to them.

The environments consist of nice looking city surroundings,traditional Japanese style environments or can be places that have sci fi themes.The hyper combos produce some colorful backgrounds.

The music is inspired by J-Pop and I like J-Pop but understandibly it's not to everyone's taste.

Overall,I think this game is a great fighting game and if you own a Wii you should give this game a try because it's one of the best Wii exclusives(if you don't count it's arcade version).