Street Fighter 5: Casuals Matter Too
23 Feb 2016
Let’s start right off the bat by saying that Street Fighter 5 is probably going to be a hard sell. Even though it might be a hard sell I haven’t been able to put the game down. Most of the time I would normally be playing Heroes of the Storm has been replaced with bodying and getting bodied. The game is fun, the controls are tight, the netcode is fantastic, everything that should make a good fighting game is there. So then why is this game going to be a hard sell? More importantly if someone has any good tech for Laura please contact me.
Let’s start off with the giant Russian Bear in the room; The single player is not good. If you are looking to pick this game up to fight some NPC’s and get a story hold off on buying the game. This isn’t to say that the story mode is bad. In fact in my opinion the story has better writing than most Street Fighter games. The problem is that story mode will take about an hour to two hours to beat. There is no arcade mode but rather a survival mode where you fight a single round against enemies that slowly become more powerful. This also feeds into the second Russian Bear of that the game is not a fun casual experience. The game does no hand holding except for a tutorial in the beginning that says here is V-Trigger, EX - moves, ….. and that’s it. It teaches you no tech, no tutorial on how to play a specific character, no help whatsoever. Your best bet is to get into training mode and start discovering your own tech. This is the equivalent of throwing a small Japanese school girl into the wring with a sumo wrestler. It will lead to anger, frustration, someone getting their ass kicked, and some form of snuff film.
This might seem like a turn off and that the game isn’t possibly that good. Do not be mistaken, this is easily one of the best Street Fighters that I have played. In terms of gameplay I would rank it next to Street Fighter 3: Third Strike. Third Strike is one of my favorite fighting games of all time, and one of my favorite games of all time. In this game they have removed the ultras in favor of V-trigger which is a better comeback mechanic that allows it to be used offensively or defensively. It is a mechanic similar to Killer Instinct’s instinct mechanic. The other mechanic that they introduced that makes the game so good it the removal of focus attacks. To be competitive in Street Fighter 4 you had to learn how to cancel focus attacks and use them to your advantage. This created a barrier to entry that stumped some of your average fighting game players. This game instead focuses on footsies, mind games, and the underlying mechanics of being good at a fighting game. The netcode for this game is extremely good and does its best at making games playable on bad connections. It doesn’t fix bad connections but it makes them playable.
So with the gameplay and game mechanics out of the way, lets talk technical aspects. More Russian bears to talk about, are you playing on PC? Well thats cool, the game runs fine and even has a low spec mode for lower end machines. You know whats not cool, lava, you know whats not cool non re-bindable keyboard controls as well as no support for Dinput controls. The no keyboard re-bindability is inexcusable even though it is beside me why you would play on a keyboard instead of a controller is beyond me. What is Dinput and why is it a big deal? Well the Dinput controls are used by PS3 and PS4 controllers. You know the console other than PC the game is launched on, ill give you a hint it’s not the xbox one. Yah thats right the PC version does not have support for the only other console that is released on. As of the time this review is up Capcom has addressed this issue and will be working on a fix for both of these problems. Enough about things that want to make me pull out my hair lets talk about the positive. Cross play works amazingly and increases the community overall, no longer are the days that the fighting game community suffers with split up online communities. Another awesome move from Capcom is making all future DLC characters and costumes being able to be bought with in game currency or real life money. It also seems that the characters wont be that much of a grind fest as with the first week of the game being released I have enough to buy the next three DLC characters.
Overall if you are a casual player then hold off on buying this game. Challenge mode will be released in March, and the full story mode will be out in March or June. While the barrier to entry is fairly low it is hindered by a lack of character tutorials, and single player modes. If you like fighting games and are willing to play online then there is no reason why you should not pick up Street Fighter 5.
Buy Street Fighter 5 on Steam.