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Gaming’s Undervalued Treasures: Darkstalkers 3

October 7, 2016 colin

Image courtesy of the Capcom Database Wiki

Darkstalkers 3 is one fast paced, yet incredibly fun, fighting game

Darkstalkers 3 is one of Capcom’s biggest cult hits in the fighting game genre. Similar to the rest of the Darkstalkers series, Darkstalkers 3 sets itself apart from other fighting games at the time. It’s extensive roster of horror movie monsters, spooky techno/jazz soundtrack and some of the most engaging fighting game mechanics keep Darkstalkers 3 fun. It’s also one of the fastest fighters in Capcom’s library.

Vampire vs Succubus! Only in Darkstalkers. Image courtesy of VG Museum.

Equipped with envelope pushing features, Darkstalkers 3 was quietly released in 1997 in arcades, and was not a major hit. The popularity of the then-new Capcom vs series overshadowed Darkstalkers 3. The game was also marketed as Vampire Savior, which may have confused gamers. Home ports did not fare much better. The Sega Saturn port was Japan-exclusive and the PlayStation 1 was mostly ignored.

Original arcade flyer with the name confusion. Image courtesy of Hardcore Gaming 101.

Even when Capcom rereleased this game with it’s solid prequel Night Warriors for PSN and Xbox Live Arcade as Darkstalkers Resurrection, the general gaming public did not notice. It’s a shame, since Darkstalkers 3 truly is one of the most addictive and hard hitting fighting games out there. It deserves to be played by any fighting game fan. And with its horror themed atmosphere, it’s perfect to play during the Halloween season.

Darkstalkers 3’s fighting mechanics are top notch
The fighting properties in Darkstalkers 3 are the definition of addictive and will have players coming back for more in no time.

J. Talbain v J. Talbain to see who is the most badass, kung fu werewolf! Image courtesy of VG Museum.

Darkstalkers 3, and by extension the rest of the series, is more than just Street Fighter meets Universal Monsters. It’s a very technical series, where air blocking, dashing and timing with super meters is the norm. Darkstalkers 3 continues this trend, but welcomes additions. For instance, players can enhance special attacks by taking a chunk out of their special meter. Instead of utilizing a super, the player can instead chain a standard special with this feature. The game also introduces the Dark Force EX special mode, which is similar to the Super Art mode in the Street Fighter III sub-series.

This new feature to the series allows for quicker, more concise matches. For a game known for being technical, having the ability to blow through a match in a short period of time is great. Make no mistake, Darkstalkers 3 is a blisteringly fast fighting game, but it also requires a good amount of skill play it.

Luckily for new players, the controls are not difficult to learn. Anyone who has played any Capcom fighter will feel right at home with Darkstalkers 3’s control set up. Chaining combos and launching special attacks with come as easy as tying one’s shoes.

A shockingly balanced roster, eye-catching graphics and a solid soundtrack round out Darkstalkers 3
For many gamers, a good roster in a fighting game is what matters most. Darkstalkers 3 has a sublime roster lined with creative characters. The roster contains the series’ trademark originality. The busty succubi Morrigan and Lilith, catgirl Felicia, the vampire Dimitri and fan favorites J. Talbain, the nunchuck wielding werewolf and Eddie the Head’s long lost twin brother Lord Raptor. Newcomers include Q Bee, a human-esque bee and BB Hood, who is what happens when Little Red Riding Hood has Deadpool’s personality.

The whole freakin’ roster! With the two *ahem* MOST popular fighters at the forefront. Image courtesy of Fighters Generation.

Darkstalkers 3 contains one of the most badass villains in any fighting game. Jedah Domah is a stoic and ruthless demon, who has some disturbing special attacks. His ultimate plan is to destroy the universe and build it back up as he sees fit.

Jedah taking on the Frankenstein’s Monster inspired character, Victor. Image courtesy of Fighter’s Generation

Disturbing describes the game’s graphics in many instances. Backgrounds range from a jungle with sadistic plants, a post-apocalyptic city or a satanic fetus. They are all colorful, yet creepy, and fit the vibe. With the game taking place in the demon world, known as Makai, it makes sense to have weird and eerie settings for fights.

Image result for darkstalkers 3 j talbain

There it is folks, the fetus. Pure nightmare fuel. Image courtesy of VG Museum.

