Street Fighter X Tekken First Week Impressions

Before I get into my thoughts on Street Fighter x Tekken I would like to emphasize that I'll be talking about the game itself rather than the game's unfortunate DLC situation. I'm just as angry about it as everyone else, but I think it's unfortunate that people are choosing not to pick up the game for this reason. I'll get more into that situation another time. If you're looking for more on the DLC woes check my post from last month here. As stated in my previous post I was on the fence about the game, but after having played it I found myself hooked.

Street Fighter x Tekken is obviously an amalgamation of arguably the most popular 2D and 3D fighting game franchises out there. It's also well known that this iteration is meant to play more like the Street Fighter series (with Tekken x Street Fighter releasing in the coming years for the Tekken preferred). So that may leave you wondering, just how well did Capcom do with the 2D portrayal of the Tekken cast?

I'll be the first to tell you that I'm not a Tekken expert whatsoever, but from my experience with the Tekken series I'm confident in saying they did a great job in emulating the Tekken cast into the Street Fighter universe. Sure they don't have their complete move lists (which would be a little absurd for a Street Fighter game) but the essentials and trade mark techniques are in place. Tekken players needn't worry about fireball dominance either as they have many ways to stuff a careless fireballer right in the face, such as Kazuya's mist step techniques.

As for the Street Fighter cast, if you spent much time with the Street Fighter IV series you'll probably feel at home with them right off the bat. Most of their standard links still work the same along with the addition of the new chain system. Cross ups feel different but still effective. Throwing isn't as good as in SFIV, which may be good or bad depending on your preference. For the most part everyone feels arguably better than their SFIV versions.

The netcode needs a bit of work. Sometimes it's pretty flawless, but when you're playing in a huge lobby there seem to be more hiccups than in Street Fighter IV. Most notably are instances of lost inputs and visible roll backs. While not too hindering of gameplay, there's also an issue with the music and sound effects while you're playing online. For some unknown reason the sound will get quiet or even cut out for a few seconds in the heat of a match. I believe Ono has tweeted vaguely that they are working on some sort of patch for this.

I'm having a lot of fun with the game in it's early days. The new focus on offensive play is a refreshing change from SFIV's slower pace. While the netcode could definitely be better I find that it's still very playable.

I believe I've mentioned it in a previous post but I'm currently retired from the tournament scene right now due to more important priorities (my kids!). That being said, I love the game as a fix for the occasional online throw down. Playing co-op with my buddies is a blast.

That being said, I think if you approach the game with the point of view that you just want to have fun with it you wont be disappointed. I think it's safe to say as well that the game will make a viable tournament entry. I still stand with my predictions that there will be future versions of the game (this is Capcom after all, and the DLC on disk has kind of proven it). So I think if you're in to take the game serious you're in for a ride of the game knowledge and financial sorts.

Lastly, if you're still on the fence about it, Red Box it or something. The way Capcom is handling it is very unfortunate but the core game itself is a lot of fun.

Capcom's cards and gems

I just wanted to throw my 2 cents in on a new trend Capcom seems to be interested in with their new fighting games. Of course I'm talking about the recent announcements at New York Comic con regarding Street Fighter x Tekken's Gem system and Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3's card system, which seem to be reminiscent of CCG's (collectible card games).

For the uninformed, check Shoryuken.com's front page for plenty of news and videos on these new mechanics.

All in all I think it sounds like an innovative way to make for an almost unlimited variety of matchups. Depending on just how altering these new mechanics are, some characters and team ups could play completely different from your traditional idea of the selected characters. I do have my concerns though...

One is with the competitive tournament scene. Yoshinori Ono has already stated that SF x TK's Gem Mechanic is an integrated gameplay feature and cannot be disabled. I'm interested to see how tournament organizers handle this, especially if all the Gems have to be unlocked. It's going to be a pain rounding up enough completed system files so it'll be fair for all participants. What if one of the more desired Gem's by the community is something that has to be unlocked by winning a 1000 matches online, or completing all combo challenges. Not everyone is going to have the ability or desire to go for something like that. Another thing is how much time you're going to allow people for assembling their Gems and then selecting their characters. If not regulated, tournaments for that game could take ages to complete.

Another concern I have is private selection of your Gems and Cards. This will probably just be an online gripe though. For example in the Marvel card trailer, we see a team that has selected a "projectile invulnerability" card. It doesn't auto block projectiles, or give you super armor against them, it just completely ignores them! Well, what if you're the unfortunate player who has trained a team around zoning with projectiles or runaway tactics? I just wonder at what point during character selection do you choose your cards. This could swing a matchup in one players hands or another's favor depending on when you get to see the team and when you get to see the cards.

