Grade: B
The final boss of Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls, who’s called the Champion (they could have tried harder), is up front about his philosophy. ‘Actions are worth more than any word,’ he says. ‘And the greatest action is… to fight!’ Well, that’s Proust told, the big biscuit-dunking jessie.
Here’s a very competently made, agreeably hectic new entry in the lineage of that most apparently basic of computer games, the 2D fighter. Ever since the heady days of Yie Ar Kung-Fu, gamers have known there’s fun to be had in having a couple of cartoon characters square off and slap each other upside the face.
This one is an anime-style battler featuring an initial roster of 20 well-beloved Marvel superheroes (Wolverine, Deadpool, Captain America etc) where the basic gameplay (chains, blocks, combos, character-specific special attacks) is enriched by a tag-team system where you can swap in other team members ad hoc to do more slapping. Fill the ‘skill gauge’ to enable a flashy cinematic smackdown.
The trick for developers is to produce a game whose skill range includes a high ceiling – skilled players chain combos with pixel-perfect precision – and a low floor, allowing button-mashing duffers to enjoy the game after a few pints. Speaking as a button-mashing duffer, this more than delivers. It’s fun.
Still, boo to the Champion. It’d be nice to see some downloadable content with a team of writers each with their own special attacks: Proust in his dressing-gown giving ‘cork-lined wall-bounce’, Milton unleashing ‘darkness visible’, or Seamus Heaney, perhaps, letting fly a barrage of potatoes. I’m here for it.
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