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Street Fighter V Review

Street Fighter V Review

The King Is Back

Street Fighter is the most iconic fighting game franchise of all-time. For many of you, your love affair with the world warriors began when you were a kid and, like me, you’ve grown up eagerly looking forward to every new release. That being said, Capcom is undoubtedly aware that Street Fighter V will appeal to an enormously broad spectrum of players. Casual gamers who haven’t played a fighting game in years will be picking this up and looking forward to controlling Ryu much the same as they did back on the Super Nintendo. Alternatively, tournament-hardened veterans will be making the switch from Street Fighter IV and looking forward to digging deep into the new mechanics, learning frames, and discovering all of the trickiest combos and cancels. No matter where you fall on this spectrum, I’m happy to say that Street Fighter V is guaranteed to challenge and excite you.

For newcomers and fans of the classic Street Fighter games, there are a lot of familiar faces and familiar inputs. You’ll feel right at home as soon as you get a controller in your hands, roll the d-pad or joystick forward, and tap a punch button to project a fireball. As amazing as it’s been to see our favorite characters change and evolve, it’s just as wonderful to know that they’re the same in many ways. That’s part of the appeal of Street Fighter V and of Street Fighter generally. Every character has a unique move list that will take time and practice to master, but any of your friends who have played Street Fighter in the past can come over for some versus play and likely hold their own when fighting with an old favorite.

Street Fighter V derives its sense of balance, its accessibility, and its massive potential for depth and variety from the variable system. The focus attacks from Street Fighter IV are gone, and after spending some time experimenting with the variable system, you’ll never look back. By simply pressing the medium punch and medium kick buttons together, players can trigger their character’s V-Skill. Each character has his or her own unique V-Skill, a free-to-use ability, which compliments their offensive or defensive strengths perfectly. Ryu’s V-Skill, for example, will absorb fireballs or other projectiles, charging his V-Gauge. Rashid’s V-Skill is completely offensive and enhances his mobility, either launching him into the air or causing him to quickly roll toward his opponent as a setup for a quick attack.

The introduction of V-Skills shakes up the pacing entirely, encouraging players to fight more aggressively and more strategically. Successfully performing your V-Skills and taking damage will charge up your V-Gauge. With a fully charged V-Gauge, a simple tap of the heavy punch and heavy kick buttons will unleash your character’s V-Trigger, which changes up your offense in a whole new way. Some characters’ V-Triggers are time-based, enhancing mobility and strength for a short amount of time and altering basic attacks, while others’ V-Triggers may initiate a short and powerful combo or fire a powerful projectile. V-Reversals can be executed while blocking, and perform simple counters or evasive maneuvers for when you’re backed into a corner by an aggressive opponent.

Frankly speaking, I think the variable system is perfect. For fighters like myself who like to use 1 to 3 characters perfectly, it opens up all kinds of possibilities for improvisation and creative combos – all while remaining perfectly accessible to the newest of noobs. When taken advantage of in tandem with the more familiar EX Gauge, EX Moves, and Critical Arts, the variable system proves to be more than just a minor addition or iteration for a new game that offers “more of the same.” I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we see the variable system make a return years from now in the next installment, and in the meantime I can’t wait to see what kind of surprises are in store as I experiment with some of the fantastic new characters and relearn my old go-tos.

Now, Street Fighter V isn’t perfect, and as long as I’m speaking frankly I should warn you that there is almost nothing here for anyone who’s looking for an exclusively single-player experience. The story mode is so bare-bones that it’s hardly worth checking except to earn some in-game currency. Each fighter’s “story” consists of 2 to 4 single-round fights with corny, storyboard-style cutscenes in between that sometimes consist of only 2 or 3 illustrations. These provide minimal (and I mean minimal) backstory for each character – and the matches are way too easy. There’s no way to adjust the difficulty, and once you clear these out for the initial currency rewards there’s absolutely no reason to go back.

