A while back, Tatsunoko vs Capcom: Ultimate All-Stars was a Wii game I was sure would never hit shores outside of Japan; but come Eurogamer we were told otherwise – somehow someone managed to convince the bigwigs that people outside of asia would actually like to see the new Capcom fighter, regardless if they didn’t recognise half of the cast. With a little help from Tatsunoko themselves, Capcom got past liscencing issues and granted us a chance to get our hands on their latest fighter. Personally, I’d only heard of Casshan and Karas, but I was eager to play a new style of Capcom Vs title, with some new fighters to play with bundled in.
As with Street Fighter IV, Tatsunoko vs Capcom has taken a step away from the traditional 2D style fighter, this time opting for a sort of 2.5D style with a cell-shaded 3D design working with a 2D engine. Although I’m always sceptical with Capcom’s fighter’s going 3D, they’ve once again managed to rehaul the graphic design whilst keeping the game feeling like it should.
People who are mostly unfamiliar with Tatsunoko (probably more than 90% of gamers) should feel right at home with this game – as with all VS titles half the cast consists of Street Fighter characters and various other members of the Capcom roster – Ryu, Chun Li, Alex and Darkstalkers’ Morrigan hold the flag of the Capcom fighters, joined with some more unsual entries such as Soki (Onimusha 4), Viewtiful Joe, Megaman Volnutt (Megaman 64) and Frank West (Dead Rising). Sadly the Capcom VS series is still unaquainted with Devil May Cry’s Dante, but we can’t have everything we want, can we? The classic fighters all retain the majority of their signature moves, and all of the new cast have been converted well to the fighter format.
The Tatsunoko side, however unfamiliar, offer a good selection of characters to the cast – although I was a little biased toward the Capcom cast to begin with, I soon found myself getting aquainted with Casshan (with a lot of rocket-boot style moves and supported by his cyber-dog Friender), Jun the Swan (who uses a lot of stylish teleportation and explosive moves), Karas (with plenty of katana-spinning slicing moves), and Tekkaman (aided by a Scopion-esque grapple and quick lance attacks). Although one or two of the Tatsunoko characters look a bit samey to a reviewer unfamiliar to their backgrounds, there are some genuinely good characters amongst their ranks and I frequently find myself using them.
The game operates on a 2-on-2 basis, with the ability to switch characters on the fly, and chain moves together. Unlike most Capcom fighter titles, there are no seperate Punch and Kick buttons, simply Light, Medium and Heavy. This does make the game feel a little simpler to start with, but in all truth it doesn’t take much away from the experience – there are plenty of moves and it doesn’t even occur that anything’s not there, and it’s possible to chain combos by linking them in order from Light up to Heavy (such as LL,MM,HH or L,M,HHH). Special moves generally consist of traditional Street Fighter inputs, such as Down, Down-right, Forward, Attack for Ryu’s signature Hadoken, or charge attacks such as Chun-Li’s spinning bird kick.
As with most VS games (most specifically Marvel Vs Capcom), TvC is a lot more hectic than Street Fighter IV, with plenty of leaping around, huge beams and aerial supers. The inputs for supers are fairly simple generally, often with more of an emphasis on how you use the moves, rather than actually being able to pull them off. Many of them are performed in the same way as specials, simply by pressing all three attack buttons at once (such as Ryu’s Shinku Hadoken which is pulled off by pressing Down, Down-right, Forward, L+M+K). This may seem a little easy to veterans, but it actually evens the playing field quite well, giving most players full access to the majority of characters’ moves and allows them to really focus on the fight itself. The game operates with a 5-bar Super guage, with each character having 2 Supers that require a single bar each, and an Ultra that requires three. This results in a massive 70+ super attacks, which can make some battles quite spectacular.
Aside from that, the game does offer some extra, more in-depth abilities such as Baroque mode (in which a player sacrifices health regeneration for a burst in attack speed), and chaining moves via tagging. The game really fits the ideal of “easy to play, difficult to master”, but I personally haven’t really gotten good enough to really use this to it’s full potential as of yet.
The game’s arcade mode features 8 rounds – mainly of random 2-on-2 matchups. However, the game also offers special fights at rounds 4 and 8 in the form of bosses. This brings me to my next point – giant characters. Tatsunoko and Capcom each have one “giant” character in their roster, which serve as the Round 4 ’sub-bosses’, and each count as two characters in one – so solo battles only with these guys. Capcom’s ‘giant’ is PTX-40A, a mech from Lost Planet, and Tatsunoko has Gold Lightan, a sort of giant golden transformer/lighter hybrid. A similar “giant” unplayable 3-round boss in the form of Yami (from Okami) takes the position of Final Boss in Arcade mode. Now, I quite enjoy the concept of these characters, and they look great; however I can’t really decide if they feel as though they balance very well with the game. Most of the time when fighting them they either feel like punching bags which are easy to pummel with screen-filling supers and energy blasts, and other times they can be frustrating with their own screen-wide swipes and barrages of attacks. Yami in particular is a bit of a pain – if you lose one of the three rounds against him (in which your health only recovers a little between rounds), you must start again from the first stage of the boss. Not too bad at times, frustrating at others. As for the playable giants – they feel a little novel to play a couple of times, before I end up returning to the regular characters who feel a bit more balanced.
Aside from Arcade and Vs modes, the game offers a shop that allows you to unlock art and alternate colours for each character, gallery modes for viewing art, character models and sounds. Six of the characters in the roster need to be unlocked, so there’s also some incentive to playing it a lot if the fun alone isn’t enough for you.
Also included on the disc is an unlockable game which involves using one of four characters in a sort of arcade top-down mini game. Sadly, it seems the Japanese version of the game included a whole selection of other mini games that weren’t ported to the international versions - no idea why they removed them, which is a little bit of a shame. However, although the one we have is a little bit of cheesy fun, I personally found myself returning to the main game soon after having a go; so I doubt we’ve missed out on too much.
The game also offers online support, which is a nice feature for competing with friends (provided you actually know someone who owns it) and random players if that’s your thing.
I really do like the game, however there is one big flaw with it that does put me off a little – the controls. The game can be played with several different controllers – from Wii remote, Wii remote + Nunchuk, GameCube Controller, Classic Controller or Arcade stick. However, I only have access to the Wii and Cube controllers – neither of which feel particularly comfortable, the Wii remote with it’s un-intuitive button layout (which can’t be changed), and the Cube controller’s analogue stick paling in comparison to the comfortableness of the PS3 and Xbox counterparts used for Street Fighter IV. The game works well with an Arcade Stick – having used one at Eurogamer before it’s release – but it’s a big expense for a controller you’ll only be using for one title on the console at the moment.
Overall, I really think Tatsunoko vs Capcom: Ultimate All Stars is a game worth buying. As with Marvel vs Capcom it’s a more flashy and hectic style of Capcom Fighter, sort of a lighthearted crazy little brother to the challenging and technical Street Fighter IV, complementing it as an alternative rather than a rival. The game has a few minor flaws, and sadly it’s best with an Arcade Stick (never thought I’d hear me say that about a fighting game); but the beauty of it, good roster and vast assortment of Super attacks make it a great addition to the VS series. Sadly it won’t be released on consoles other than the Wii – so PS3 and 360 owners may miss out on this – but it’s said that a potential seques could be going multi-platform in future depending on sales and reception to this.
-Leon
