GT video review is up, haven't finished watching it yet though

Mario looks damn funny and Superman looks like shit xD

nice.... when you do get the apprentice ? i've completed the game with vader multiple times XD can't help doing it.

Darc Requim @ Yeah it would appear so. I have yet to play with either of those, but i'll probably get around to it today :p I still think it's a very big change over the previous games in the way the story is told though. (but atleast there is more focus in the cutscenes on each char... well a little lol)

Hehe even if yoda is broken i'll probably still get him if he comes out in dlc. But yeah, I had assumed it would be a little like GUN in tekken 3.

Tinoux @ well that's what any new game cost around here.. cept for pc games.

heh, the gameplay is really awesome for a fighter overall.. Seriously though...

At one point I became more interested in your sig than the video....  ANYWAY, I think the Thor, Mystique, and Robin characters were the best out of the bunch.

@ Staude:
Uhm I think you have to complete the arcade mode with Vader to unlock the apprentice

Meh, allow me to pitch in with a little review of my own. I'll try my best to not spoil anything. If you don't want to risk any spoilers, I suggest you just don't read this.

Gameplay on the whole, is solid. The characters all have their strengths and weaknesses and I've yet to see one that looks unbeatable if played right (PS3 version mind you, I hear Yoda's absolutely broken for 360). Critical Finishes didn't add anything terribly frightening, and the chance of you actually getting to use one is very very low.

Oh, and Stun Combos rock. Huzzah. 50% damage combos are now a possibility again, woohoo.

That said, I'm a bit miffed about the rest of the game. A wonderful part of gameplay, was the tutorial to learn how to be halfway decent at it. Well, its gone. You get 7 pages of text that doesn't explain much thats not common sense anyway. No more beating on Olcadan, sadness. Don't know what an Ukemi is? Well... good luck trying to find out. Aerial Control? No explanation anywhere.

Story Mode. Well, as said before. It's 5 rounds for every characters. First two rounds are against groups. The third rounds against a Bonus Character. 4th Rounds another group followed by the 5th round boss character. Some characters get a partner they can switch out for, some don't. Every character starts with a blurb, after the second round is a cookie cutter cut scene similar for every character (only difference being if it starts from the raft, or the throne room). After the boss, is a pretty cinematic. That is it. Nothing else aside from unique words from the characters entrance animation during battle 'occasionally'. Some scenes are even reused to an extent here (Hello Amy and Raphael!)

Tower of Lost Souls. Not a bad attempt at Surivial Mode. You get to chose several characters then you fight through X amount of floors in a pseudo tag team mode with Skills active. You can also win Treasure by completing the hints objective. "Don't part with your vitality" for instance, means win without getting hit once. Not too much to gripe about here.

Arcade Mode. Standard, 8 rounds. Win all rounds and get some money for Custom Character stuff. wahoo...

Versus Mode. Standard, my one gripe here is there is no option anywhere to pit 2 CPUs against each other to my knowledge. So you can't possibly learn anything from a CPU, nor use it for betting while a little drunk. >.> You get the options of armor effects and skills active or not. Guess thats a plus?

Online Play. Ok, here is where I complain a lot. First off, this game doesn't do framerate lag. Instead, it does annoying random freezing for some time, then normal frame rate, then freeze for another few seconds, and so on. Annoying as hell to combo during. Input lag, even when your connection rates a 5 makes follow ups or any 'just' inputs damn near impossible. Even simultaneous button presses fail a lot online. Then we get to the match making themselves. If you pick quick play (or whatever it was called) it looks for a room for you. It can pair you with private rooms that boot you when they leave their current battle, nonexistant rooms, full rooms, and pretty much every type of room but the one you need... When you FINALLY get in a room (and don't get booted), you have to keep in mind its rooms of 4 people. Let me explain why this is a problem. Only 2 people ever play at a time. It will NOT pair the 2 not playing together for a separate battle. It forces them to watch the top two go at it (which probably ends up adding to the lag). Then, the winner stays and takes on the next person in line. This system basically says: "Ok, the best is going to play every game until his fingers tire, then you can have a chance at playing more then one game in a row." In the end, one person plays every match, while the other 3 play 1/3. Yay for fairness!. I'd rather it had been 4 people per room. 2 battles at a time. Winner takes on Winner and Loser Vs. Loser after every battle. Only make it the current way when 3 are in a room. =/ Would have been so much more fun. In short: Online is Button Mashing only.

The one plus of Online play: Custom Characters and the like work just fine with no noticeable increase in lag at all. Woopdeedoo when you can't combo worth a damn with them online anyway.