However, the rest of the game’s graphics are incredible.Anyone taking a look at Darkstalkers 3 will notice it feels like a mid-90s Marvel Comic book. The is game full of vibrant colors and heavy on action. Sprites well animated and fluid. Darkstalkers 3’s animations even rival the almighty Street Fighter III: Third Strike. Animations will perfectly reflect the fighters personality, especially BB Hood who is full of expressions. Special moves are an absolute delight to look at as well.

BB Hood calling in the cavalry! Image courtesy of Hardcore Gaming 101.

To top it off, the soundtrack a good mix of atmospheric and moody horror with techno-jazz.

One of Gaming’s Undervalued Treasures
Darkstalkers 3 and the rest of the franchise is sadly forgotten about by Capcom. The absolute best way to play the game is to download it through PSN or Xbox Live Arcade. It appears on various collections, including Darkstalkers Chronicle: the Chaos Tower on the PSP. Copies are relatively expensive though.

Darkstalkers 3 is simply just fun to play and will wow players with its uniqueness. It does not condescend new or returning players and anyone watching will be in awe over how gorgeous the game is. Sticking around for the excellent, fine-tuned gameplay helps enhance playing. Playing this game on All Hallow’s Eve also adds to the experience.

Guilty Gear Xrd Revelator: The Best of the Best

June 21, 2016 dan

If you’ve been reading my articles, you may have noticed I have quite a love of fighting games. In addition to my love of fighting games, I also love heavy metal, and, on top of that, am complete and utter weeaboo trash. So obviously, Guilty Gear is a series that really resonates with me. The newest entry in the series, Guilty Gear Xrd -Revelator-, just came out two weeks ago, and I’ve been playing it ever since I got my hands on it. The previous entry in the series, Guilty Gear Xrd -SIGN-, was known as the most anticipated fighting game of the year after its announcement, and had received critical acclaim upon release. How does the follow up to Daisuke Ishiwatari’s passion project do? Well, let me be straight with you here: Guilty Gear Xrd -Revelator- is the single greatest experience I’ve had with a fighting game.

Gameplay

When people talk about fighting games with a lot of mechanics, Guilty Gear is one of the first that gets mentioned. Guilty Gear Xrd -Revelator- (from here on out referred to as just “Revelator”) is able to hold on to a lot of complex mechanics without making learning and adapting to them difficult, thanks to its incredible tutorial mode. Normally I wouldn’t talk about the tutorial mode in a review, but Revelator is able to do the one thing other fighting games can’t: teach the game well. The tutorial mode puts you in a fun minigame-like environment where they present concepts to you and then ask you to execute them OUTSIDE of a battle situation, which allows inexperienced players to learn much easier, and opens up the game to a broader audience.

The tutorial is fun! (Image courtesy of Kotaku)

Okay, now that I’ve gushed about how good the tutorial is, let’s get into the actual combat. Unlike Street Fighter, which is a 6-button fighter, Revelator is a 5-button fighter. In Street Fighter, you have 3 punches and 3 kicks, with each ranging from light to heavy. In Revelator, you have Punch, Kick, Slash, Heavy Slash, and Dust. Aside from punch and kick, I don’t really know what the names mean, but that’s what they’re called. Combos in this game focus more on chaining everything you can get together in a flurry of flashy hits and specials, as opposed to the more slow combos in something like Street Fighter. It’s very easy to make combos in Revelator, but to make good combos is going to take time and effort. Unlike in most recent fighting games where they are trying to lower the execution barrier, Revelator still retains the complexity the Guilty Gear franchise is known for. Don’t let that scare you off, though, because Revelator has this special little thing called Stylish Mode. A mode that originated in the other flagship Arc System Works fighting game, BlazBlue. Basically, Stylish Mode is a mode where you don’t need to have any skill in execution at all to do all these cool-looking combos, so you can just relax and have fun without going into a scene where everyone outclasses you. It’s a very good decision to include this because it allows the more casual audience to have fun and be invested in the game without having to spend hours learning someone that they might just wanna jump right into and mess around with.

Now, remember when I said that there are a lot of mechanics in this game? Well for the sake of keeping this review at a reasonable size I’m only going to explain the more important ones. That said, every mechanic in this game is important in some way or another, and you should totally learn the rest of them if you’re interested.

