I knew you could.

Little more than a port of the Dreamcast game, Marvel Vs Capcom 2 pits the player against the mightiest of Capcom characters and the most popular Marvel brawlers. Fan favorites like Cyclops, Ryu, Guile, Chun-Li, Hulk, Sentinel, and more join a cast of 56 characters in a 3 on 3 tournament to decide what 3-person team will take down the big bad boss at the end of the game.

The game is literally drawn out in 2D and 3D animations. Character sprites are borrowed and animated in two dimensions while the backgrounds are done in 3D. While this sounds like a winning combination, the stages are a bit too…bizarre for my taste. Fighting in front of a huge scary ass clown inside a carnival or cruising on a rather bland iceberg is not my idea of being creative. The original MvC's cameo filled backgrounds are sadly missed. On the positive side, the character sprites are very crisp and very clear. People with the S-Video / Component set-up will be treated to very sharp visuals.

MvC2 plays out just as well as the DC version, and slightly better than the PS2 version. Sadly, the Xbox D-pad just wasn't made for fighting games, so you'll have to relearn how to use a D-pad. I still haven't attempted to re-create the Gambit Glitch, but considering this is a Microsoft machine, I'm sure it will eventually crash on its own.

With that in hand, you're pretty much playing a great arcade conversion.

Soundtrack wise, the game can truly go wrong at times. I've been playing Capcom fighters for over 11 years now, and to this day I still can not why their background tracks keep getting fruitier and fruitier. If you were to believe some of the lyrics that come out of this game, apparently 'making true love' requires beating the living crap out of a man who can shoot beams from his eyes courtesy of a voluptuous succubus inside a crystallized cave.

I'm not even making that up.

If there were any complaints about the XBox version of the game, it's that there was no Xbox Live support tossed in, or damn near anything that could have brought it above the standard 2-years-too-late conversion job. Why in heaven's name would you make the first game (Capcom Vs SNK 2) have Live, and not this one? If Namco can toss Link into Soul Caliber 2, the least Capcom could have done was tossed in Blanka.

If you haven't played the game to death on the Dreamcast, or need to get in touch with your inner 2D child, you can't go wrong with either Marvel Vs Capcom 2 or Capcom Vs Snk 2. Hell it beats Kakuto Chojin…