Permit me the guilty pleasure of a Street Fighter review which fails to buck the trend and does not omit a token reference to Chun-Li's thighs, but if you were permitted to draw any analogy between the gameplay of the weightily titled Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Ultimate All-Stars and the physical makeup of one of the characters contained therein you'd almost have to go the way of them renowned gams.
You see, they both toe the line intriguingly between an elegant simplicity and brazen, outlandish gravitas—in a certain light looking almost gentle but upon closer examination and the right circumstances hulking meaty behemoths ready to wrap themselves around you and refuse to let go.
TvC's attack button arsenal has been slimmed down from Street Fighter's traditional six-button setup to one using only three, and you'll tap them casually shortly before unloading a graphically overwhelmingly 72-hit combo causing what the game proudly displays in text as "18.07 BILLION DAMAGE!" whatever the hell a "damage" is and ignoring the confounding mental pursuit of finding out exactly what represents 18,070,000,000 of them.
Capcom and Eighting have interestingly considered the economy of Street Fighter, and streamlined it while bulking up. Think about how your average person plays Ryu, for example. If they're rolling a quarter-circle from down to back, it's a given that they're probably going for the Tatsumaki-senpu Kyaku. If you're playing a traditional Street Fighter game and you hit a punch instead of a kick, nothing happens. If you do it in TvC, you can't hit a punch, because there are no punches or kicks, just three attack buttons which basically represent fast but weak, medium speed and strength, and slow but powerful (in essence, the light, strong, and fierce punches and kicks being consolidated to one button for each category). Your hurricane kick Will Come Out, no matter which attack you press. They've dug in and examined how people play to trim the fat of complexity and leave nothing but muscle: throw out your Hadoukens, your Shoryukens—they all work just as you expect, your controls are just pulling double duty. It's a bold change that bridges the gap between simplicity and complexity, and one that results in making this a very accessible fighting game, perhaps even moreso than the psychotic favorite of cola-addled mouthbreathing hyperchildren, Marvel vs. Capcom 2.
The super moves are quick to charge and easy to pull off without consulting each character's command list (which can be easily displayed semi-transparently over the top of the screen, even while you fight). They look mostly fantastic, especially when you decide to get your tag-team comrade in on the action by tapping your "partner" button just as you bust one for a hellacious orgy of strobe lights and damage rolling into the billions, more hits than Elvis, and a series of stacked gutteral yelps from your newly burgered opponent the likes of which have been unheard since your roommate's last brazen abusing of the Arnold Schwarzenegger soundboard.
For the more experienced gamer, there are even a few extra mechanics: use an absurdly named "Baroque" ability to irradiate a portion of your health and in exchange mux in a custom combo. After expertly blocking a portion of your enemy's onslaught, hit your three buttons to Advance Guard and push your enemy back, eliminating the time delay normally suffered between your thrashing and your comeback. For the particularly outrageous, consume two bars of your super meter to Mega Crash and cancel your way out of damned near anything (most enjoyably used as you are being ground to a fine paste against the edge of the stage by the rainbow broom of Mega Man's girlfriend). And all these multi-key presses are ultra-simply able to be mapped to any one of your shoulder buttons.
If you're best pals with Jun the Swan, Tekkaman Blade, a giant gold robot that turns into a cigarette lighter, and some weirdo called Yatterman, this game is definitely for you. For the less worldly among the populace, enjoy the varied Capcom side of the characters and take this opportunity to dig into the history of Tatsunoko—you might not be overly familiar with many of these guys, but it is indeed possible to enjoy a Capcom crossover game that does not involve a guy named after television service or an amnesiac in yellow spandex posing as a rabid female mammal.
If you have a penchant for playing offline, a bunch of friends (or no friends), or don't have your Wii connected to the Internet, this game is going to be awesome for you, because the Nintendo Wi-Fi battles are absolute manure. In order to make them actually playable, people on the Internet suggest:
Maybe if you feel like dinking with it you could get the battles to not suck, but if you're like me you've already got your network running just fine on your other seven devices, have no trouble downloading or uploading anything on any of them, and have played and do play virtually lag-free matches in a variety of games on your PS3 and 360 without doing anything special to your gear. I am not going to take points away from this game for whatever reasons it has for its at the very least "temperamental" online service, because I don't give points to anything.
Outside of the main game itself, and its standard arcade mode (which you will be playing to unlock other characters and gain the agonizingly named Capcom currency "Zenny" in order to buy photo galleries and alternate colors), there's a survival mode that I intentionally lost at round 30 because it's impossibly easy on the standard difficulty, a time attack mode that PITS YOU AGAINST THE CLOCK, and a bizarrely non-sequitur non-forced scrolling vertical shmup with iffy controls and some branching difficulty levels. This game is only unlocked by playing an infuriating mini-game during the arcade mode's credit sequence (Sanity-Tip: Beat the game with Roll to prevent your own real-life self-immolation). It's a complete enough package, but those of you who remember such bursting presents as Tekken 3 or Street Fighter Alpha 3's home iterations might find it a little wanting.
In the end, it's a goddamned miracle that this game was even released in the US, and they added a bunch of new characters on top of it. Your dog might have a chance at beating you if he's got heavy enough paws, the visual style is a bright and colorful anime-inspired take on SFIV's gorilla-thugs, and just watching the game go through its motions is completely entertainingly ridiculous. Like those glorious thighs, there isn't a hell of a lot of reason not to at least take a look at Tatsunoko vs. Capcom.
You see, they both toe the line intriguingly between an elegant simplicity and brazen, outlandish gravitas—in a certain light looking almost gentle but upon closer examination and the right circumstances hulking meaty behemoths ready to wrap themselves around you and refuse to let go.
TvC's attack button arsenal has been slimmed down from Street Fighter's traditional six-button setup to one using only three, and you'll tap them casually shortly before unloading a graphically overwhelmingly 72-hit combo causing what the game proudly displays in text as "18.07 BILLION DAMAGE!" whatever the hell a "damage" is and ignoring the confounding mental pursuit of finding out exactly what represents 18,070,000,000 of them.
Capcom and Eighting have interestingly considered the economy of Street Fighter, and streamlined it while bulking up. Think about how your average person plays Ryu, for example. If they're rolling a quarter-circle from down to back, it's a given that they're probably going for the Tatsumaki-senpu Kyaku. If you're playing a traditional Street Fighter game and you hit a punch instead of a kick, nothing happens. If you do it in TvC, you can't hit a punch, because there are no punches or kicks, just three attack buttons which basically represent fast but weak, medium speed and strength, and slow but powerful (in essence, the light, strong, and fierce punches and kicks being consolidated to one button for each category). Your hurricane kick Will Come Out, no matter which attack you press. They've dug in and examined how people play to trim the fat of complexity and leave nothing but muscle: throw out your Hadoukens, your Shoryukens—they all work just as you expect, your controls are just pulling double duty. It's a bold change that bridges the gap between simplicity and complexity, and one that results in making this a very accessible fighting game, perhaps even moreso than the psychotic favorite of cola-addled mouthbreathing hyperchildren, Marvel vs. Capcom 2.
The super moves are quick to charge and easy to pull off without consulting each character's command list (which can be easily displayed semi-transparently over the top of the screen, even while you fight). They look mostly fantastic, especially when you decide to get your tag-team comrade in on the action by tapping your "partner" button just as you bust one for a hellacious orgy of strobe lights and damage rolling into the billions, more hits than Elvis, and a series of stacked gutteral yelps from your newly burgered opponent the likes of which have been unheard since your roommate's last brazen abusing of the Arnold Schwarzenegger soundboard.
For the more experienced gamer, there are even a few extra mechanics: use an absurdly named "Baroque" ability to irradiate a portion of your health and in exchange mux in a custom combo. After expertly blocking a portion of your enemy's onslaught, hit your three buttons to Advance Guard and push your enemy back, eliminating the time delay normally suffered between your thrashing and your comeback. For the particularly outrageous, consume two bars of your super meter to Mega Crash and cancel your way out of damned near anything (most enjoyably used as you are being ground to a fine paste against the edge of the stage by the rainbow broom of Mega Man's girlfriend). And all these multi-key presses are ultra-simply able to be mapped to any one of your shoulder buttons.
If you're best pals with Jun the Swan, Tekkaman Blade, a giant gold robot that turns into a cigarette lighter, and some weirdo called Yatterman, this game is definitely for you. For the less worldly among the populace, enjoy the varied Capcom side of the characters and take this opportunity to dig into the history of Tatsunoko—you might not be overly familiar with many of these guys, but it is indeed possible to enjoy a Capcom crossover game that does not involve a guy named after television service or an amnesiac in yellow spandex posing as a rabid female mammal.
If you have a penchant for playing offline, a bunch of friends (or no friends), or don't have your Wii connected to the Internet, this game is going to be awesome for you, because the Nintendo Wi-Fi battles are absolute manure. In order to make them actually playable, people on the Internet suggest:
- Buying a LAN adapter for your Wii and stringing 35 feet of network cable across your living room floor
- Opening ports 3424, 436534, 98320, 12, 65, Timothy, 1997, 34+3, and pi on your router, if it is one of the "special" kind of routers, which they sell only in Minas Tirith
- Lowering your body temperature to 76 degrees Fahrenheit in a walk-in freezer and then playing
- Other dumb shit
Maybe if you feel like dinking with it you could get the battles to not suck, but if you're like me you've already got your network running just fine on your other seven devices, have no trouble downloading or uploading anything on any of them, and have played and do play virtually lag-free matches in a variety of games on your PS3 and 360 without doing anything special to your gear. I am not going to take points away from this game for whatever reasons it has for its at the very least "temperamental" online service, because I don't give points to anything.
Outside of the main game itself, and its standard arcade mode (which you will be playing to unlock other characters and gain the agonizingly named Capcom currency "Zenny" in order to buy photo galleries and alternate colors), there's a survival mode that I intentionally lost at round 30 because it's impossibly easy on the standard difficulty, a time attack mode that PITS YOU AGAINST THE CLOCK, and a bizarrely non-sequitur non-forced scrolling vertical shmup with iffy controls and some branching difficulty levels. This game is only unlocked by playing an infuriating mini-game during the arcade mode's credit sequence (Sanity-Tip: Beat the game with Roll to prevent your own real-life self-immolation). It's a complete enough package, but those of you who remember such bursting presents as Tekken 3 or Street Fighter Alpha 3's home iterations might find it a little wanting.
In the end, it's a goddamned miracle that this game was even released in the US, and they added a bunch of new characters on top of it. Your dog might have a chance at beating you if he's got heavy enough paws, the visual style is a bright and colorful anime-inspired take on SFIV's gorilla-thugs, and just watching the game go through its motions is completely entertainingly ridiculous. Like those glorious thighs, there isn't a hell of a lot of reason not to at least take a look at Tatsunoko vs. Capcom.