First off, there’s the Burst technique, which is a blast of energy that pushes your opponent off of you while they’re mid combo, mid block string, or anything really. It uses up burst meter, and you have to use it wisely, because of you burst and it doesn’t hit your opponent, you won’t get it back for a while, meaning your opponent doesn’t have to worry about being thrown away. There’s the Blitz Shield, which is a universal parry that everyone has, and making a good read and blitzing the opponent can lead to huge damage. You can also charge it for this really strong focus attack style move, which does good damage on its own and produces a crumple effect on the opponent, allowing for huge combo potential. Finally, there’s the most important mechanic of Revelator: The Roman Cancel. Red, yellow, and purple Roman cancels (here on referred to as RRC, YRC, and PRC), each do basically the same thing, but their uses vary on the situation. The RRC is used mainly as a combo extender. It interrupts your current animation and resets you, so you can follow up with literally anything and combo for even longer. The YRC is used when you need to maneuver a bit better, or start moving sooner. You use it to either adjust yourself to avoid an attack, or use it to reset your animation after throwing a projectile. Finally, the PRC is used in case you mess up and have to reset your animation to save your ass. Each mechanic is vital to competitive success in the game, and they reward players who master them very well, and punish players who don’t.

The Blitz technique. (Image courtesy of hitconfirm)

The focus on combat in Revelator is the perfect blend of fundamentals and execution, revolving around a strong neutral game, but also needing big combos to deal significant damage. But the neutral isn’t something like Marvel where you’re hit once and you’re down. The tools given to you allow for many different styles of play in the neutral. Moving around is very fast and free-flowing as well.

My only complaint with the gameplay is the online. It’s not bad by any means; When playing within a few hundred miles, it works perfectly fine, with little to no lag. The only big problems the online has is handling playing people more than a few hundred miles away from you, and that the searching for matches is really tedious. In an at-capacity server, which is normally filled with people looking for player matches, your search results will only show you 2 or 3 people you can play with, even though there are clearly much more than that searching. That said, the online is still solid enough to play well consistently, and so long as you know what to do to get good matches, you’ll pretty much always get them. Like I said, it’s not bad, it just needs some work. The game is also only two weeks old, so these issues will likely be polished out down the road.

Looks and Sound

Arc System Works has always delivered some of the best-looking fighting games on average, and Revelator is no exception. It is by far the best-looking fighting game of the current generation, and one of, if not the best-looking fighting game period. The characters are very well-designed, and their models are beautifully made. The stages have so much color and life to them, and the environments are insanely cool locations that I would love to actually be in. The game runs at a smooth 60fps, and the characters’ movesets look really cool and really flashy, which make for an entertaining time for both the player and the watcher. Just like in -SIGN-, the opening animations for the fights enter this 3D-ish world, and eventually pan to the point of it becoming a 2D fighter. When supers happen, it enters this kind of 2.5D animation style again for the moves, and also at the end of the matches, when someone gets a KO. It’s absolutely gorgeous. Hidehiko Sakamura’s art style fits the animation of the game perfectly, and I really hope we get to see this kind of style with even more Guilty Gear entries to come, because it’s one of the best I’ve seen in Arc’s games. Not only is it just a genuinely great style, but it’s able to communicate the game’s “rock n’ roll” aesthetic perfectly.

LOOK AT HOW GORGEOUS THIS IS (image courtesy of Arc System Works)

Now, not only is it the best-looking fighting game you can get right now, but it’s also the best sounding. As I’ve said before, I am heavy metal weeaboo trash. I love metal (and I’m a weeb but that’s beside the point). The soundtrack of this game is full of nothing but heavy metal and rock, composed by the ridiculously talented Daisuke Ishiwatari. Songs range from the lighter part of hard rock to the heavier side of traditional metal, with a little bit of thrash metal thrown in for good measure. You’ve got songs like Suck a Sage, which are more hard rock, and The Lily of Steel, which are more metal. Every song is catchy and well-written. There isn’t a bad song in the game. In addition, not only does it have Xrd tracks, but you can unlock songs from pretty much every Guilty Gear from the past.

Story

The story concept of the Guilty Gear Xrd games is quite simple. Back in the far away time of 1999, people created a source of limitless energy that they called magic. Yes, they scientifically created magic. I don’t think I’ve ever written something as stupid as that, like, ever. Anyway, this magic was immediately used for war (go figure) and was used to create these biological weapons known as Gears (the title Guilty Gear actually has a meaning, believe it or not). There was a war. Almost 200 years later, a being known as Ramlethal Valentine declares war on the entire world and its inhabitants. These had been another incident like this with someone else who went by “Valentine”, so everyone was like “dude this is real we need to fight” and then everyone went to war.

