I was looking forward to getting my hands on Capcom's new Tatsunoko vs Capcom: Ultimate All Stars for the Nintendo Wii, but I came away a little less than impressed.  There's a solid fighting game at its core, but the experience is held back by a lack of polish and a roster half-filled with unfamiliar characters that do little to stand out as engaging personalities.  My review of the game is now available over at Kombo with a review of the associated Mad Catz fightstick scheduled to run early next week in which I dig deeper into the gameplay elements.

Fighting games live or die based on their character rosters, and Tatsunoko vs Capcom has both a solid advantage working for it. Expected Capcom characters like Ryu, Chun-li, and Morrigan Aensland are back for another brawl, but the development team also chose to pack the roster with characters new to the Vs Capcom experience. Fan favorites like MegaMan Volnutt, Viewtiful Joe, and the Mega Man X incarnation of Zero join the fight this time around with new moves and techniques to master. Each character comes loaded with little references to their respective franchise, such as robot housekeeper Roll's special attack in which she summons an energy pellet from the Mega Man series to replenish her energy (a classic vertical Mega Man energy meter appears on the screen for just a moment while this happens; moreover, when she dies, she explodes into glowing circles instead of being knocked out like other characters). Frank West can summon a zombie in a mall shopping cart or slip into comical Mega Man armor to pull off a special attack known as The Real Mega Buster that basically does you'd expect. There's plenty of fun here for longtime fans of Capcom titles.

If I've learned one lesson from the process of reviewing this game, it's to never anger the hardcore Street Fighter and/or Tatsunoko fans.  Shortly after the review was published, the comments section at Kombo caught fire with all kinds of angry remarks directed at me and my opinions.  I like when my reviews inspire discussion, but this is never really what I have in mind. In the future when a review is basically split between a game and an associated peripheral, we'll run both articles on the same day so that readers aren't confused about the supposedly "missing" portions of the game review.