Some of my fondest gaming memories come from Marvel fighting games.
Spending far too many quarters on Marvel vs. Capcom 2 in arcades. Messing around with the oft-forgotten Marvel Nemesis on PSP with some friends. Having some of my first-ever online gaming experiences being in Marvel vs. Capcom 3 on PS3. I’ve never been much of a fighting game guy overall due to how complex they can be, but MvC always spoke to me, especially when the third game introduced a “Simple” mode to streamline inputs.
All of that is to say that the lack of a new Marvel vs. Capcom since 2017’s somewhat underwhelming Infinite has been a real bummer. Imagine how pleasantly surprised I was, then, when Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls was unveiled last year by PlayStation. Not only is it a brand-new Marvel fighter, but it’s being developed by Arc System Works, the fan-favourite Japanese studio behind the likes of Guilty Gear, BlazBlue and Dragon Ball FighterZ. And after spending an hour with Tōkon earlier this month at PlayStation Canada’s offices, I’ve come away very pleased with how it’s shaping up.
First and foremost, it should be stressed that Tōkon isn’t really like Marvel vs. Capcom. It’s similar insofar as it’s also a 2D fighting game that features Marvel characters who can tag in and out of matches, but naturally, it also has many of its own mechanics and combo systems that create its own distinct feel.
The biggest difference is the approach to tag-teaming. Where MvC was about swapping between teams of three (or two in Infinite) with their own health bars, Tōkon features parties of four that all share HP. This means that you go into a match selecting a party leader and three assist characters from a total launch roster of 20, although you can freely swap between them at any time.
It took some getting used to at first, but I came to appreciate this unique approach. For one, it creates these gloriously stylish comic book page-inspired vs. screens that segue into the respective party leaders having fun bits of trash talk, like the plucky teenager Ms. Marvel roasting Wolverine, a grown man, for being as short as she is. The game also assigns a random name to your team depending on who’s a part of it, although some of them are a bit weird, like “Genius Geniuses” for one that included Iron Man.
And on a deeper level, having four characters who share a health bar challenged me to rethink my approach to using them. It was less like an RPG-style party of characters and more like different weapons in my loadout; my health remains the same no matter which I use, but swapping between them still presents opportunities to change tactics on the fly. This was especially valuable as I was getting used to the characters, quickly realizing who I favoured over those I wasn’t as good with.
The demo also had 14 of the total 20 characters to try out, and I was impressed by the variety of their move sets. Spider-Man plays as fast as you’d hope, with a neat twist that his Spider-Sense gives him unique counters and flashy animations. Meanwhile, Danger (the physical robot manifestation of the X-Men’s Danger Room, funny enough) has a Mega Man-esque arm cannon that can shoot missiles and lasers for more ranged play. I was especially pleased to see the inclusion of Ms. Marvel, one of my favourite characters who is a blast to play thanks to her embiggened punches and kicks that afford her some excellent zoning potential.
But surprisingly, my favourite character was the lesser-known Magik, the Russian warrior who was played by Anya Taylor-Joy in the oft-forgotten X-Men spin-off, The New Mutants. Despite wielding a huge Buster Sword-like blade, she swings it with speed and agility that fondly reminded me of my MvC main Dante, with the added bonus of her being able to tap into even more demonic fire-based abilities.
All in all, the roster is quite diverse, and the fact that it even has several X-Men characters, like Wolverine, Magneto and Storm, is already a huge improvement from their inexcusable absence in MvC Infinite. Further, I loved how many of the characters are being voiced by returning Marvel stars like Josh Keaton (The Spectacular Spider-Man) as everyone’s favourite wall-crawler, Steve Blum (Wolverine and the X-Men) as Wolverine (plus Green Goblin, reprising the role from The Spectacular Spider-Man) and Nolan North (Deadpool) as the Merc with a Mouth. With all of that said, only 20 characters at launch feels a bit thin, especially when the past few MvC games had at least 30 to start.
The only big question mark that remains for me is the story. Generally, you shouldn’t expect much from a fighting game narrative, even though there’s a lot of inherent potential in a silly, fun crossover such as this. And so far, Tōkon‘s premise sounds fairly generic, with the relatively obscure comics character known as the Champion recruiting teams of heroes and villains to compete in a tournament for his own amusement. That said, the story was penned by Kieron Gillen, a prolific writer behind Marvel comics like Uncanny X-Men and Young Avengers, who also once worked in video game journalism and even co-founded Rock Paper Shotgun. That extensive background makes me hopeful he’ll bring something worthwhile to the narrative.
But for now, I’m loving what I’ve played of Marvel Tōkon. With its diverse roster and unique focus on 4v4 matches, I can’t wait to play more. And thankfully, we won’t have to wait long, either. An open beta runs from July 24 to 26 on PS5 and PC ahead of the game’s launch on August 6.
Image credit: PlayStation
