 Marvel vs Capcom, a name so synonymous with great fighting games that even a simple fake poster depicting the number four next to these two company logos was enough to make the entire fighting game community lose their collective minds. With so many licensing issues that games like these run into, it's no wonder why the fans would take any sign of hope they could that their favorite game would someday be resurrected. And that day of resurrection was finally promised to be PSX, a day that fans of the series would always remember, for better or worse. Because on that day, Marvel vs Capcom Infinite was officially announced to the general population. The game was revealed to be returning to its original 2 vs 2 roots, and with the Marvel franchise being bigger than ever, the game was a recipe for success. What could possibly have gone wrong? Other than almost everything. This video is going to be covering Marvel vs Capcom Infinite and how the game has died since its release. Before we get into the real meat of this video, I do want to show you all two clips that in my mind perfectly capture how the general feeling towards Marvel vs Capcom Infinite have changed from its announcement trailer to where it is today. But now that you've seen the difference of the energy at the game's reveal, compared to the energy scene when the game was announced to not be getting its spot at EVO, I think it's time I tell you everything that happened in between those times. And I will warn you, there is a lot of things to talk about here. Starting with the bad PR. The game was losing popularity with the casual audience and its fans long before its release, which is impressive because when the game was revealed it was considered almost a miracle. One of the main issues the game ran into before its launch was the terrible PR. And I mean absolutely awful. Even if you haven't played the game, you've most likely heard jokes or references to the characters being functions. This is referencing the time in an interview when somebody asked the PR representatives about missing characters like Magneto and Sentinel. The response to this wasn't we'll see what happens later on in DLC, it was if you were to actually think about it, these characters are just functions. They're just doing things. Magneto case in point is a favorite because he has an 8 way dash and he's really fast, right? Well guess what? Nova can do the same thing. What an awful response. I mean really what is the point of a crossover game if the characters you're choosing don't matter at all? And I think this is more than just an answer. I think this perfectly captures how Marvel vs Capcom Infinite views itself as a game. And this brings me to my next point that Marvel vs Capcom Infinite lacks characters and character. The lack of character. It's no wonder that when focusing on bringing functions to the game instead of cool and interesting characters, you end up with characters feeling like the blandest iteration of the character so far. I don't really have to talk about this point to show you. In fact, here's three different clips from the arcade series over the course of the game's lifespan from Marvel 2 to Marvel 3 to Marvel Infinite and you let me know which clip shows the most character. And you know what, as a bonus challenge, let's just see which clip you had the most fun watching. In my eyes, both Marvel 2 and Marvel 3 ooze character. You can feel the love and respect to the origins of these characters and where they came from. And even without knowing them, you can get the basic plot points of their character so that you can jump in and have some fun as well. You don't need to know who Mega Man is to get what he is. He is a childlike robot who has a lot of different powers. And you don't need to know who Deadpool is to get what he is. He's a fourth-wall breaking kind of guy that will insult the player himself if he can. And in Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite, who is Thanos? Other than some big guy that just slaps people around. This game gives me no vibes to go off of. But even then, maybe they chose to focus on getting as many characters as they can instead of focusing on giving all the love and attention to just a few characters. But that didn't happen either, as the roster for Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite sucks. For example, here's a picture of Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and its character selection screen. And here's Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite and their characters. As you can see, the majority of the cast is just reused. And you might also notice that half of the final boss of the game isn't even here. But I haven't talked about that yet. The final boss is Ultron Sigma, a combination of Ultron and Sigma. Shocking. But Sigma's actually DLC, which is just fantastic. I can't tell you how much I would love to play a Dragon Ball game, in which Vegeta is the final boss, and I have to pay to unlock Vegeta at a later date. But you know, okay, whatever. It's been a couple of years since Marvel vs. Capcom 3 has been out, and even if they reuse most of the characters, the art style in this game is different. So it should be interesting to see how they look in a new and updated game. Oh my god, they're all so fucking ugly. This game is so ugly. So hard to look at. It has to be the biggest problem with Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite