Marvel vs Capcom 3 advice

May 9, 2011 9:54 AM

Marvel vs Capcom 3, please give me your bread and butter.

Watching Wednesday Night Fights has got me very self conscious about this game that I bought whimsically. I bought a stick, but now I need a training regimen.

I want a solid primary (Magneto? Dante? Wesker? (oh wow is that shit is hard, but if it gives me that nice drop in...totally worthwhile) with a secondary that will give me that nice rebounce (Deadpool? Wesker again?) + super glitch that allows you to reset the damage + a solid anchor (man, that was Sentinel, but I'm looking long and hard at Phoenix now. Maybe even Trish...)

And after all that, characters are entirely secondary. After a long day at work and some time and the gym, I just need some tips for putting time in practicing on that joystick. Where do I start? What are critical bread and butter combos that I need to know how to execute as well as defend against?

posted by GooseOnTheLoose to computers & internet (3 answers total)

I've just barely dipped my toes into fighting games (with the new MK), but have you looked at Shoryuken.com's MvC3 guide? Shoryuken was one of the main sites recommended for learning about MK, and I think they're supposed to be quite good with all major fighting games.
posted by kmz at 10:03 AM on May 9, 2011 [1 favorite]

I'd say the big thing is to find a team that covers all of your basics (projectiles, anti-air, crossovers, etc) and work through their mission modes to get a sense of what they're capable of. Definitely check out the shoryuken guide above, but this guide for intermediate players may be more immediately useful.
posted by Oktober at 10:17 AM on May 9, 2011

Here's what I've found helps when playing MAHVEL BABYMvC3:

1. Unlike SF4, I never ever use the joystick for dashing in MvC3. Pressing two attack buttons together is much more precise and much faster. Easier, too.

2. Watch match videos, yeah, but practice messing around in training mode until you can do stuff like, say, Deadpool's ground combo into air combo into down-launch (S button) followed by H Katanarama and Chimichangas into his QCF hyper. As ridiculous as this sounds, it's really not very hard — it just requires a cool head under pressure. Mission Mode is your friend here for learning what is possible. (HINT: can you imagine doing a thing? Then it is probably possible. I was using Gouki/Akuma at one point, and found myself finishing a combo with a hurricane kick and wondering, "hey, I wonder if I can cancel this into his air fireball hyper." TURNS OUT THE ANSWER IS ALMOST ALWAYS YES)

3. Don't be afraid of playing arcade mode with matchmaking off. I'm actually taking advantage of the PSN outage by using this time to play MvC3 offline on progressively harder difficulty levels, messing around with different teams (the deckbuilding! GOOD LORD THE DECKBUILDING) and just generally working on my basics without having to worry about getting utterly obliterated by pretty much everyone online (I live in Japan…).

4. Learn to play against certain characters. Sentinel comes to mind (to the extent that there's even a fairly amusing video on how to fight him well), as does Phoenix (who is friggin' annoying since the general strategy tends to be "max out the hyper gauge and then switch to Dark Phoenix ASAP" and that works more than it should). The best advice I can give for Phoenix is to prevent Dark Phoenix by any means necessary, even if it requires forcing her in with a snapback (QCF+assist) and then sacrificing your X-Factor to just kill her off outright with a fairly simple combo.

5. If you're feeling ballsy, get good with someone weird and unusual. Nobody plays MODOK, for example, so if you're willing to invest the time in understanding the basics of someone that nobody ever plays with or against, you've got the gameplay equivalent of security through obscurity ('sup 4th place in a 3rd Strike tournament with Q).

6. Seriously, practice the basics of just getting in and being aggressive. MvC3 is not a thoughtful, opponent-reading game like the Street Fighter series. It's all about completely overwhelming your opponent with absurdly over-the-top offense, mixing up lots of high and low stuff at a very fast pace. Combos with overhead hits (Deadpool's toward+M Terry Kick comes to mind, comboing from any L attack) can be extremely useful because generally, blocking low is much safer overall than blocking high.

7. Pick characters you like for a while, and once you get familiar with the general flow of the game and the archetypes (big bruisers, meter-burners, keep-away characters, what have you), then start worrying about your team. If you're noticing that you can't beat teams that have a certain type of character, then start looking for a way around that.

8. If you have a PS3, my user name is the same as on here. My SSF4 is pretty solid but I am still decidedly intermediate in the world of Mahvel. Feel free to drop me a friend request! Assuming, of course, the ping times to/from Japan wouldn't be a deal-breaker (as they probably should be).
posted by DoctorFedora at 12:38 AM on May 11, 2011