Sat, Aug 15 · 1:00 PM PDT
The next meeting will take place on August 15th at Vocari Hub. It starts at 1 PM and ends at 10 PM, but you don’t have to stay the whole time and can come and go as you please. The featured game is Marvel Tokon Fighting Souls for PlayStation 5 which is two players and I will have setup on three different systems at the party. You can also play any other games I have setup and installed on the game systems in the room, not just Marvel Tokon Fighting Souls. I will also provide at least four pizzas, cola and bottled water for guests to eat at the party.
Marvel Tokon Fighing Souls is a new tag team fighter by Arc System Works who have made other similar games like Blaze Blue Cross Tag Battle, Persona 4 Arena, and Dragon Ball Fighter Z. You choose a team of four characters for a match but unlike most tag fighters everyone on the team shares a single life bar and switching between them won’t heal anybody. It seems the only reason to switch characters is when the first team member is in a bad match up against a much faster opponent and switching to anyone else will give you a better chance at winning. The game has an extremely simplified and cinematic combat system. There are three main attack buttons plus another attack called a unique, a dash and a assist from your team members called Assemble. To perform a special move you simply have to press an attack button three times and make sure it connects and then the camera will zoom in and you’ll automatically do a super move and chip away 20% of your opponent’s health. So you end up just mashing the same button over and over again. The combat system boils down to which player can stun lock the other first. Only the speed and range of your basic attacks really matter and nothing else which makes the matches feel incredibly shallow.
The plot of the game is the Eternal known as the Champion is obsessed with fighting and proving that he is strongest person in the universe and in order to do this he has a tournament where the Earth’s toughest heroes compete for the opportunity to face the Champion and defend the planet. The game has beautiful graphics and a wonderful presentation throughout the story mode. Sometimes there will be a full blown Anime cut scene but most of the time there are original comic panels that tell the story and advance the plot forward. I only played 18% of Spider-Man’s story episode during the beta but it was reasonably interesting and the voice acting was pretty good. There are also nice intro and outro dialogue based on what the first and last characters are in a match. I also enjoyed seeing all the fun cameos of non playable characters in the background move about the stages as the matches took place.
When the game comes out there will be twenty playable characters including Spider-Man, Captain America, Iron Man, Hulk, Black Panther Shuri, Ms Marvel Kamala Khan, Blade, Ghost Rider Robbie Rayes. Loki, Star Lord, Peni Parker in her mech suit Sp//der. There are X-Men like Wolverine, Storm, Deadpool, Magik, Danger, and Phoenix Five Cyclops is said to be the first premium DLC character but they haven’t said when he would come out. There are even some playable villains like Dr. Doom, Magneto, Green Goblin, Carnage, and possibly the Champion that runs the tournament. I didn’t get to play every character in the game during the beta but it seemed like Spider-Man, and Captain America attacked fast, while Magik and Black Panther had good range. I had a much easier time however playing as Wolverine or Star Lord since they both attack fast and have great range making them top tier characters.
As far as multiplayer goes there’s a standard two player Versus mode, Training, Survival and a Tournament settings and three for online play Ranked, Casual, and Stadium Arcadia. You have to do well in casual matches to unlock Ranked online play and I was having trouble finding Casual matches during the beta. The open lobbies of Stadium Arcadia seemed much more popular. It resembles a theme park and you walk around and explore the area looking for open arcade machines to begin a match. The online play seemed prove to stutter and hitch when all four team members were on screen at once or a character used too many projectiles that filled up the screen like Magneto, Blade, or Star Lord. Maybe they could offer a mode that drops the team battle in favor of a mano e mano fight for a smoother online experience.
