Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite is coming out in a few short weeks and Capcom is looking to keep the hype at maximum levels before then, unveiling the Soul Stone and its fifth character trailer, showing off Firebrand, Jedah, Dormammu, and Ghost Rider in action.
The Soul Stone is the final Infinity Stone to be revealed and the wait was well worth it. Unlike other stones which had special properties when using its effect, this one is fairly one dimensional, though still seemingly impressive as it allows players to steal the opponents health when activating its Infinity Surge. The Soul Stone’s Infinity Storm looks to be equally impressive as it allows the player to revive a fallen character.
Unfortunately, the trailer — perhaps intentionally — doesn’t do a particularly good job in showcasing the nuances of the Soul Stone. The life bars are hidden so we don’t get to see how much health is drained, nor do we get to see whether it affects the yellow or red health bar. This is an important distinction because while draining yellow health is still a strong ability, draining red health means the opponent can’t regain as much health overall when they substitute their character. Similarly, we don’t see how much health a character gets or how long they remain alive when they’re revived by the stone’s Infinity Storm effect. Unless the stone’s meter takes a very long time to charge when compared to the others, then the ability to permanently revive a fallen character at full health is overpowered. It seems likely that the effect only lasts for the duration of the Infinity Storm, but the trailer ends before such speculation could be confirmed.
In either case, from a preliminary glance, the Soul Stone looks pretty strong, albeit somewhat wonky in implementation — a player who is doing well and is using the life drain effect properly will probably have both characters alive and have no one to revive.
Meanwhile, the trailer also showed off four characters of the demonic variety: Firebrand, Jedah, Dormammu, and Ghost Rider. The only character among the four new to the series is Jedah and we already saw gameplay of him at Evo 2017. Similarly, Capcom previously confirmed that Firebrand, Dormammu and Ghost Rider would be making an appearance at Gamescom 2017, so their inclusion shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who follows this game.
As for their movesets, the series veterans all seem to have at least one new move. Firebrand can create a violent gust of wind that launches opponents up into the air, Dormammu can swing his arms to instantly faceplant an aerial opponent and can use his Power of the Creator ability to summon fiery vines along the ground which bring opponents to him, and Ghost Rider has an attack where he repeatedly hits an enemy with his chain before ending the onslaught with a punch.
All in all, the Soul Stone, Jedah and the new moves for the veterans all look really cool, but we’ll have to wait until September to see how they play out in full.
Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite arrives for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC on Sept. 19.
Check out the trailer below:
