VideoGame Cinematic Story Mode Review (SPOILERS AHEAD)
(Note: I have not played SFV, so this review is from a purely narrative standpoint.)
Well, the Cinematic Story Mode is finally here. Like many, I was upset with Capcom because of its botched launch of the game, but I was still curious about the story mode. After watching a live stream of it on Youtube last night, I can say that while it is definitely entertaining, it makes quite a few mistakes.
Pros:
- The sheer amount of characters who appear. Just watching all your favorite Street Fighter characters come together to take down Bison once and for all is a sight to behold, and each character gets their share of badass moments (Zangief tanking a samurai blade with just his muscle or R.Mika taking a punch from Balrog), especially Karin, who's basically the Big Good here.
- The graphics for this game are pretty awesome to look at.
- Likewise, the fight scenes are fun to watch.
Cons:
- Bison's death was anticlimactic. A Hadoken to the chest and he dies? Really? Granted, Charlie did weaken him a bit, but still.
- Cammy attacking the police and working with Juri to save Decapre is completely out of character for her. The fact that she never gets called out on it only makes it worse.
- The biggest problem with the story is that They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot and They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character.
- The fact that Abel finally meets Charlie, the person who rescued him, the person he spent all of SFIV looking for, and doesn't even recognize him is so damn stupid. Seriously Capcom, how could you get that wrong?!
- Likewise, there is not enough meaningful interaction between Charlie and Guile despite the fact that avenging Charlie's death had been Guile's motivation since SFII.
- Speaking of characters, the newcomers Laura and Necalli don't get much screentime. Laura shows up, fights Ken, gets recruited by the heroes and is never seen until the finale and even then, it's a brief cameo. Likewise, Necalli has suffered Villain Decay. He only shows up to fight Dhalsim, Bison, and Ryu and loses each fight. And after fighting Ryu, he is never seen again.
- The fact that Abel finally meets Charlie, the person who rescued him, the person he spent all of SFIV looking for, and doesn't even recognize him is so damn stupid. Seriously Capcom, how could you get that wrong?!
Overall, I give it a 6/10. It was a worthy first attempt at an actual story mode, but ultimately fell short of expectations and failed live up to its hype. Hopefully this experience has taught Capcom a few lessons and they improve in future games.
VideoGame Obvious Beta
Hmm, the single player has almost nothing to do except survival mode, but it is ok since new content is coming...which we all had to wait more than a month for. No arcade mode because Capcom rushed this. Oh and the main story mode is coming in June or July. Nice good job Capcom...you washed up hacks
16 characters at the bat, which is less than most fighters.
You can get more characters for free...but i hope you enjoy grinding and grinding some more for it to get to that. But i guess for the folks who spend 10,000 hours on SF 4 and can somehow tell when one measly frame drops, then i guess that is ok, but most people aren't those folks which this game seems to cater exclusively to.
Tell me why any reasonable person should buy this in favor of something much better and with much more love put into it like say Super Smash Bros 4 or Mortal Kombat X?
VideoGame Capcom's contempt for its player base shows again
This game should not have been released prior to June.
It's very Obvious Beta status can be seen from the start menu, which lists features as "coming soon". You can earn DLC characters for free, but only if you're good at winning matches online. If you're not someone who wants to spend several hours per night grinding, you're really not going to be able to unlock them without spending money. Oh, and then there was the DLC outfit for M Bison for people who ordered from Amazon. Which never appeared. As of this writing (March 25th), Amazon customer service still doesn't know anything about it.
Yeah, it's a whole mess.
VideoGame The Next (Rough) Revolution
Review is being updated again...
Online Code: Thankfully fixed as of this writing. Connection is smooth and matches only suffer lag occasionally. Just to note, I'm from the Philippines and I have a 5mpbs connection at best... it still works fine. That should be enough indication.
The fighting: Top notch. SFV blows the competition out of the water with it's energetic fast paced brawls. SFIV's calm, tense matches are replaced with break-neck speed balls-to-the-wall fights that provide just as much tension. My personal favorite change in the system is that chip damage no longer kills an opponent, thus forcing players to earn that last hit. Nerve-wracking stuff.
The V-System contributes greatly to the flow of matches by allowing V-reversals, character-exclusive V-skills, and V-Triggers, which induce property changes for some characters, combo extensions for others, and just help in turning the tide of a match.
The game is easy to play (Thank God for the 3-frame link change), but there is a staggering amount of depth to dive into with the 16 characters. Feel free to experiment with Combos, Neutrals, V-Trigger usage, Baits and Mixups.
Single-Player content: Not much to write home about right now, but with Capcom promising a full story mode in the June update I can only hope it's good.
Music: Need I say more? Compared to SFIV's Techno soundtrack, SFV had blood pumping progressive Metal in its place. Listen to the Main Menu theme and prepare for an eargasm. The individual character's themes all kick ass, seriously just check the Awesome Music page and you can take some time out of your day listening to the tunes, they're awesome.
Unlockables: When was the last time you could unlock extra content by playing the game instead of DLC?
Last notes: Capcom is avoiding the rerelease route and all new versions come in as patches. Sold.
8.9/10: With the online component fixed, the game's only real flaw now is that it lacks single player content... for now.
VideoGame Street Fighter V, a year of strange enjoyment!?!
Yes, the game was an Obvious Beta at the beginning, but seeing the game evolve overtime throughout 2016 made me rethink its quality.
Capcom said this game would be a game as a service and like Killer Instinct, it's actually showing. I've been following this game for the majority of 2016, keeping up with the Fighting Game Community, patches, etc. When September's 1.09 patch came out, this game started to grow on me, and now... I can't stop playing it. I play on my Playstation 4 everyday and pop my disk in. The Fight Money missions give me more drive, while the Vs. CPU mode just gave me ten times more reason to play this game. Now that Season 2 is a thing, I've got more to study about this game.
The story is in my opinion, well done. Aside from Bengus' excellent drawings for the character stories, the general story is very interesting. Being an interquel between numbers 4 and 3, it actually goes very deep into how Shadaloo falls and how each characters relationships with each other are displayed at full.
As a Street Fighter game, it feels like a cross between the mental game of Super Street Fighter II Turbo and offensive play of Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike. It doesn't help that Guilty Gear player Woshige was the battle director. Anyways, if I had to rate the game out of 10 in its current state, I'd give it a 9 out of 10 noting consistent improvement.
DISCLAIMER: I chose to review this game a year later due to the game having more content available now as well as the coming months.