And then plot happens.

It’s not NetherRealm Studios levels of good, but it’s still a pretty good story, with a lot of nice fights and entertaining characters. Except Elphelt. That waifu trash should go back to BlazBlue where she belongs. It’s only about 3 – 4 hours long, so if you’ve got a free afternoon, you can beat it.

Content

The sheer amount of stuff to do in Revelator is insane. It’s got a pretty good story mode, the obligatory versus, arcade, and training modes, and fantastic tutorial, which you can go back to and play minigames. On top of that, you’ve got the always fun Medal of Millionaire mode, which is pretty much Guilty Gear’s equivalent to coin mode in Smash, except actually good. After that, we have combo mode, where you’re put into a training room and asked to do specific combos, most of which are worthless in actual fights and are there just for fun. Then there’s mission mode, which is pretty much just the advanced tutorial, but with a LOT of tutorials on general situations and mechanics, but if you go to the next page in there, you something no other fighting game does: Matchup tutorials. That’s right, there are specific tutorials that allow you to gain matchup knowledge against other characters/techniques. This is incredible, and all fighting games should do this.

But wait, we still have to talk about the best mode of all: Fishing. Basically, you walk up to a lake and fish for unlockable things, like songs that can play in battle (including ones from older Guilty Gear games), character colors, avatar customization items, concept art, and more. And yeah, you could also just save up your in-game currency and buy them in the gallery, but that’s no fun.

The lobby system, where you walk around as that cute little thing. (Image courtesy of Fighters Generation)

The lobby system, where you walk around as that cute little thing. You can also fish here! (Image courtesy of Fighters Generation)

Even outside of modes, Revelator still has other things to do. When playing online, you have an avatar that is the most precious thing in the world, and it walks around the lobby and you get into matches by sitting at arcade machines and waiting for other avatars to walk up and sit at the same one. It’s so cute. And the best part is that you can customize your avatar. You can give it little square heads of the characters in the game, and change their body color to your liking, though you have to unlock those. And then there’s your plate, which is more or less your trainer card for the online. You can unlock custom frames, change your profile picture, and give yourself a title, normally composed of really goofy words. Mine is Magic Manly Mustache.

Conclusion: Should you buy Guilty Gear Xrd Revelator?

Guilty Gear Xrd Revelator is the single greatest experience I’ve ever had with a fighting game. It has an incredibly unique and balanced roster, fantastic blend of fundamentals and execution, and well-designed mechanics, along side a fantastic score and the best graphics I’ve ever seen in a fighting game. It’s got plenty of options other than versus and arcade mode to keep you from getting bored, and not to mention a pretty good and fun story. Fishing is great, and despite some issues with the online, I’m still willing to give this game the best score I can, because the online still works well so long as you know what to do.

The Importance of Villains in the Fighting Game Community

May 31, 2016 dan

What is a villain? Well, when you think of a villain, you think of this antagonist who’s bigger and better than the hero. Evil intentions, scary, and just genuinely bad people, right? Villains in the fighting game community (or FGC) aren’t as over-dramatic as that, but still are a cause for a lot of tension and drama in their respective communities. That said, even though these villains cause a lot of drama, they’re a good thing to their communities. Be it through a persona they made for the sake of a good show, or if it’s just how they naturally are, villains generate hype, get the crowd invested, and make the mood of whatever it is they’re competing at much more intense, all by providing someone for the audience to root against.

Villains are a special breed of competitive player. They retain the skill and consistency to compete with the strongest players in the world, while also following up this skill with as much disrespect as possible. This can range anywhere from trash talk, to showboating, to really anything, so long as whatever is done contains major disrespect towards individuals, or the community.

Normally, the reaction to these kinds of people is disdainful, as it should be. They’re going out of their way to be disrespectful to others; of course they’re going to make people react negatively. This kind of behavior is generally known to be toxic, and when done by a regular member of the community, it is. But, when it’s done by the proper person, it changes from complete toxicity into nothing but hype building, and when it comes to the FGC, hype is the backbone of the community. Building hype increases player and audience investment, overall showmanship in major tournaments, and more. Villains generating hype through this kind of disrespect create a consistency that is otherwise not there.