in its entirety. Every character looks a little bit off. And I'm sure there are tons of funny things to say about each of them if I were to hover over. But let's go with just a few. Chen Li kind of looks like a fish. Dante has some serious drug problems, and I really hope he gets some help. Morrigan, Morrigan scares me a little. And the worst part is it's not just the characters that are unappealing, it's also all of their special moves, their animations, and the music of the game also kind of sucks. So yes, everything about the game visually and audibly is very iffy at best, and that is at best. At worst, this is a really awful looking game. I would say that most of the time it looks like a subpar PS2 game. And I don't know how that happens when you copy characters over from a previous game, but they manage to make them all look a little bit worse, and their super is a little bit less cool. For example, here's Ghost Riders level 3 in Ultimate vs. Capcom 3, and in Marvel Infinite. Yeah, Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite's version was pretty lame. And also the characters show no emotion when they get hit by supers. Just look at X's face when he gets hit by Sigma. He's getting pummeled show some emotion in Dragon Ball FighterZ, which is a game that people compare this to. Every time you land a hit, the enemy reels in pain, making the player feel powerful, and giving the other player a sense of urgency that their character is taking a lot of damage. Infinite has none of this. But okay, just because the game looks bad, got bad PR doesn't mean that it can't find success at the tournament level. Maybe, and just maybe, Infinite's Battle of the Stones event can turn this game around for the better. And that was awful. Battle of the Stones, the final nail in the coffin. So a lot of people would argue with me here that the final nail in MBCI's coffin was actually when it didn't get one of the eight spots for EVO. I would have to disagree. The Battle of the Stones was such an awful event that I think it set the precedent that this game just did not have a future in it. So for those of you that don't know, the Battle of the Stones event was a tournament series for Marvel vs Capcom Infinite. In which players could compete at qualifiers and earn different stones so that when they went to the final tournament, they could use those stones to give them a benefit in their play. And it sounds kind of interesting, right? Giving a reason to compete at different tournaments so that you can have different advantages. But these advantages absolutely sucked all of the fun away, and these were some stupid advantages, and I mean absolutely stupid. For example, one of the stones countered another stone, and the Power Stone allowed you to get the first hit on your opponent. And by the way, this is a game in which every hit leads to at least 7000 damage from the other player, meaning you lose that game. And that's pretty much what all the stones mean. If you use them, you win that game. Pretty much all of them, except for the two that just moved brackets and countered the other stone. And speaking of that, one of my favorite things to come out of Marvel vs Capcom was probably the Time Stone thing. For those of you that don't know, in the finals, Chris G had the Time Stone, which counters another player's usage of their stone. And his opponent had a far more powerful stone, so they went up to Chris G and asked him if he would be using his Counter Stone against his opponent. Now because they asked him, he assumed that meant that he was using his stone, so of course he said yes. But then after asking if he would like to counter, they went and asked his opponent if he would like to use the stone, which of course he said no to. That has to be Marvel vs Capcom Infinite summed up. How do you get any dumber than that? Hey, are you gonna block or dodge? Uh, I guess I'll block. Hey, are you gonna grab him or are you gonna try to attack? I guess I'll grab if he's gonna block. Ooh, and he grabs and lands the hit. That's not how it works, that's not how it should work. But I'd be lying if I said that wasn't my favorite part of the tournament, so I'll go ahead and let that one slide. So with all of these negatives, where does that leave Marvel vs Capcom Infinite today? Well for one, it's not getting a spot at Evo, which is already a huge blow to the game. And casually the game is pretty much dead as well. With only 30 people playing on Steam 11 minutes ago and a 24 hour peak of 38. And it's really sad because Marvel vs Capcom is one of my favorite fighting game series by far. And I think Marvel vs Capcom Infinite means the death of the Marvel vs Capcom series, which is not very funny at all. Now with the end of this video I do want to say if you still play Marvel vs Capcom Infinite, this wasn't meant to be a jab at you. In fact, you can still find games for Infinite despite its low player count. Try going to the Marvel vs Capcom Infinite subreddit and seeing if you can get any games there. If that doesn't work, try the Discord. I'm very sorry with how Capcom handled this game, and I think we all deserved a little bit better. In the comments below I would love to hear your thoughts on the state of Marvel vs Capcom Infinite, or just some of your memories with the Marvel vs Capcom series in general. I'll be down there as always. I'm Dato Doia, and I'll see you in the next one.