Eight years after its release, Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite — easily the worst of the two companies' fight game collaborations — is most interesting for what it tells us about these companies at the time. Capcom was really into microtransactions and making players pay to get every piece of content for their games, as they were finding success yet again with the return of Resident Evil and Monster Hunter. Marvel, on the other hand, was on its way to becoming a behemoth, particularly in the movies, and were proud of what they were building with the MCU.

Because of where both these companies were, Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite is...the way it is. Capcom's roster is decent and full of the eccentricities one would hope for in this series, but even the character select screen shows off the characters that you'd need to buy to play the "complete" game. Meanwhile, Marvel's roster is uninspired and bland, mostly comprised of characters that Marvel was pushing in their movies at the time.

This is all important because the Marvel/Capcom fighting game collaborations in the past felt like two companies that were huge fans of what the other side was doing, and desperate to play in those worlds. But that's not what this feels like. This feels like two major corporations knowing that people want more MvC, and giving the audience what is best for their brand, not what's most interesting and fun.

Even in the gameplay, Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite is a disappointment. These characters just don't feel right and it isn't fun to play. You know how hard it is to make Ryu feel off? That guy has been around for 30 years and is boring as hell! Everything feels bogged down and unbalanced, which is maybe why I found myself appreciating the tank-like characters, such as Thor and Haggar, more than the usual characters I would play.

The story mode is a wild choice, but I'll admit, it does create the best possible story one could imagine in mashing up these two universes. At the very least, this game does find intriguing pairings between these two groups that kind of make sense. Iron Man teaming up with Dante works. Iron Man working with Dr. Wily? Sure. Morrigan and Ghost Rider bonding over their morbid aesthetics? Works for me. This sort of feels like when DC and Mortal Kombat tried to find a story for their game, and it was clunky as hell, but I do think this works about as well as one could admit, and might be the highlight of this game.

I truly think if Marvel vs. Capcom had just decided after Marvel vs. Capcom 2 to make a game that looked and played the same, just with a bigger cast of characters, this series would've aged so much better. But the way MvC 3 and, to a much greater extent, Infinite, have moved away from what people loved about this series in the first place is pretty appalling. This does feel like the nail in the coffin for this series, unfortunately, but we've thought that before as well. I'd still love to see Capcom and Marvel return to a more 2D approach with a massive cast, rather than whatever this is. But I think these two companies might have moved too far away from what make this series great to begin with to go back like that.

After watching some very negative reviews of this on YouTube I wasn't expecting much. However, this game is basically just totally average in every way. I really can't comment on prior iterations. This is my first game in the series so I'm excited to try the better iterations of it in the future.

This game has a very under construction feel to it. A lot of the basic aspects of a game are here but they look very armature. I never really CARE about the font that a game uses, but, geez, this one uses the most generic looking font ever. It gives the whole thing a very cheap feeling. Kind of like visiting a handmade website from the 90's or something. Where everything is just using the default fonts and layout.

Also, a lot of the 'extras' are very janky and underwhelming. The gameplay, however, is insanely fun so it does a lot of the heavy lifting. I would gladly play through with only achievements but they have other unlockable stuff such as costume colors and title cards that really don't add any value to the game. The gameplay is solid, however, it was probably just a lot of reused gameplay from older iterations so I can't give too much credit there. Also, I'm not seeing a whole lot of depth to the characters yet. They all seem to have the same moves and only really differ by sizes. It has a real Smash Bros vibe. Maybe that's intentional.

The story mode is really goofy. However, it's entertaining, I guess in the same way the MCU is entertaining. It's fun to see all these random characters interacting. My favorite part is when Ryu and Hulk are introduced to the story, Ryu is, like Hulk's buddy or something and they have been traveling together for some reason. At the end of the cutscene Hulk picks up Ryu like a sack of potatoes under his arm. I laughed my ass off.

The character models during the cutscenes drew a lot of grief online and I can totally understand. The capcom characters in particular looked very plastic, almost like action figures or something (poorly designed ones at that). Ryu's face in particular is in a permanent scrunch which is uncomfortable to look at and Dante looks like he's from a PS2 game (weirdly rigid hair).