An Analysis of Sentinel’s Moves and Playstyle in Marvel VS Capcom 3

Share on Facebook posted 01-31-11 by Angelo D'Argenio

Let’s just face it. Capcom lied to us. As much as Niitsuma said there wouldn’t be another Darkstalkers character, and that Sentinel was on Marvel’s do not include list, look who our final two characters are. Hsien-Ko and Sentinel round out the Marvel VS Capcom 3 roster to a nice 36, and aside from DLC, these are the only characters we are getting. So there is nothing left to do but analyze these two the same way we analyzed every other character reveal.

Sentinel

There was a rumor that Sentinel was too big to include in the game. Well, he is in the game now, and he sure is big. In fact, Sentinel is almost as big as the Tatsunoko VS Capcom giants were. Not quite, but almost.

Niitsuma was afraid that this would somehow unbalance the game, and if Sentinel was as fast and tough as he was in his Marvel VS Capcom 2 incarnation, this might have been the case. However, Sentinel has been seriously slowed down for MVC3, and his super armor is gone! OK, well that’s not entirely true. He certainly doesn’t have super armor on during his normal standing animation or while in the air that is for sure. Instead, certain moves have super armor during execution, his launcher being one of them. This goes a long way toward balancing a character that nearly every pro had on their team back in MVC2.

Sentinel has received some other nerfs as well. For example, he doesn’t seem to do chip damage with his normals anymore. He also doesn’t seem to be able to perform re-fly combos, and his fly mode itself is much much slower. He is nowhere near the poking machine that he was back in Marvel 2, and unlike Marvel 2, he actually seems to open up most of his gameplay on the ground. This is OK though because his increased size vastly increases the range of his moves. In fact his crouching sweep (most likely a hard attack) is a multi-hit leg attack that reaches halfway across the screen and combos into his launcher. Good stuff, good stuff.

His normals are pretty much the same normals that you saw in Marvel VS Capcom 2, just much much slower. So Sentinel players can’t just throw out his moves as safe pokes anymore, and his combos are shorter and slower on the whole. Since his hit-box is so huge and he doesn’t have super armor anymore each move becomes its own worst enemy if it whiffs. In fact, Sentinel now appears to be the easiest character to punish in the entire game. On the upside, when he does hit he induces a lot of hit-stun so his combos are actually far easier to pull off than they were in Marvel VS Capcom 2. It’s not much, but it’s something.

His special moves also got the nerf bat on the whole. His Sentinel force summons are now much slower, and their directions are much more exaggerated. His high version is higher, so it can’t really be used on grounded opponents, and his low version is lower and far slower than it used to be, making it easy to jump over. For both moves Sentinel is frozen in place while pointing for longer than he was in Marvel VS Capcom 2, making each move far less safe. His hyper version, the Hyper Sentinel Force, is lower than is used to be, so it can no longer be thrown out as an anti-air. It’s also slower than it used to be, and you regain control of Sentinel far more slowly than you did in MVC2. In return, it does way more damage than it used to, including chip damage, and while it can’t chain into itself anymore, it can link into his spark super which I’ll get to in a minute.

His rocket punches have also received a nerf, mostly in the speed department. They are still extremely useful, as far as their utility goes, since they still hit opponents who are on the ground and generally act as great follow ups after a string of normal moves. Since all the moves got a speed nerf, they received a range buff, with all of his rocket punches traveling much further than they did in MVC2. More importantly, his rocket punches benefit from his bigger hit-box, due to his increased size, but not his bigger hurt-box, making them excellent pokes, and one of the few moves he can throw out without immediate fear of being punished for it.

His mouth beam special is actually one of the few specials in his arsenal that has become better since his time in Marvel VS Capcom 2. It starts up and travels much quicker than it used to, and can be fired at multiple heights. In fact, the beam has become so quick, we see Sentinel combo the high version into the low version in one of the gameplay videos. The highest version does go above some characters’ heads, but this means that it can be used as an effective anti-air, especially against characters like Hsien-Ko whose air approaches are slow. It cancels into his rocket punch as well as either of his ground hyper combos, so most likely we will see Sentinel firing many more beams in the future.

We have already covered his hyper sentinel force super, but his other two supers are just as good if not better. His spark super has just gotten better, starting up quicker, dealing more damage, and sporting a vast increase in range. The fact that he can chain this super from hyper sentinel force makes it extremely deadly, and it’s likely that we will see some hyper sentinel force, spark super, x-factor, spark super finishes in the future. Yeah, it will take three levels of meter, but Sentinel doesn’t have a level three hyper combo, and most likely three level ones from one character will do more damage than any other level three in the game.

His other super is an air rush super which doesn’t do many hits but does a lot of damage. Since Sentinel’s air game isn’t really as good as it was in Marvel VS Capcom 2, Capcom probably gave him this super as a good way to finish off his air combos. There really isn’t much more to it than that. The super takes up his whole body and operates as a standard expansion super. If there is anything unique about it, it’s the size of the hit-box, which is bigger than most expansion type supers in the game.

Sentinel is nowhere near the monster that he used to be, and honestly I don’t agree with the mass of fans saying that the Sentinel, Storm, Magneto team will be as broken as it once was. Each of these characters have received noticeable nerfs with Sentinel obviously receiving the most. He will certainly be playable, he might even be good, but he will definitely not be the must-have character that he was in Marvel VS Capcom 2. Instead, I can see people picking up characters like Dante or Trish for their versatility, Hulk and Haggar for their sheer damage. Sentinels biggest strength and weakness on the other hand is his humongous size, and without super-armor, it’s going to take a very specific playstyle to make that work.

… Unless Sentinel has his Mango color scheme in. Then he will be broken, if only becuase he will make his opponent’s think of the New York Knicks.