If you are already a fan of Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 you should take the fact that this review is really quite short as a very good sign. It’s very fair to say that this portable port is just about as perfect a recreation as you could have ever hoped for. All the characters and game modes are present and correct with combat playing out just as smoothly as the original home console version.
Let’s not get silly here, though, you need to remember what you have in your hands. While the Vita is a very comfortable console to hold it’s not as ergonomic as a Dual Shock and could never be as responsive as an arcade stick, but you’re also not going to be playing in any tournaments with this game. Portable fighting games need to be judged for what they are: a way to take your favorite games with you on the bus or a way to pass some time while vegetating in a hotel room and to this end this Vita game delivers in spades. Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 uses four main attack buttons and two assist buttons so has always been well suited to being played with a pad. That hasn’t changed here and once you get a comfortable grip worked out you’ll be pulling off Delayed Hyper Combos and X-Factor Cancels with relative ease.
Character models and backgrounds are all recreated beautifully on the Vita’s quite fantastic screen but there is an odd blurriness to some moves special effects and pop up elements of the in-game display. It’s initially quite jarring and really stands out against the otherwise perfect graphics. Not a game breaker but it is disappointing. Perhaps the effects were just too much for the Vita to handle but I can see no reason why the K.O. pop up can’t be as sharp and clear as the rest of the on screen furniture. While we are hitting the less outstanding aspects of the game it’s worth mentioning that I found load times to be quite erratic and I didn’t manage to pin down an pattern. Often fights will load in a respectably short time but on occasion they seemed to be taking two or three times longer than normal. It may not be relevant but for the record I was using the downloaded version running from a nearly full 8Gb card.
In addition to the standard game modes there are also a few extras here. Online matches can be spectated and recorded for later playback and there is some level of ‘content sharing’ utilising the Vita’s NEAR system, although I was unable to test that for the review. Local and online multiplayer are both present and work well, I didn’t have any issues finding a match and any in-game lag was short lived and manageable. If you really want to go all out and use every feature your new Vita has to offer you can try out the touch screen controls or hook up your Vita to your PlayStation 3 and use it as a very expensive controller. While neither of these features are very useful they are at least interesting. In a pretty classy move by Capcom you’ll also have access to any DLC characters and costumes you have purchased on PSN for the PlayStation 3 version, a trend I look forward to seeing continue.
As it turns out, the feature that impressed me most on this portable version was the Heroes and Heralds mode. This was added as free DLC to the home console versions and is present here via a title update. Heroes and Heralds is a mode where you fight standard match ups to gain territory for your chosen side. As you fight you will earn cards that can be formed into decks to power up your team of fighters. The effects of the cards vary greatly with some simply offering more damage while others will add new mechanics such as parrying. What makes this mode stand out as part of a portable title is that you make progress and earn rewards with every single battle and with a battle typically taking just a few minutes it’s absolutely perfect for gaming on the go.
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