| Street Fighter: Anniversary Collection review |
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As far as competitive games go, you can’t get more competitive than the fighting genre. Ever since Street Fighter II and the whole concept of one character versus another, mano a mano, the local fish'n'chip shop had many questionable-looking characters hustling to keep the longest winning streak on the grubby half-battered arcade cabinet. However, with the relative death of the arcade scene in this country, most fighting games have had little-to-no impact in the home. Part of the reason of this is obviously the lack of real challenges, which were readily available in the arcades. VF 4 Evo bravely tried something new, by throwing the player into a virtual arcade complete with players with vastly differing tactics and movesets, but when all’s said and done no amount of clever AI can substitute for decent human opposition. But now Street Fighter: Anniversary Collection has hit the scene, complete with Xbox Live support, so there’s no need to play simplistic AI any more. You can now compete online against the best in the world and, simply put, SF: AC features the smoothest Live play of any title out there.
Firstly, SF: AC features Hyper Street Fighter II (a mish-mash of characters from every single SF II game) and the relatively new Street Fighter III: Third Strike. However (to its detriment) the original Japanese PS2 Anniversary Collection only featured Hyper Street Fighter II - in this Xbox incarnation the main chunk of your time will be spent in Street Fighter III. It’s the most brilliantly designed 2D fighter ever made, with an incredibly delicate level of balance.
Capcom have become a byword for repetition in their Street Fighter (making them something of an insider joke), with each iteration adding little to the overall package. The ‘Zero’ games may have added Isms and Super Arts, but SF III is where the innovation lies. The parry attack is the single biggest revolution in the 2D fighting series. Tapping towards for high attacks, or down for low attacks (at the instant when the attack will connect with you) performs a parry. The incoming blow is averted, but more importantly, the parrying player has a frame advantage over the opponent, allowing them to counterattack. Opponents who use the same attacks repeatedly will fall foul to the parry more often than players who mix up their attacks, making players change their techniques widely. Whilst it sounds simple to perform in theory, timing it in the middle of a battle is incredibly difficult. The Super Arts, as performed by each opponent, particularly, require precise timing to parry, due to them being a flurry of multiple hits.
To become truly excellent at SF III, however, requires an even deeper mastery of the game than this. Super Arts are relatively simple to perform, but a Super Art that has been pulled off against a standing opponent will seldom connect successfully. The player has to be more cunning than this, and this cunning begins with the choices made at the character select screen. Whilst choosing a character, you also choose the Super Art from a choice of three. Initial choice is mainly down to preference, but the most important thing about a Super Art is to make sure it connects effectively, and is in harmony with your playing style. So by choosing Makoto’s Super Art II, a jumping-kick-into-combo, you can coax a Ken player to throw a fireball at you, then jump into the Super Art and connect before Ken's fireball animation has finished. Thankyou and goodnight - free Super Art. This has a downside though, a player knows which super art is coming, and if they are proficient enough, will be able to parry and counterattack. Buffering standard moves into Super Arts is also a more advanced technique. You can perform standard moves then instantly execute a Super Art to carry on the punishment. These can then be linked with standard combinations to completely destroy an opponent. To master these techniques even further; to buffer up moves quicker than you’d expect; you can take advantage of techniques such as Negative Edge (whereby you pull off two moves with a single button press: first move on pressing the button down, second move on release of the button, invaluable in the use of cancelling into Super Arts), and the strumming of various keys at the same time to maximise your chance of timing the move correctly. However, there’s far more depth than this, extending into the kara-throws, kara-cancelling, and some absolutely devastating combos which can potentially wipe out most of a health bar, but require the patience of a saint and the timing of a robot.
Given that the game is Live-enabled, and that the techniques described above require incredibly precise timing, Capcom have succeeded completely in moving the game online. Most bouts are completely lag-free, with very little response delay, certainly not enough to impinge on the precise parrying techniques or super-art buffering.
In short, it’s perfect - they couldn’t have made the in-game online experience any better. SF III online is now the 2D equivalent of VF 4 Evo's Quest mode, with thousands of players to play against. The experience isn’t completely without its flaws though. Occasionally the game displays the horrific “black screen of death” after a match, and the line-dropping faults from Capcom vs SNK 2 are still apparent. Fortunately, the game is generally slower paced than CvsSNK 2, so the incredibly small amount of lag matters even less, and with two players and excellent connections, there is no lag at all. A fear of an online-enabled Street Fighter game might be that a player must relearn timings of moves and parries to compensate for the lag, but this isn't the case.
The ranking system, however, rewards players for gaining lots of points, rather than by their win/loss ratio. This promotes players that are able to play all day, every day rather than quality players, but by playing a player of similar ranking to yourself you are guaranteed a close match in terms of ability. Only if you are contending the top spots does this become an issue.
SF III also rewards learning multiple characters. Some players complain that there are a few characters who can completely obliterate everyone else; however, it’s not the case. Some are simply better suited to fighting against others. Play as Gouki or Ibuki against Remy, and you can see how zipping either side of them can stop them from charging any moves up, rendering them all but useless. A good player will master more than one character, and learn exactly when to use them. This approach is completely at odds to VF 4, where a player is rewarded for learning a single character in depth, but SF III ends up giving the end user far more variety in their game.
SF: AC also features Hyper Street Fighter II online; however, the game mechanics in this title are ever-so-slightly broken - players will be bombarded by World Warrior Guile players, and subsequently get completely destroyed by his invincible four-hit stuncombo. If anything, the inclusion of Hyper Street Fighter II only proves how far SF III evolved the series.
SF III was released in mid-2000 on the Dreamcast, and it’s still played consistently in tournaments. The fact that it’s now online will make many more players jump into the fray, and the online scene shows no signs of stopping. It’s the kind of game that will still be played online to the end of Xbox Live’s lifetime, and there’s never been a better fighter to learn. So what if you may be four years too late? There will always be players of your calibre online.
A game whose essence is defined by the two player mode is now made essential by the perennially available multiplayer options. Join the revolution - this is what online gaming was made for. |
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System: Microsoft Xbox
Genre: Fighter
Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
Players: 1-2
Version: European
Writer: Tom Salter
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Pros:
- Great online community
- Chance to learn by playing the best
- Simply the best 2D fighter from Capcom ever created
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Cons:
- Dropping players still makes your win/lose ratio look worse than it really is
- Ranking system slightly flawed
- Hyper Street Fighter II imbalanced
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