Marvel vs Capcom 3 is released today. As I sit here typing this, my copy is somewhere in town riding around in the back of a UPS truck, waiting anxiously to be cracked open and played for the first time. I’ve been waiting for the game since I bought my fight stick and copy of Super Street Fighter IV, but I do worry how fast my excitement will fade for the game.

When I picked up Super Street Fighter IV, I was a fan of the series, but my true loves were the “versus” games. I spent tons of time at the arcade playing Marvel vs Capcom (1 and 2) and Capcom vs SNK. I even picked up MvC2 for the Dreamcast many moons ago and spent an outrageous amount time playing it in the comfort of my own home away from the smack talk of the arcade (not that it helped my level of expertise with the game by doing so). The kicker is that the more I’ve been playing SSFIV, the more I begin to understand the game. I started to see it as the fast paced chess match that it truly is. If you watch enough tournament matches and look over hit boxes and strategies, you can see why the series has become a favorite for tournaments.

Then you look at Marvel vs Capcom 3, and it looks like utter chaos. I’m beginning to think that Justin Wong is right by saying that the game might be “cheap and easy.” He aught to know, the guy has more MvC2 tournament wins under his belt than I do fingers. So while I am genuinely excited to get home today and bask in the insanity that is the mash-up of Capcom’s gaming legends and Marvel’s super heroes and villains, I have a concern that it won’t hold a candle to the precision of Super Street Fighter IV. I think at the end of the day, MvC3 will wind up being a game made for the fans, and SSFIV will still be what everyone uses to settle who is a fighting game champ.