Welcome to a new edition of Retro Corner and we are just a few days away from Avengers: Infinity Wars coming out. The MCU's shared universe has been out since 2008 when it all began with Iron Man. I remember how interested I was when the MCU started as we knew this would lead to something after each movie's release. However, it wasn't until the middle of Phase 2 right after Avengers: Age of Ultron (more like Age of Trash) got released is when I saw the problem. By then Marvel has gotten lazy so much that the writers started rehashing the same setup of the films story. On top of that, the biggest problem is that it shouldn't have taken 20 films to get to Thanos. It just goes to show how crappy Marvel has gotten lately as everything they touch turns into trash. You want more proof, just like the crappy MCU their cartoons and comics are absolute garbage at this point. As for the game in this edition, War of the Gems followed the Infinity Gauntlet arc from the comics in 1991. Adam Warlock the Infinity being has called upon the heroes of Earth to retrieve the Infinity Stones. Warlock tells them to find the stones, so the power of Infinity doesn't fall into the wrongs hands such as from Thanos. Gameplay It's refreshing to see a brawler based off the Marvel universe actually have quality gameplay for once. The only difference is that each selectable character had a strength verses weakness system around them. The superheroes include Iron Man, Spider-Man, Captain America, Hulk, and Wolverine. The selection is definitely way better than Data East's choice from Cap and the Avengers game. Seriously, who the hell would want to play as Vision or Hawkeye? Why use those guys when there's Wolverine and Spidy? Iron Man and Hulk are strong based guys meaning they are slower but have power behind their attacks. Cap comes off balanced between speed and strength and Spider-Man is the fastest character. However, he's weak in power while Wolverine is also fast but balanced in strength. Every hero has their own set of four attacks that's different from the other. It's true that Spider-Man, Cap, and Iron Man have projectile moves as well as a rush attack. However, it didn't feel like I was performing the same thing from previous Marvel games. Another thing that helped is the special ability that acts like a super move. The player could access these special moves when equipping a G Icon item before entering a level. When starting the game, the level select is similar to Mega Man VII as gamers choose between four stages and a training room exercise. Once the first four levels get cleared, several others open up but you can't return to a finished area. The level design is often made between straight forward and opened stages that allows you to explore other parts of the area. Presumably, the best feature is how the player will need a particular hero to have access to the other areas. Sometimes the player has to use Spider-Man's and Wolverine's climbing ability or need the power of Iron Man and Hulk to destroy walls to explore further. Every character including my least favorite one the Hulk needed some use to get to the other parts of the stages. One of the bonuses of exploring these hidden areas is with finding special items. These include small and big health capsules, the G Icon as already explained, and the R Shield which revives a fallen hero. Of course, the Infinity Stones grant the heroes extra attributes one at a time. The Reality stone allows for items to appear that could be hidden. The Soul stone can double the life bar and the Space stone allows for double jumping, The Time stone makes a character faster, and the Power stone doubles a hero's attack. The stones were a great way to get by as even the weakest like Cap and Spidy helped get through the obstacles and enemies. Capcom finally did a Marvel game justice, and it was the best gameplay they had before their Vs Capcom series took off. Unfortunately, the game is far from being fantastic as there were some issues preventing it from being even better. Not implementing a life system for each stage was a bit annoying when other brawlers have this feature. I find this surprising from Capcom and they always placed that in games like Final Fight. Whenever the hero chosen falls, they become inaccessible until you get the R Shield found only in the levels. You could argue the other characters could be picked still, and it still acts like a life system. I should've been giving at least a couple of lives per level for each hero. Of course, this makes the game quite difficult and its bad enough the player takes a little too much damage then usual. Half the time, I'm literally beaten up before even reaching the boss unless I'm careful. The game has its issues but compared to previous Avengers titles in that era makes this the best Marvel Brawler with quality gameplay. Rating: 8.3/10 Graphics/Presentation The detail in this game had many fantastic concepts illustrated as the graphics are the best I have seen in that era for any Marvel title. The environments were lively and matched the art style you would see in the comics. The backgrounds have a solid use of parallax being used as the foreground overlaps the background. The environmental effects were very animated creating a sense of calm in some areas like fish swimming in the Boston Aquarium or