When Marvel vs. Capcom 2 came out it was the pinnacle of fighting games; it had 200 plus hit combos, crazy air acrobatics, and a roster of characters that span both the Capcom and Marvel universes. So does a game that is almost a decade old still have a place in the next generation consoles? Hell yeah. But the re-release comes with a few minor annoyances.

When Capcom announced that the game was being re-released as a PSN and XBLA game, a cloud of uncertainty arose. Like any other fan of the Capcom crossover series I was a bit scared that they were going to butcher or otherwise cripple such a great game. I’m glad to say that this was not the case and Capcom released a faithful recreation of the arcade classic. This re-release does live up to its “arcade” title because unlike the console version, released a few years back, there is nothing to unlock. Which in my opinion takes away from its charm but lets you get straight to the action. The game itself runs just as silky smooth as the arcade and console counterparts and even comes with enhanced HD graphics to kind of hide the age of the game. However, the Xbox 360 version does have small frame rate hiccups every now and then but it’s nothing that will majorly distract you from the game.

The multiplayer is where this game really shines. There are three modes in multiplayer, local, ranked and player matches.  Local matches are self explanatory, it’s you and your buddy going at it till fingers start bleeding from all the button mashing. Player matches are matches where players can set game time, damage levels or other little tweaks to the game itself. Once you find a player match you are taken into the game lobby and placed into a queue. Once the queue is filled you enter what is called “spectator mode.” In this mode you watch the two people in front of you play; I think this is a pretty nice addition that adds to the fun factor. Ranked matches are, well, ranked matches. Unlike player matches, you have no control of time limit or damage settings; also there is no “spectator mode,” so you won’t have any idea how your opponent plays the game. The ranked games come complete with a leader board to see how well your skills rank among other Xbox live players or against your friends.

Earlier I mentioned that the Xbox version of this game had small frame rate issues, unfortunately playing this game over Xbox live makes this minor issue quite visible. There were times when I was in the character select screen and the screen froze for half a second, it wasn’t that bad in the middle of the actual game but it was still noticeable.

All in all this a great remake of the arcade version. If you were into the Capcom crossover series, you owe it to yourself to check this game out. If you weren’t into and were curious to see what the big rave was about this game, then you also owe it to yourself to check it out. Again the fact that everything is already unlocked for you does take away from the game’s replay value, but the included online multiplayer more than makes up for it

The good: All the characters are back and ready to pick up and play. The game play was not tweaked or altered in any way making it pretty easy to pick up if you were familiar with this series. The enhanced HD graphics look pretty nice on a newer gaming rig.

The bad: The fact that there is nothing to unlock kind of takes away from its replay value, there is no way to change the character order during the “versus” screen of the game.

by: Gerardo Gamez