Of course these are just my first observational concerns. No one can really pass any judgement until they get their hands on the game. Like I said earlier, I think these systems sound like a lot of fun and will provide for limitless diversity in teams and matchups. Capcom just needs to do a lot of testing to make sure things get done right. I'm sure people would rather win or lose based mostly on skill rather than CCG tactics.

Time will tell though!

Massive fighting game bombshells have dropped

What an awesome day for fighting game fans it has been. Since San Diego Comic Con has opened it's doors we have seen a flood of absolutely awesome fighting game news.

This post will sum up a lot of the things that have dropped so far. If you've been keeping up with it then you probably already know all of this, however I'll also give my opinions on these bits of news.

Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3

The first big announcement is that Capcom is working on the next revision of MvC3, dubbed the Ultimate edition, though if you ask me there will probably be more after this (I'm looking at you Street Fighter IV). Let's call the next one Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 Galactic Edition, haha.

But seriously, this is a generous update to the game adding 12 new characters which brings the roster to 50 as well as a complete rebalancing of the existing cast. Known changes are the nerfing of damage when in X Factor mode, the removal of the DHC glitch, removal of exchange glitches, the removal of the mystery invisible health as well as an overhall of the HUD in general. Individual character changes so far confirmed are Magneto's disruptor being much slower, Ryu's Shinkuu Hadoken super now ricochets off of the wall, Wolverine's berserker slash is slower and no longer invincible as well as him having a new move.

This update is coming to us November 15th, less than a year after vanilla MvC3 released. So far only in the form of a new disc for 39.99. I'm a little disappointed that the game needs such an overhall this soon, but let's be honest it was a broken mess. I know, I know, "that's MAHVEL BABY!" But the update will be needed to keep long term interest in the game and especially if you want to keep introducing new players.

Freddy Kreuger comes to Mortal Kombat 9

This is the strangest if not most hilarious fighting game news ever. But you know what, he actually fits with the rest of the cast pretty well. His character trailer is below if you still find this hard to believe:



My only complaint is that it's the newer Freddy from the modern movie revamp and not the classic Robert Englund one that we all know and love (or fear). Maybe that can be his alternate costume, here's hopin! Now, where's Jason? Doesn't Warner bros. own the rights to him as well?

New Darkstalkers game in the works

At the Street Fighter x Tekken panel the following image was shown as a teaser to let us know that Capcom is cooking something up for Darkstalkers in the future:



I'm excited to see how this game looks. Morrigan and Hsien-Ko looked great in MvC3. I'm confident that they'll be able to recapture the crazy animations of the other Darkstalkers just as well. It's too soon to speculate much about this at this point other than I believe this game will have 2D gameplay with 3D graphics much like Capcom's other new fighting games.

Street Fighter x Tekken character additions

This is the most exciting bit of news for me. I was excited about this game, now I'm REALLY excited! Yesterday they revealed Dhalsim, Poison, Steve Fox, Yoshimitsu, Hugo, Cody, and Guy! That's a pretty massive reveal in one day by traditional Capcom standards. Check out the cinematic trailer below:



Also a new game mechanic called the cross assault attack was revealed. It reminds me of the crossover attack mechanic that was available in Marvel vs. Capcom 1 where you could bring both of your team mates into battle at the same time. I didn't use the attack much, but it seemed that you controlled one character while the cpu moved your teammate.

What happens in Street Fighter x Tekken is both of your characters life bars merge into one and both characters come on screen to be played at the same time. It seems that it's only available when your characters are nearly dead, like a comeback mechanic. It also requires some of the super meter. The on screen action looks confusing to me. Is the cpu going to be able to play your partner character to your standard? Right now the whole mechanic seems like sort of a gamble to me. Check it out in the video for yourself:



Aside from the cross assault attack I'm really excited about everything this game is offering so far, especially the cast. It's full of my favorite characters with hopefully even more to come.

So those are just a few bits of news for us fighting fans. Today is another day of San Diego Comic Con which will hopefully bring even more exciting reveals.

It's good to be a fighting game fan

Yesterday was a good day if you are a fighting game fan, particularly of Street Fighter or Tekken. While a lot of news got leaked early, yesterday Capcom finally released information from their Captivate 2011 event to the public. In this post I'll summarize a lot of the more important tidbits for my friends, facebook followers and anyone else that may not stay on top of the big fighting game news releases. I'll also be adding my opinion here and there.

Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition comes home

First of all Arcade Edition was finally officially announced for home consoles. It will be available as a DLC on June 7th for $15, or as a full disk release on June 24th for $40 in case you no longer have a copy of SSFIV or never picked it up in the first place.

As I stated previously you get 4 new characters: Yun, Yang, Evil Ryu, and Oni (or Oni Akuma). They are also implementing balance updates across the entire cast.

The endless lobbies are being updated so that you can apply filters to let other players know what kind of fights you are seeking. Such as character specific, or if you're looking for players of a certain skill level. Think along the lines of MvC3's lobbies.

The replay channel is receiving an update that allows you to search for specific players as well as other helpful search options. You can also follow certain players and receive updates as to when they have uploaded new videos. The My Channel will also let you share up to 50 videos to be searched for by the community.

I think this is a great update and if you spend any time with SSFIV at all you owe it to yourself to pick up this update. The great thing is though, even if you choose not to or can't afford the update right away you wont be left behind from the other players. You can still play against regular SSFIV players, although the rules will follow standard SSFIV rather than the update.

I would have liked to see a few more characters, but the rebalancing will make things fresh again and perhaps fix a few of the more unfair matchups. Time will tell.

Lots of new Street Fighter x Tekken information now available

This is probably the most exciting thing to come out of Captivate for me. They started by releasing the below cinematic trailer that shows more gameplay as well as reveals more of the cast:



The cast now includes: Ryu, Ken, Chun li, Guile, Abel, Kazuya, Nina, Bob, Craig Marduk, and King.

The game will play similar to the Tekken tag series in that you choose 2 characters for your team and when one of those characters loses all of their health the round ends. Matches will play best 2 out of 3 rounds.

It follows the standard 6 buttons Street Fighter layout of lp, mp, hp, lk, mk, hk. The Tekken cast also uses 6 buttons, but the game has been engineered so that lp, mp, lk, and mk respond as the traditional 1, 2, 3 and 4 buttons of Tekken. Many of the Tekken character's combos and specials will port directly over from Tekken 6 and Yoshinori Ono explained that seasoned Tekken players will mostly feel right at home by ignoring the hp and hk buttons all together, though it would be wiser to include those in your arsenal as well.

lp+lk is throw, mp+mk is tag out, and hp+hk is a universal launcher. What I gather from the match videos on the net is that to emulate a Tekken style juggle state any character in an arial state can be juggled just about by any move. For example in the above video we see Chun li land a head stomp, air hp, hp (air target combo), c. mk, ex spinning bird kick. Ryu can get things like c. mp, hadoken or hurricane kick after connecting with a Shoryuken. Of course these combos can be extended using the tag feature.

In the videos shown players had a 3 bar super meter. It costs 1 level to do ex moves, 1 level to tag cancel (you can cancel any move into a tag to extend your combos with the next character), and 2 levels to do a Super Combo. There wasn't anything available that used all 3 bars of the meter, though likely I'd say it's for the double team Super Combos. Those weren't present either, I'd imagine because work hadn't been completed on the available character's team up Supers.

You can also "charge" your special moves. For example, by doing a Hadoken with Ryu and holding the punch button he will continue to charge the Hadoken in place until you let it go. The character will flash to signal different levels of the charge. Level 2 gives you a meter free ex version of the move and if you charge all the way to level 3 you get the Super Combo version of the move (this seems to take a long time so it doesn't seem like it could be abused as a cheap tactic).

For a very in depth analysis of the fighting system so far click here: http://www.play-mag.co.uk/general/street-fighter-x-tekken-gameplay-notes

I think the gameplay looks really fun at this point. It seems to reward more offensive play in comparison to the more turtle friendly SSFIV. Time will tell if such a free juggle system will end up breaking the game. Right now the lengthy combos are definitely not as devastating as they are in Tekken and there seems to be rules in place that prevent infinite loops (such as the rule in Tekken 6 where you can only "bound" your opponent 1 time per each combo). In one video Ryu attempts a sort of loop with his donkey kick and Shoryuken but it seems to drop for some reason after he tries another rep.

Click here for the official Street Fighter x Tekken website

After what I've seen I think I'm more excited for this new game than I was for MvC3. What are your thoughts?

Marvel vs Capcom 3 first impressions

I wanted to do a write up on MvC3 much earlier than this, however my computer has messed up on me again so I'm stuck doing this with my trusty android.

