Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 in the Heart of the Cards

Before
bidding adieu to the New York Comic-Con this year, Capcom had one more surprise
to reveal for Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom
3: a mode called Heroes and Heralds. This mode will let you unlock new
abilities for your team with upgrade cards, giving them new powers and
enhancements. The first option involves battling as heroes, which won’t change
the appearance of any characters. The second option involves battling for
Galactus as heralds, who take the appearance of the Silver Surfer-like characters you fought before taking on the big
man in Arcade Mode. This mode will be playable in both single-player and
multiplayer modes, and will be available as free DLC after the game releases on
November 15th.

The
enhancements cards give are curiously similar to the
Gem System introduced for Street Fighter
x Tekken over the weekend, though in this case it’s (fortunately) being
implemented as a separate mode. The trailer Capcom provided
shows enhancements like X-Factor Burst, Invisibility, Super Armor for
characters that don’t usually have it, the ability to go through projectiles,
and Special Attack Canceling. There’s also a card that provides a very welcome,
fanservicey enhancement, but you should watch the trailer to the end to see it.
It seems the abilities are triggered after a character performs a specific
move, which would, again, make it similar to SFxTK’s Gems.

The cards
themselves include guest appearances from other characters in the Marvel and
Capcom universe. You have popular, well-known characters like Leon S. Kennedy, Mega Man X, Captain Commando, Godot from the Ace Attorney games, Nightcrawler, Juggernaut, and The Red Skull.
There are also appearances from more obscure characters like Devilot from Cyberbots, June from Star Gladiator, Daken from X-Men, and Clea from Doctor Strange. The final game will
have a total of 105 cards, so you’re bound to find one that shows a character
you wanted in this game but didn’t make the cut. One of them could be listed
above! That also means there will be plenty of combinations available. No one
would be surprised if they offered some of these as DLC in the future, should
the mode take off in popularity.

The MvC3
development team at Capcom made a good decision in making this an optional
mode, since it avoids the mass confusion and potential disaster that’s Street
Fighter x Tekken’s Gem System. They also thought of a nice way to work in more
homages to other characters, one that doesn’t include displaying them on a
trollish poster in the background. Not all fighters in fighting games are
created equal, meaning giving some top tier enhancements could be enough to
create some serious balance issues. That’s fine for an optional mode meant to
be pure fun, but shoving that mechanic into the main game could be disastrous.
Hopefully that’s not the case, but we’ll see.