But how does being so disrespectful generate hype? Quite simple, actually. Like I said, villains give the audience someone to root against. People don’t like seeing villains win, because they’re not nice people. So when a villain is up against someone who can compete against them and potentially take them down, that match will get the audience ridiculously invested, and the reaction to everything happen will be even greater than it would have been if it were between two other players.

This heavy focus on who wins the match makes it more exciting, and both outcomes help to make the community more invested in the game. If the non-villain wins, then the crowd goes crazy because they saw the villain get taken down. If the villain wins, the initial negative reaction to the crowd will eventually go towards an even better positive reaction when the villain finally does lose. Something big happened a few months ago with Ultimate Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 villain Ryan “Filipino Champ” Ramirez at Winter Brawl X. He had a match against Ultimate Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 EVO champion Kane BlueRiver, and FChamp, also being an EVO champion in the same game before Kane BlueRiver, starts taunting him after every win. Yelling at him, talking down to him. Making it known that he is the best, and there’s nothing that can be done about it:

Video courtesy of Youtube user BasedMonster

Listen to the crowd when he taunts Kane BlueRiver. Listen to the crowd when he screams “THIS IS MY GAME!” Listen to the crowd every time he antagonizes Kane BlueRiver. He’s making the audience gain so much energy, making them get hyped up for this match, for the chance to see Kane BlueRiver destroy FChamp after being taunted. On top of making the crowd so invested in the game, his antics add flare to an otherwise regular exhibition match, which makes the event as a whole a much more entertaining show. This is the kind of impact a really good villain can give a competitive scene.

And it’s not just traditional fighting games where this happens either. Without a doubt the most notorious villain in the FGC is the incredibly talented Super Smash Bros. Melee player, Leffen. As much as FChamp has in his showboating game, and how much he taunts people while playing, there is nobody in the FGC who can compete with the sheer amount of trash talk that Leffen spits out.

Video courtesy of Youtube user Levoki

Leffen is a fantastic player, knows it, and isn’t afraid to say that he is. He generates hype in a different way than FChamp does. When FChamp does it, while he does trash talk outside of games, he does it in the moment more than prior to or after a match. Leffen will seemingly talk smack about anyone when given the opportunity. The sheer amount of trash talk Leffen speaks makes him a top contender for the “I really want to punch this dude in the mouth” contest. This whole situation between Leffen and Chillindude was started over Leffen trash talking him on Twitter, which Then ended up being a huge event at Apex 2015, where Leffen won. Leffen’s victory caused two reactions with the crowd: them freaking out because they liked Leffen, and he won, or people freaking out because they hate Leffen, and they’re mad he won. Either way, due to Leffen’s disrespect, he was able to make the huge crowd get involved in the match, and be the cause of what is probably one of the most well-known matches in Melee.

Without these villains to put into the mix, all we would have in the FGC are a bunch of really good players who all just kinda show up and play. The conflict and drama these people add to the formula provides a great show for the audience. Being a villain that is capable of generating so much energy within both the audience and community is a talent in and of itself. It takes a lot of devotion to the game and the community to be perfectly fine with being viewed as “that guy” for the sake of the game, and these villains need to be shown a bit more appreciation for what they contribute to this great community of hype.

Street Fighter V: Is It Finished Yet?

May 23, 2016 dan

Ever since its release, Street Fighter V has been under fire for being an incomplete game, and who can blame anyone for thinking like this? Upon release, people who put that game into their system were greeted with barely anything to do offline. With no arcade mode, no challenge mode, a yet-to-be-added in-game shop for unlockables, and a horrible online experience for the first week of release, anyone who bought Street Fighter V in its February release had essentially purchased a $60 training mode with bad online.

What a lot of people seem to forget, though, was that a lot of the game’s major parts were to be added in March. So, now that the huge March update has happened, is the newest addition to Capcom’s fighting game giant actually worth a buy? Let’s find out.

Gameplay

Fighting games are notorious for alienating the more casual scene due to their high execution requirements, requiring a small frame of time to mix moves together into combos. Capcom noticed this trouble with the casual scene, and has increased the window for combos in this game, making the creation of effective combos much easier to do. Most bread n’ butter (BnB; basic, effective combos) combos in Street Fighter IV only had a window of 2 to 3 frames where you could input the next move before you drop the combo. In Street Fighter V, that number seems to be closer to 4 to 5 frames. On top of this, the casual audience can also rest easy knowing that even if they don’t have combos, they can still get by on the regular moves, because the damage on all attacks in Street Fighter V is huge. A few random attacks can do some serious damage if they land. The best part about these two simple changes is that even though it is more welcoming to the casual player, it also brings the competitive scene for the game closer to its roots. By making execution overall easier, in combination with the high damage from normal and special moves, it shifts the focus of the game away from having a player that has both high execution and a good neutral game, to a player that really only needs a good neutral game.