Character Roster: I have to do this before Custom Characters and you'll see why. The roster this time around is pretty diverse. It sees some new faces, though old ones are missing (Li Long, Huang, and Olcadan, though the former were only original in the arcade version). Amy has got her own moveset with very few similarities to Raphaels (I suppose you can only move a rapier so many ways and look viable to cause pain, so a few had to look similar). Hilde is a neat addition with a good mix of long range verticals and short range horizontals. Algol is full of visually impressive attacks and the Star Wars guests have their own unique flavor with Force Attacks. Few movesets got better, few got worse. Overall nothing too overpowered (though a well played Apprentice is scary). Then... we get to some problems. The 5 bonus characters are all clones of another already existing character. Ashlotte is a clone of Astaroth. Scheherezade is a clone of Amy. Shura is Cervantes. Kakirimisu(sp) is Nightmare. Algol Fear is Seung Mi-Na. Talk about a let down. The only differences, is some of them have different ranges (due to size), different swing colors, and their speech. In addition. Every character that passes for Human and isn't the guest or bonus characters has their 2P outfit made from the Custom Character Creator. In addition to THAT, some characters main outfits are also completely available in the Character Creator (Herro Amy!). Didn't have enough time to make original outfits or what? Tira's Jolly Side voice is still annoying, but you'll get over that.

Custom Characters. Ok, this mode is actually kind of neat. You get a wide variety of options for clothing. Color options for every article of clothing is diverse with some pieces having 4 colors for a single part. Good variety in hair styles and faces. Body types can be adjusted via a grid balancing Physique (size) and muscularity (texture). Theres several voice options with an additional pitch option to change the voices pitch, which is pretty neat. Then we get to the bias... First off. Body types. What could possibly be wrong with that? Well heres the gist of it. Physique for males basically adjusts all muscle sizes, the width of their shoulders and overall size. Basically you can adjust them between Runway Model size, and Hulking Body Builder size. Muscularity adjusts just that, how defined the muscles are on the skin texture. You can go from super ripped, to no definition at all (Giving a kind of chunky look). Now, for females. Physique literally adjusts Boobs, Butt, and Thighs when the butt gets big enough. Your female basically can not get manly for holding that sword bigger then she is. She can just do well at putting Pamela Anderson to shame. Muscularity , basically means "Tan" as their is little to no difference between +50 and -50 except maybe at full +50 abs start to show... Yea... biased? Second... Clothing options themselves. Females get nearly half again as many options as males, and not only that but they tend to look better. Some of the male stuff just looks half ass. This isn't nearly as big a deal though. So meh.

Continuing with the rant on costume characters. EVERY SINGLE COSTUME CHARACTER CAN ONLY BE A CLONE. There is no more original weapon types for custom characters. Tamborine, Kick Blades, Fans, Wave Blades, Sickles, and all those original weapon types are completely gone. Want a Rapier user? You have to use Raphael or Amy's moveset. This can also cause some problems. For instance, Amy is a little smaller then most of the cast. She's smaller then the Custom Characters at least, so theres really NO reason at all to use her (from a competitive standpoint) when a Custom Character using her moveset has more range then her due to size. Same is true for Astaroth, why use a Custom Character with his moveset when he's always going to have superior range (Which is also why Ashlotte is useless). This won't always be true, but for some characters, its very noticeable. Theres also a wonderful little bit of 'controversy' with males using Tira's moveset while facing another male and using her Critical Finish. God forbid, Tira kissing an opposing girl is ok, but a guy kissing a guy? Outrage! (I use a male Tira Custom Character, and I like it! >:P).

Stage Selection: Again, the game shows its bias. Seriously, 2 Star Wars stages? Where the hell did that little swamp come from. Why are several stages repeats from previous games and why, when SC3 did it, does every character no longer have a home stage?. Was their seriously not enough room on the disc for things like this?

Museum Modes. Combo Showcases are gone. Cutscenes consist of one per character basically, and a few extras for certain characters. Then we get pictures... oh goody.

Options... no real reason to go there I guess.

The War like adventure mode thing SC3 had. Gone, nonexistant, kaput. Nothing to even replace it either.

Basically, the more I play this game. The more I can't help but think. What the hell is taking up so much space on this disc? So many things were erased. So many things were done half ass. So many things could have had so much added. Where did all the disc space go? The game might be pretty. But hell Sonic the Hedgehog seems to have had more stuff in it then this game does. The gameplay itself is good. However, with so much extra stuff that was cool missing. I'm finding it harder and harder to justify paying 60$ for it. Its a fun game at its core, don't get me wrong, but it really seems like after they got the battles done. They just kind of slapped some half ass extras in and called it complete. Cloned Characters? Relatively small stage list containing old stages (not to mention stage clones... ugh)? 3 somewhat original characters gone. Unique weapon classes wiped from existence.

I swear, I'm just waiting for them to start trying to add stuff as DLC for money when they should have been in the game in the first place. If I see Olcadan as a Downloadable Character for a buck, I'll probably break this disc in half. I see stages that look like they actually belonged in the game, and PS3 will be taking a trip out the window.

The games fun, but dear god why is so much missing. Oh, and I've been adding Gameplay footage to my Youtube Channel slowly. I currently have an online match that didn't freeze for once (though input lag severely limited my abilities) and every Critical Finish in the game. Take a looksie if you'd like.

 lol the solid snake one looks alittle like brendan fraser...or is it just me :p

Game is excellent, online (4-5 bars) is great.

I made "The Tick", so Im happy as a clam!

..Im now sad cause my image isn't showing...

There you go GodofWine.