Ryu’s Hyper Combo Shinku Hadoken pummels Polimar for 5606 Billion points of damage finishing the fight in a blaze of bright flashes and colour. Capcom are up to their old tricks it seems, but how we love those old tricks.
Capcom add to their critically acclaimed Vs series by bringing a new 2.5D team fighting game Tatsunoko Vs Capcom Ultimate All-Stars, exclusively to the Wii.
If you have played Capcom Vs SNK or Marvel VS Capcom 2, then you will know what to expect. Solid, intense fighting in every corner of the screen, bizarre team combinations from a diverse list of colourful characters and super moves threatening to burst through the side of your television screen.
The first thing you will wonder about this game, however is, who are Tatsunoko? Tatsunoko are the company behind a number of famous in their homeland, anime series’, but there is a good chance that you will never have heard of any of the characters. Gatchaman will be the most recognisable for being a series that was dubbed twice into English under two different banners – Battle of the Planets and G-Force – during the 80s. The Tatsunoko side also includes Karas, Tekkaman, Yatterman-1 and Casshan amongst others.
Capcom have an equally interesting roster on their side consisting of Street Fighter favourites Ryu, Chun-li and Alex (from SF 3, sorry Ken fans he didn’t make this one) while throwing in characters from some of their other titles such as the piloted Vital Suit from Lost Planet, Morrigan from Darkstalkers, Batsu of Rival Schools as well as Frank West of Dead Rising.
Capcom know how to give this eclectic roster their chance to prove themselves and blend such a wide, seemingly mismatched group together and yet again they do a wonderful job here. The character models all work well together, move fluently and are fantastically animated using a toned down variation of the 3D style used in Street Fighter 4. The game’s over-all presentation is somewhat weak in places with horrible menu and character selection screen design. Some of the backgrounds are a little rough around the edges too, but these are minor gripes with the game.
The fight system is similar to that of previous entries into the excellent Vs series with aerial combos, team combos and assists all present alongside new techniques Baroque Combos and Mega Crash. The big difference is in the simplified control system. The ability to choose between weak and hard punches and kicks has been replaced with a three button attack scheme with weak, medium, strong attack that covers both punching and kicking at the same time. I was a little dubious about this scheme at first as it can feel a little limiting, but it does work very well and makes the game very accessible to new comers who would usually shy away from hardcore fighting games.
In regard to the control scheme, using the Wii-Remote alone simplifies the game further giving one button for basic attacks, one for special moves and a combination of these two for Hyper Combos. It is a design decision to cater for people who don’t own a classic controller or an arcade stick. The better experience of this game comes from playing it with a classic controller as it allows you to really get into the mechanics of the game.
The online mode was something of a let down compared to other online fight games as it took an age to find or even connect to a match. There was a serious lack of other players online. That accompanied with occasional lag during the matches made for a disappointing online experience.
With Arcade, Survival, Time Attack and Versus (offline and online) modes there is enough here to keep casual gamers coming back for more and gives fight fans plenty to master and really get their fists into. There is a small, handful of characters along with art galleries and videos of characters end stories to unlock.
Recommendation Rating – A great Wii exclusive fighting game. Play with a classic controller to get the best out of it.
Tatsunoko Vs Capcom Ultimate All-Stars is available now for Nintendo Wii
All images courtesy of Capcom and IGN
