upholstery lankiness: Review: Street Fighter X Tekken (360/PS3)

The Dream Crossover

Street Fighter X Tekken will grab you from the second you load up the game; even skipping the intro sequence is something you will really regret. It serves to tell you that this is the game your younger self always dreamed of, the two giants of the fighting genre going hand-to-hand.

Street Fighter X Tekken (if you didn?t already know) is a game that incorporates the Street Fighter graphical and gaming style, with 3D cell-shaded models in 2D arenas, retaining Capcom?s beautiful and unique aesthetic. Yet, Capcom hasn?t just made the same game as Street Fighter IV and added the Tekken roster. Instead, the developer has chosen to throw in some controversial new features (and reinvent some old ones), all of which are explained in the tutorial (something even masters of Street Fighter could get use from).

Subtle Reinventions

Gems are the first new addition that you may notice if you have played a Street Fighter game from recent generations. Gems are broken down into two categories: ?Boost? gems, that allow you to fine-tune your fighting style by giving a boost to a stat of your choosing when a certain criterion is met; and ?Assist? gems, that do things like make special and EX moves easy to pull off, or let you auto-evade grabs. Before release, much of the community was up in arms about the inclusion of gems, claiming it gave less-skilled players an advantage that they previously wouldn?t have had. However, this isn?t the case.

Gem set-up is a skill in itself, and allows for pro-players to tune a character to their own fighting style. Also, since the game features tag-team style gameplay that is similar to?Tekken Tag Tournament, it allows you to build a pair of characters that can really deal with any match-up. For example, I opted to have Marshall Law increase his speed after connecting with 4 hits, his defence when 4 of his attacks were blocked, and fortitude when he was hit by 2 specials, whereas for Jin Kazama I focussed on gems for extra attack power. This meant Law could be speedy on the attack, but take punishment when I went defensive, and Jin could finish them off. It felt like I had much more input into the characters than in many other games in the fighting genre, and that was satisfying. The gems are also very well-balanced, and trade-offs are something to consider when you set them up.

Street Fighter X Tekken review The one thing that Capcom has not tried to reinvent is the Tekken characters, and that?s a really good thing. While they (obviously) have a different art style, the roster feels exactly the same. The fighting styles are precisely as they are in the Tekken series, albeit with a simplified move base to match up to the Street Fighter roster. Nothing makes it feel like Capcom has tried to take over at all. On the Street Fighter side, the characters have the same play style as previous iterations, though they feel faster, perhaps to fit in with Tekken?s flowing style. The roster is beefy, containing most favourites, though it bothered me that key figures were absent, like Lei from Tekken and Blanka from Street Fighter, and while the epic intro video alluded to Devil Jin, no further mention of him was made in the game aside from one of Jin?s moves. It?s clear that some of these will appear in DLC character packs, but why we need to pay for new characters when we?ve already bought the game is beyond me. What has certainly made this worse for me is that many of the missing characters are already on the disc, raising more anger against on-disc/day-one DLC.

All By Myself

The game has a lot of replay value in its online ?Battle Points? system, and ranked match-ups help newbies slot in where they need to. My biggest gripe comes with the single-player aspect of the game. Whilst fighting games aren?t known for their stories, Street Fighter X Tekken seems to ignore the story it began with in the intro video, and gives you a?few fairly lifeless arcade rounds centred around the search for an object from space called Pandora. Thus, the single player doesn?t really have much to it. While there is a ?mission? mode, it only really serves to teach you how to play a new character properly, and that is true of the remaining modes. The game seems geared solely to the multiplayer market, which is something we are seeing increasingly with modern fighting games. Even the addition of Tekken?s survival mode would have increased the amount of time you could play Street Fighter X Tekken by yourself.

What I cannot fault is the game?s difficulty. On medium (the default), I seemed to breeze through the game. When I went to flick it to hard difficulty, I realised how many difficulty stages there are in-game. I found ?hard? a fun challenge, Street Fighter X Tekken review but got beaten pretty soundly on anything higher. As a result, veteran players really get the opportunity to test themselves against the AI, while genre newcomers can ease themselves into online play against more skilled opponents by fine-tuning their computer-controlled opposition.

Online multiplayer is smooth and has the perfect matchmaking system for all skill levels. Some players already seem to be using a small number of characters; I noticed Hugo and Zangief popping up a lot, and these seemed to be the opponents that I had the hardest time against, so perhaps there are some imbalance issues, but this doesn?t detach from the quality that Capcom has clearly poured into the multiplayer arm of the game.

The Final Verdict

Street Fighter X Tekken is everything the title promises. The game is fast-paced, stylish and fun. It provides a challenge for any level of player, and includes a well-executed online stage. It bothers me that main characters have been left out so they can be purchased later, especially because most of them are already on the disc, but must be unlocked through their respective online stores. The limited replay value for single player is also a bother, but one that can be overlooked with such a vast online fanbase to fight against. With these minor things aside, this game is the most polished and enjoyable of Capcom?s Street Fighter franchise, and is a top-tier example of why the fighting genre is so entertaining.

BNBGAMING Recommended Award