Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3

(Capcom for Xbox 360)
By Mike Delano

The remix album in music has long been an interesting, if not consistently successful (critically or commercially), concept. Take an established work and give it to a handful of artists you trust and let them go wild, free to manipulate the original tunes like a Rubik’s Cube to see if they can come up with some worthy new takes. How about trying the same experiment in the games world? Various permutations on the idea have been attempted, but nothing sticks out as an unqualified success. Sure, it’s probably a legal and logistical nightmare to make something like that happen, but hey, that’s not my problem! Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 is kind of a remix: Many of the characters from the original game have been tinkered with, adding new moves and adjusting their power balance, but it’s more of an add-on or fleshing-out of the original experience. New characters (all eight newbies are great, but Rocket Raccoon and Nemesis are the best of the bunch), new stages, new modes; it has everything you want in an expansion, and since it’s expanding on an excellent fighting game to begin with, it’s easy to recommend. It may not be the gonzo “remix” that could one day make for a fascinating experiment, but it certainly earns the “ultimate” in its title, since it’s hard to fathom a more exhausting and exhilarating fighting game.
(www.capcom.com)