Marvel vs Capcom : Infinite

One of the most impenetrable fighting games around shows its friendly side

Well, we needn’t have worried about complexity. When Marvel Vs Capcom: Infinite was announced, we’ll admit to being concerned at what the change to a two-on-two structure would do to one of the most varied and flexible fighting games on the market. In Marvel Vs Capcom 3, you chose three characters, then an assist – a special move that could be performed by an off-screen teammate – for each of them, from a choice of three. In a game with a huge roster, there were millions of potential team combos. Yet in Infinite, motivated by a desire to make a spectacular, but often impenetrable, game more accessible, Capcom has reduced team sizes, and done away with assists. By the end of our first sit down with the game, however, any lingering worries have not so much faded away as been Hyper Comboed into deep space.

When Infinite was announced at last year’s PlayStation Experience, Capcom made much hay of the Infinity Stones, a handy mechanical MacGuffin borrowed from Marvel lore. You choose your two warriors, and then a stone, which gives each team member an extra move to use in open play, and an Infinity Storm – a powerful, time-limited status buff – when a meter is filled. The Capcom line is that this mechanic does the job of a third character, and while that might be stretching things a bit, the Stones certainly offer something that wasn’t available in previous games in the series. Three are available in the build we play, and while we’ve little chance of understanding their true utility in the space of a couple of hours, the possibilities are already intriguing. An early favourite is the Space Stone, which when fully powered up traps the opponent in a rectangular box for a spell, limiting their moveset as well as their movement.