Besides the pitiful excuse for a story mode, you have your basic training mode and a survival mode. That’s it. There is literally no way to set up standard 3-round matches against a CPU, and the typical training that you’d get from a combo challenge mode is missing. If you want to practice against CPU opponents of varying difficulty, your only option right now is to set up a dummy in training mode. If you want to learn how to combine your moves effectively, your only option right now is to watch how other players are fighting online and try to learn from them. I say “right now” because eventually, some of this content gap will be filled by free updates.

Next month an update will introduce challenge mode, which will consist of trials designed to teach players more advanced combos and techniques. This is the first thing that I looked for when I booted up the game, and it’s a shame that Capcom decided to ship without it. You’ll also notice that if you do play online, you can only open a lobby for two players. Next month’s update will improve the online lobbies, which will support up to 8 players and include a spectator mode. If you don’t want to play online, though, you may want to save your money until June. That’s when Capcom is releasing what it’s calling a “Cinematic Story Expansion:” an actual story mode that focuses on events that occurred between Street Fighter III and Street Fighter IV .

While it’s a shame that we won’t have a complete game until June, it is nice to know that Capcom has decided to structure all of its additional content in such a way that (as long as you’re playing regularly) you won’t have to spend a dime on extra characters or costumes. There will be six new characters released this year, and you can unlock all of them with the currency you earn in-game; no paying for individual DLC packs, and no season pass required. This is such a welcome contrast to how most publishers are handling post-launch content these days, and it almost makes up for the huge lack of content that will likely leave many players wanting until summer.

If you can overlook the temporary content void, I have a good feeling that Street Fighter V will come out on top as the best fighting game of 2016 and the go-to title for tournament play. Expect to see a lot of Street Fighter V on Twitch, on YouTube Gaming, and even on TV as eSports continue to blossom and grow in viewership. It’s gorgeous to watch in action, accessible to newcomers, and offers depths of variety that that the competitive and hardcore will be mining ambitiously for years to come.

RATING OUT OF 5 RATING DESCRIPTION 4.5 Graphics
The world warriors have never looked so good; models are detailed and brilliantly animated, and the stages look great without being distracting. 4.8 Control
Controls are almost perfect, and the variable system offers new challenges for veterans while empowering newcomers to jump right in. 3.8 Music / Sound FX / Voice Acting
Typical fighting game fare. Voice acting is solid overall, the high-octane soundtrack is full of shredding guitars, and blows impact opponents with satisfying pops and smacks. 4.0 Play Value
The variable system bestows so much life and potential upon every single character, and a year from now this will be one of the best fighters of all time. Right now content is lacking. 4.5 Overall Rating – Must Buy
Not an average. See Rating legend below for a final score breakdown.

Review Rating Legend
0.1 – 1.9 = Avoid 2.5 – 2.9 = Average 3.5 – 3.9 = Good 4.5 – 4.9 = Must Buy
2.0 – 2.4 = Poor 3.0 – 3.4 = Fair 4.0 – 4.4 = Great 5.0 = The Best

Game Features:

  • New Strategies and Battle Mechanics: Highly accessible new battle mechanics, which revolve around the V-Gauge and EX Gauge, provide an unprecedented layer of strategy and depth to the franchise that all players can enjoy.
  • Next Gen Visuals: Unreal Engine 4 technology pushes the realism and next-gen visuals to new heights, making this latest entry the best looking and most immersive Street Fighter game of all time.
  • New and Returning Challengers: Birdie, Nash, R. Mika, and Karin all make their long-awaited return to Street Fighter, where they join newcomers Necalli, Rashid, and Laura as well as classic characters like Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li, Cammy, Vega, Zangief, Dhalsim and M. Bison. Even more characters will be added to the diverse roster in the future.
  • PS4 and PC Cross-Platform Play: For the first time in franchise history, the online community will be unified into a single player pool, allowing for even more rivalries to be born.
  • Progressive In-Game Economy: All gameplay related updates, including the new characters, will be available for players to purchase for free by earning Fight Money. Content can also be purchased instantly using real in-game currency, named Zenny. All gameplay updates and balance changes will be made available to all players for free.

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