That being said, please excuse any typos as I have little patience for this tiny screen.

I wanted to write about my initial impressions of the game. Since I have a new baby in the house, I haven't been able to put the time into it like I have with other fighters in the past. I feel like with my past experience with fighters I should be able to form a solid starting opinion anyway.

The majority of my time with the game has been split between training mode and online versus. I've only had a single play session offline with a group of friends and I can already tell that the online quality is about the same as Super Street Fighter IV, i.e. tolerable but could definitely use some fine tuning.

Another dissapointment in the online play is the missing ability to spectate lobby matches like you can in SSFIV. I suppose a game like MvC3 might be more system taxing, but perhaps the inclusion of a better netcode, like say lGGPO, could make up for it. I'm also having trouble connecting to ranked matches. Last time I played I got in 2 ranked sessions out of maybe 30 attempts. So yeah, the online modes could definitely use some attention.

But let's talk about the most important aspect of the game: the game itself!

Unlike in MvC2 the game appears to be balanced enough so that you can play as just about any combination of the cast and still compete (for now at least). Although it seems the game is slowly becomming Sentinel vs. Sentinel 3: the fate of two Sentinels. You also see a tremendous amount of Dante's online, but I was expecting this. *see my mini Dante rant below.

The entry level for this game is very low, but will take a long time to master. Perfect for Capcom to snag a new user base. The game has tremendous depth and can be very rewarding to learn (I haven't even scratched the surface yet, but every time I play I see new and amazing things from other players, as well as discovering new tricks myself).

It can be annoying when new players are able to unleash amazing air combos with no effort (and probably not be able to offer an explanation on how they did it) but in the long run it should provide long life and huge user base for the game.

Aside from the awesome gameplay, the graphics are also amazing, sporting character models better than SSFIV and unbelievably detailed stages.

The music consists of remixed character themes from past vs. series games and although they're more upbeat than MvC2's offerings, they could still use a bit more kick in my opinion.

All in all I'd say Capcom has done it again. We've got another solid fighter that will be played for many years to come. I'd like to go more in depth about the game, but I'd like to spend more time with it first. I'd recommed it to anyone, fighter fan or not. It's perfect for veterans and also a good jump in point if you've been interested in fighters but haven't tried one out yet. There's plenty of content to please everyone.

*Dante rant: Okay, I do see the appeal for the guy. White hair, leather coat, guns, huge sword, the ability to turn into a demon. He's like the epitomy of characters I would invent in the margins of my notebooks in middle school. On top of that, he's a really solid character in the game. But there's such a robust cast of characters in MvC3. Do yourself a favor and drift around a bit from Dante's icon on the character select screen. I'm tired of seeing the same 2 dimensional Dante gameplay in every match (doing his super the second you stock a meter, etc.) If you're going to play him, try to vary it up a bit, check out his strat section on Shoryuken.com or something. Because the same Dante scrubbery just doesn't work anymore.

Okay maybe that wasn't fair. I'm just sick of fighting this guy so much :P

See you in game!

Marvel vs. Capcom 3 promotional art

Here are a few pieces of promotional art done by my favorite (former) Capcom artist Kinu Nishimura as well as Shinkiro. I found these hi-res versions of the pieces and thought I would share.

By Kinu

Direct Link

By Shinkiro

Direct Link

New Street Fighter x Tekken character?

Yoshinori Ono posted this image last night on his twitter account after visiting the Capcom R&D office for SFxT.

It appears to be a teaser image of a character (as usual per Ono). Who could it be though? A friend of mine thinks it looks like Law from Tekken because of the stance but I can't be sure. What do you think?

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5

Marvel vs. Capcom 3 casual vids

In case you haven't seen this elsewhere already, Youtube user, EvilBowlofCereal, has posted a bunch of Marvel vs. Capcom 3 casual matches from Norcal Regionals 8 on his youtube page here:

Caffeinated Gaming

Some aren't the most exciting looking matches ever, but remember that players are still figuring this game out yet (hell it isn't even out yet). Any new footage is good footage though.

Marvel vs. Capcom 3 Tron Bonne reveal trailer

This is a few days old now, but whatever, it's another great cinematic trailer for MvC3 that's a good watch for the action.



Things we can learn from this trailer:

-Chun li is hotter still <3

-The super soldier serum is still serving Captain America very well.

-Dr. Doom and Super Skrull are huge jerks.

-Tron Bonne is in the game (woot!)

-Morrigan is sleeping with Tony Stark :p