For those unacquainted with fighting games, the neutral game is the point in a match where neither player is at a clear advantage or disadvantage on screen, and both are trying to get in on each other. This point in the game relies heavily on mindgames and prediction, as opposed to execution. Lots of limb-flailing going on here to keep opponents out or to try to get in on them. Punishing mistakes, applying pressure, everything to do with fighting games outside of execution happens in the neutral game. It’s the core of fighting game fundamentals. This change to almost exclusive focus on the neutral game is a smart choice. By having the gameplay focus more on fighting game fundamentals, it helps to develop the player into someone who is better overall at the game than creating a person with a flowchart of “that one combo they found” or keeping to one singular strategy. It encourages the player to learn, because they know that all they have to know to get by is their opponent, rather than any complicated combo list, while at the same time rewarding the player for knowing those combos.

Mobility in Street Fighter V feels incredible. Everyone has the perfect amount of weight to them and maneuvering around the screen feels incredibly natural. Street Fighter V is by far the best-feeling game in the franchise, even better than fan favorite Street Fighter 3: Third Strike. That said, mobility in a fighting game isn’t really something that can be graded, as how a fighting game feels to the player is almost entirely subjective. So while I feel that Street Fighter V feels the best, this is the part that will vary the most from person to person.

Zangief Spinning Pile Driver Street Fighter V

Image courtesy of GiantBomb user DryvBy

Now moving on to the actual mechanics themselves, Street Fighter V seems to have taken the series back to basics in terms of, well, everything. No more Focus Attacks, no more supers, no more Ultra Meter. In its place, we have Critical Art (CA) Meter, and the V-Gauge. The CA Meter is used for only two things: EX attacks, and a Critical Arts. EX attacks are powered up versions of each characters’ special moves that take one bar of your meter to perform, and Critical Arts are what’s replacing both Supers and Ultras in this game. Critical Arts are powerful moves you can do once you fill up your meter. Performing them takes all the meter you have, but if landed, they can be game-changing. You can charge your CA Meter by doing pretty much anything. Attacking, blocking, getting hurt – anything.

The V-Gauge is also only used for two things: V-Reversals, and V-Triggers. V-Reversals are exactly what they say: reversals. If your opponent is applying pressure, you can spend half of your V-Gauge to push them away from you. V-Triggers are special skills you can perform when your V-Gauge fills up. These skills vary from being something simple like an increase in overall damage for a short period of time, to a special attack that can put you at a serious advantage. Because of the higher utility the V-Gauge offers, it is harder to build up than the CA Meter. You can either build up your V-Gauge by getting hurt or using your V-Skill, a special move that varies from character to character.

That’s it for actual mechanics, though. The minimal mechanics help highlight the neutral game, giving the players just enough tools to deal damage and get in, without it being so full of mechanics you get lost in the sheer amount of options you have. With less overall options, it’s easier to learn your opponents and develop strategies for their specific style of play. It sacrifices complexity for the sake of a more involved mental game, and it works wonderfully.

One last thing I’m going to mention is that the roster is incredibly balanced. Every character has high points and low points that make them each good in their own way, where even the lowest tier characters can still make top 8 in tournaments.

Street Fighter V is by far my favorite Street Fighter game in terms of how it plays and feels.

Looks/Sound

Aesthetically speaking, Street Fighter V looks fairly lacking when compared to other fighting games, such as Mortal Kombat X or Guilty Gear Xrd. Not to say it looks bad, just that it could be better. The quality of the character models is very good, and the environments are bright and full of color. The biggest issue here, though, is that the environments don’t feel like they’re a part of the game like in previous entries. This has to do with the fact that, while the playable characters are animated at a full 60 fps, the backgrounds are only animated at 30 fps. Meaning the images in the back are going to look really off-putting while playing. The stages themselves look good, but when playing through them, I can’t help but feel detached because of this weird, unnecessary difference in frame rate.

