As Capcom revealed back at Captivate 2010, Marvel vs. Capcom is back for its third iteration, Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds. This time around, the focus seems to be strongly on character balance and a unified presentation.

At the show I only had the opportunity to play a single match of the game. Luckily, the game was being demoed with a fighting stick which made for a much better representation of exactly how the game plays. In the demo each player chose three exclusive characters, meaning both players could not choose Ryu if player 2 had already chosen him. I was able to grab a few old standbys for the match, Iron Man and Wolverine, but I was forced to chose Morrigan as Ryu was already taken.

I probably should've chose a few new characters, but my desire to win overpowered me. I did see both Chris from Resident Evil and Dante from Devil May Cry in action, and they both seemed to have a solid moveset and an interesting fighting style. Chris in particular seemed to have an interesting fight style that was a bit different from most other fighters in the series. From my observations, they both seemed like great new inclusions to the epic title.

The gameplay itself didn't feel extremely different from Marvel vs. Capcom 2, which is definitely a good thing. It was also a bit tough to gauge how balanced the match was because the demo had the damage turned way down so that players would have the duration of the time limit to fight.

Though the demo was short and not completely telling of the coming experience, it was as fun as ever jumping back into one of my all-time favorite arcade fighting series.

If anyone remembers from the second title ahead of its re-release in digital form, the in-game sprites were very inconsistent and a number of them were downright ugly. This is no longer true in any regard. The game looks gorgeous and all of the fighters are well-modeled and look great.

With only a few minutes total with the game, I walked away quite excited. It looked gorgeous, it played extremely smooth, and it was very enjoyable to execute the crazy moves found in the game. In short, I'm excited and if you like the Vs. series, you should be excited too.