MARVEL Tokon: Fighting Souls (BETA)

‘Download MARVEL Tōkon: Fighting Souls OPEN BETA! Download and Play Now!’ After wrapping up the Dead Space remake, seeing this notification pop up was a pleasant surprise. I was eager to jump in. Could this be the next Marvel vs. Capcom? Would it play as good as it looked? I downloaded the beta and installed it immediately.

What follows was supposed to be my impressions of the MARVEL Tokon: Fighting Souls Beta. Instead, it’s my impressions of trying to play the MARVEL Tokon: Fighting Souls Beta:

I click Play. Nothing happens. Oh wait – it’s just installing a few prerequisites. It’s fine. The game begins to load. Here we go! The splash screen appears. PlayStation Studios! It’s stuttering but – probably just compiling shaders. MARVEL GAMES! More stuttering!

Okay, we’re finally at the Main Menu. Let’s see what – oh, it’s frozen up. Okay, let’s – oh, it’s a firewall issue. I can fix that. Okay. Let’s try this again. Start it up. Less stuttering. Good. Main Menu. ‘Press Any Button’. Press button!

Nothing. Oh wait. Something. A pop-up window. ‘Sign in to your PSN Account’. What if I don’t have a PSN Account? ‘Create a PSN Account!’ But do I really need to create a PSN account just for a beta? Seriously? An account I’ll likely never use again? Cancel.

‘ATTENTION: You must sign in to PlayStation to access online features’. Okay, but what about OFFLINE features? Can’t I just skip the sign-in and try out the single player versus CPU mode? Back to Main Menu.

‘Press Any Button’. Press button! A pop up window. ‘Sign in to your PSN Account’. GROAN! Okay, fine – ‘Create a PSN Account’. Nothing happens! Let’s try again. Nothing happens! Cancel. ‘ATTENTION: You must sign in to PlayStation to access online features’ I’M TRYING!

Quit game. Restart. Try again. Same outcome. Go on Steam forums: ‘Can’t make a PSN Account’. ‘Stuck at Main Menu’. ‘Can’t Launch the Game’. ‘Crashes after logging in to PSN’. ‘Can’t Play the Game’.

I’m an old man now and I don’t have the patience for this shit. Right click. Uninstall.

I know it’s only a beta, but come the f**k on. If you’re going to make an online account a requirement, you’d better make it work! If Sony want an all digital platform going forward, they sure as shit need to overhaul their online infrastructure.