Now, onto my biggest complaint about the visuals in this game: the color of the stages. You have all of these beautiful looking stages, with all of these colors that could be used really well to make them even prettier, and this just doesn’t happen because of one huge reason:

HARDLY ANY OF THE STAGES ARE WHITE BALANCED WELL

Image Courtesy of EventHubs’ Jonathan ‘Catalyst’ Grey

Seriously, it may seem like a small thing to some, but god damn is it horribly obvious in this game. The colors in the majority of the stages all have this really ugly blue tint to them from lack of white balancing, as shown above. And when it’s not an ugly blue tint, it’s an ugly orange tint. All of those great colors could have been brought out so much better if they just white balanced the stages.

Now onto the sound, and I’ve gotta’ say, Capcom nailed it with the OST here. You’ve got a bit of everything, from the hype-building Rashid’s theme, Ryu’s orchestral theme, Ken’s awesome hard rock, and F.A.N.G.’s… Dubstep elevator music? Yeah I guess that’s how you’d describe it. But it’s great, I swear! Point is, this OST is awesome, and huge props to Capcom for making one of the best fighting game OSTs of all time.

Story

lol

Content

Ah, here it is. This is where all the backlash is coming from. Does Street Fighter V have enough content to warrant its price? It certainly didn’t at its release. But now that the promised March update has happened, adding in a lot of the content that was lacking in the initial release, is it finally worth a buy?

Well, let’s add it all together, shall we? The amount of content in this game is as follows: Survival Mode, Training Mode, unlockables through the in-game shop, Challenge Mode, ranked and casual online matches, quick stories for each character, access to the Capcom Fighters Network, and yes, the online is now actually stable and working pretty alright now. If you want to count it, we’re also getting a cinematic story mode some time next month.

Survival mode is the closest thing this game has to an arcade mode, and it’s not as good as one. You go through a lot of stages, each increasing in number with difficulty, and try to beat the boss at the end. To stay in the best shape you can, you can exchange points you earn for winning fights for buffs in HP, attack, defense, etc. It would be so much cooler if it weren’t for the horrible AI. It’s pathetic for the first half of survival, and then is absolutely brutal in the second half, so getting through the whole thing, even after a little bit of practice, is still horribly tedious. That said, I still enjoy the occasional survival mode, and don’t really see why people hate it aside from unlocking colors. As a mode on its own, I feel like it’s perfectly fine. The AI may be jank, but going through it once you learn the game is kinda fun. You just have to get over that difficulty spike if you’re playing on anything higher than easy.

The stories take 5 minutes per character, are pathetically easy, horribly written, and have ugly art, though sometimes comically bad. And some stories are kind of entertaining. And by some, I mean just Zangief’s.

Doesn’t stop the art from being ass, though.

Challenge mode is the standard fighting game challenge mode, where you’re presented with 10 combos for each character that you have to pull off. You get nothing out of this aside from something to do and some help on your execution, which isn’t a bad thing. Especially since this is the first challenge mode I’ve seen where the combos in it are actually practical. A couple of the combos I came up with for Nash actually were in challenge mode. It was soul-crushing.

The Capcom Fighting Network is irrelevant if you don’t play competitively, but if you do, it’s a place for you to keep track of the top players and watch replays of pretty much any match that happened online. It’s a great way to learn more about the game.

There is plenty of content, but half of it won’t be revisited after the first play through.

Conclusion: Should You Buy Street Fighter V?

Okay, here it is, the big moment. After everything that’s happened with Street Fighter V, is it finally worth a buy after the update? Well, a used copy of Street Fighter V at Gamestop goes for about $45, and that’s the perfect price. I want to use that to prove something: Even after this huge update, with the extra characters, modes, unlockables, and everything, Street Fighter V still does not have enough content to warrant a $60 price tag. Even now that it’s price has been lowered to $50 for a new copy, that’s not going to be worth it until June, maybe. If the story mode isn’t 5 minutes like what we have now. I bought my copy for $60 on release, and I love it. It’s one of my favorite fighting games, and I feel like my money was well spent for the time I’ve put into it. But I can’t honestly recommend getting this game to anyone for anything higher than $45. I wouldn’t buy a game that was online-only for any more than $30, and with the content Street Fighter V has, it just pushes it up to $45 as a good price. It plays wonderfully, looks good, and sounds great. From the perspective of gameplay, Street Fighter V is absolutely fantastic, and if you want to play it, you should buy it for whatever price you want. But if you’re looking for content, this game just won’t deliver for full price. Get it used.