Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes (Xbox 360)

With reservations, one of the DLC deals of the summer
8/3/2009 3:40 PM | 3 Comments | Page 1 of 2

I've been watching the scores for Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes on GameRankings (which I prefer to the competition). One thing that might strike you is that the downloadable game is getting far better review scores than it did when released on the PlayStation and Dreamcast. This is quite the conundrum -- or, as the Thing might exclaim, "Wotta revoltin' development."

Is it that the game gets better with age? Did the reviewers all not play the game the first time around? Or is it just that folks like to play as the cheeky, wisecracking heroes, especially the Marvel heroes and Capcom's Chun-Li, online?

This might help the understanding. Director Guillermo del Toro ("Pan's Labyrinth") and bestselling novelist Chuck Hogan wrote a piece in The New York Times about why people love vampires. In "Why Vampires Never Die," there's a quote that applies to this game: "In a society that moves as fast as ours, where every week a new 'blockbuster' must be enthroned at the box office, or where idols are fabricated by consensus every new television season, the promise of something everlasting, something truly eternal, holds a special allure."

The heroes of comic books are often everlasting figures who, even when they seem to die, somehow magically come back to life for the next issue. And in this videogame, the Marvel vs. Capcom 2 heroes never expire. I mean, they seemingly perish in many of the short, 90-second battles. But then, if you press Continue, there they are again, alive and vital, like so many Lazaruses or so many vampires. (Lazarus was a vampire, right? They say so on HBO's "True Blood," so it must be true.)

So maybe that's why folks appreciate MvC2 with such utter zeal. It doesn't just provide escapism. It provides you with some semblance of eternal life, however fantastical and, in reality, untrue. The characters will always be there for you. Have a bad day? You don't even need a telephone booth to change into a superhero costume. All you need is your controller and 12 bucks to download 196.7 MB of data.

You will be the same heroes who, if you've read comic books for some time, generate visceral feelings in your mind and soul because of the dramatic stories that have stayed with you. In fact, every time you battle, you will be not one hero. You are forced to be three heroes, a great trinity, if not a holy trinity. Talk about the potential for omniscience.

The first thing that hits you in the game is the obvious charm and savvy in updating it for Xbox Live Arcade. So you see these '80s colors (remember the Ticketron logo?) flashing by as the game starts, and there's this funky, grab-you-by-the-groin pop hook in the background, too. It's part P-Funk, part James Brown and part Jackson 5 -- again, nostalgic yet somehow new. There's this big globe as your videogame interface. From it, you choose three of 56 heroes with which to brawl against the CPU, the pal next to you or your opponents online.