snow falling in Alaska. Then in other instances it brought eeriness and an intense feeling as seen from the Amazon and Dr. Doom's castle. Every environment provided its own unique concept and created a sense of diversity among the levels. The sprites for the main characters matched perfectly to the art style Marvel used during the 90s. They were also very detailed which obviously was taking advantage of Super NES's 32,000 colors. That is when a studio like Capcom takes their time to study and research the brand they work on. It's why Disney games developed by this studio have always been good back then. The soundtrack sounded like any license game Capcom produced in the past. I can't say it sounded generic as each stage and the boss theme matched the environments. The boss battle and Thanos' theme were the best tracks in the game as they created an intense song. The most prominent creative failure is the art direction for the enemies and its truly a lazy concept. Capcom took the heroes sprites and reskinned them into something that bares a strong resemblance to other characters. Most of these reskinned enemies also had their colors change like from Wolverine whose sprite got reused as both a regular enemy and a boss. I have to question the studio's design choices for the enemies and they came off quite generic. Take Dr. Doom's Castle; the robots that appear had this old fashion concept no one even uses anymore. Additionally, we have some of the monster type enemies with a flying demon, a green "zombie" woman, and one that's literally a midget troll. Why do the Puck enemies wear a one body suit with a P on it? Why do the green women resemble a poorly designed and shrunk She-Hulk? The studio should've been more creative than using such ideas, I mean this is the same company who develops unique Mega Man enemies. The next issue comes from the lack of more notable bad guys that were in the Infinity Gauntlet comic. Of course, Dr. Doom, Blackheart, an evil Thing (Fantastic Four), Magus, Nebula, and Thanos are all here, but that brings up a couple of questions. So what happened to Red Skull, Loki, Ultron, Mandarin, Murdoch, or members of the Black Order? What the hell happened to Thor and the likes of Malekith and Hela from his comics? These baddies being a part of the same game would've been a crucial idea but Capcom decided to become a little lazy here. Rating: 8.5/10 Features/Content The content was a little more developed compared to previous Marvel titles during the 90s. That isn't all surprising when you have a qualified company who knew how to make good license titles. The game provided ten levels of fighting your way through legions of enemies before facing a boss. The most desirable feature is choosing between five of the most popular heroes each with their strengths and weaknesses. The levels being developed around these characters creates different challenges in five ways. It created replay value and gives the player an option to complete the game in any order. The next one is the Training Room and here you can practice fighting bosses as holograms that get randomly picked by the game. The area becomes selectable on the level select menu at the start and if a hero falls in this mode that won't count in losing them. It was a great way to practice the characters moves that requires exactly that to actually nail them. There is a password added and as always it's used to save your progress. Just like in the Mega Man series, the player has an option for a password that could have the first four stages completed or have all the gems. The only thing missing is the option menu features such as adding additional lives and changing the difficulty. As mentioned earlier, the game can get hard at times and obviously this would have helped in many ways. Rating: 8.0/10 Final Rating Capcom was literally the king of license games back then as not even Konami put this much effort into their own. Unlike the previous Avengers games, Capcom put effort into researching the brand by using the Infinity Gauntlet comic as the bases. The gameplay is the best out of the 16-bit titles based on Marvel at the time. Each level's challenges got built around the five characters' strengths and weaknesses. There wasn't one hero that you could solely use as even my least favorite one was actually needed for the levels. The gems also gave extra capabilities which would assist me through each stage and boss. The graphics retained some of the best detail out of all the Marvel titles and would have a good use of elemental and parallax effects. The studio must have studied their other development projects as seen from X-Men vs. Street Fighter to put in this much effort. Of course, the game has its issues with its difficulty, and generic based enemies, and not enough of major villains from this universe. Fortunately, Capcom was truly among the only studios that took license titles seriously like they with the Disney franchise. Gameplay: 8.3/10 Graphics/Presentation: 8.5/10 Features/Content: 8.0/10 Final Rating: 8.4/10 Very Good
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Retro Gamer has over 25 years of gaming experience and played many classics since the Golden Age. She has been an avid fan since the day the NES graced her life and changed it forever.
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