Dubai: The highly anticipated Street Fighter V (SFV) delivers a superb old-school fighting experience, with smooth gameplay and a few new tricks up its sleeve.
But it doesn’t deliver content — not enough of it, anyway.
A number of classic characters, including Guile, have been reserved for downloadable content to be delivered later in the year, as has the game’s story mode. Some classic characters, including producer Yoshinori Ono’s favourite Blanka, haven’t yet been listed for release.
With the absence of an arcade mode, this makes the game a poor solo experience. You’re limited to playable back stories for each of the 16 characters that are included, but each one is a mere four fights long, and they aren’t especially challenging ones, either.
The fun of Street Figher, however, has never been in playing the computer, but in playing live opponents. SFV offers two multiplayer modes — offline, against a friend with a second controller, and online.
Many players reported server issues with the online mode on release. Capcom say these are now fixed, and certainly I’ve experienced no issues recently.
The major difference from Street Fighter IV is the replacement of SFIV’s blast meter with the new V-system, a trio of special abilities (V-skill, V-reversal and V-trigger) distinct for each character. The V-skill is a cool move that charges your V-meter and, if used right, gives a tactical advantage in a fight. The V-reversal is a counter punch. The V-trigger, which drains your meter completely, unleashes a special ability — Chun-Li makes a series of very rapid attacks, Ken gets extended combos and so on.
Real changes
Each of the classic characters has been redesigned, some subtle (Cammy, for instance, seems to be a bit more muscled, and no longer wears cammo paint on her legs), some a little more radical — the formerly bald Dhalsim now sports a big grey beard and a turban.
But the real changes are under the hood. Gameplay has been smoothed out, and characters tweaked and rebalanced. Gone are the little glitches that make certain characters dominate others; you can get a decent fight out of any combination.
This is without doubt the sweetest-playing Street Fighter I’ve experienced (and my experience goes back to shoving 10-pence pieces into original Street Fighter arcade machines in the 1980s).
The tweaking is so good that I’m finding it heaps of fun playing formerly dull characters like Ken and Ryu. And the fast characters I favour, such as Cammy, are even better.
New characters, including flamboyant Shadaloo agent FANG and the amiable, gadget-obsessed Arab, Rashid, are well thought out and also fun to play.
This makes Street Fighter V rather hard to rate. What content is present is absolutely top notch. I’d go as far as to say it’s the best Street Fighter game yet.
But there’s so much content missing, reserved for DLC, that the game feels too thin. It’s like having a delicious starter, but no main course.
Rating 8/10
Character selection: Ken, Ryu, Chun-Li, Zangief, Dhalsim, M. Bison, Vega, Cammy, Nash, Birdie, R. Mika, Karin, Necalli, Rashid, Laura and FANG.
DLC characters announced: Alex, Guile, Balrog, Ibuki, Juri and Urien
