Game Review: Capcom vs. SNK 2: Mark of the Millennium

If you're a fan of 2D fighting games CVS2 is a gift from the gods! More over if you're from the Street Fighter or King of Fighters fandome now you can put some muscle behind your claims of superiority over the other. CVS2 has an impressive collection of fighters, 44 in total! 21 Capcom characters from Street Fighter, Rival Schools and Dark Stalkers. Most of the Street Fighter cast are ported sprites from the Alpha series, Yun/Yang is from Street Fighter III and M. Bison gets a much needed face lift from his "cubby" alpha series sprite to look more like the original SFII M. Bison. CVS2 also brings back Eagle from SFI.

Before playing this game I never played any KoF games but the SNK roster had some unique characters, Hibiki is clearly inspired by the anime Blood. Haohmaru is a curious fighter as her pet hawk also attacks and acts as an arial projectile. Mai is SNK's equivalent to Chun Li and she was more than just eye candy. Athena was from a NES title I had back in the day and Ultra Rugal has to be as cheap/difficult as Shin Akuma from SFA2.

CVS2 has as many features as characters. Arcade mode has 3 options, your traditional 1p vs comp, 3 vs 3, and ratio where you distribute a set amount of points towards a team of 3 or less.

Survival Mode has: traditional survival and infinity survival. Training Mode. Replay Mode...see my fight below against CJ (Ken). Color Edit Mode...want to give Chun Li that orange outfit? now you can. Groove Edit Mode to tweak the different grooves (more on that later) and Versus Mode.

Grooves replace SFA3's ISMs C-groove is your basic alpha super meter with 3 levels, A-groove is the equivalent of SFA's custom combo P-groove is the equivalent of SSFIIT super meter.

The graphics seem a bit rough around the edges and could use some serious anti-alizing. The controls feel right, if a bit forgiving compared to the controls for SFIII.

The character map selection is lacking considering there are 44 characters I'd be happy with 22 different locations, CVS2 has about 12. I wanted to choke the in game announcer, his voice was as annoying as a hokey radio DJ's, but I guess it fits the whole World Warrior Network WWN.

Other little issues of mine are Sagat's Tiger shot is identical to Ryu & Kens Hadoken, that's just lazy programming.

Overall there's enough variety to keep fighting game enthusiasts occupied for a long time.

8/10