Street fighter 2 was a game that  I stared at when I was 8, watching older guys virtually beat the crap out of each other on arcade machines. To this day I still can’t pull it off at the arcades.

Tekken was the first game that I managed to finish, at an internet cafe in early 1997 – it was a fantastic game. The 3D landscapes, the graphics and the modelling were fantastic – so fantastic in fact that they defined the fighting genre’s battle ring for the next 10 years.

Fast forward 12 years and the Street Fighter franchise is properly reborn with the arrival of Street Fighter IV, and 2D fighters once again reign supreme as the ultimate way to virtually beat the crap out of each other.

Enter 2012 and Capcom and Namco decide to play nice and the fruit of this friendship is one of the most compelling fighting games you will ever play.

FIGHT!

You start off with a rather ostentatious intro video which features all of the characters from both franchises. From there you enter the main menu where you are met by eight options, starting with three fighting modes, namely:

Arcade: This is a two-character tag-team mode, and the main story mode where you fight to get to Antartica and find out the secrets of a comet that has crashed to Earth carrying Pandora’s box. This mode can be fought against the CPU, with a gaming couch-mate, or against online challengers. At the end of each of these ladder-like fights you are rewarded with a short end story for the first character chosen.

Versus: A traditional offline VS mode where you can play with 1 – 4 players or against the CPU. You choose your fighters and location, and can customize the time limit, handicap on each fighter’s health, and whether to enable scramble mode which allows all 4 fighters to be onscreen duking it out simultaneously.

Network: – This mode has three sub-options.

• Online battle: An online space with a number different battle modes which I will delve into later.
• Replay Channel: Access to your own replays and those of other players including the highest ranked players around the globe so that you can size up how you would fight against the rest of the world. Whilst watching a replay you can also access the players attack data, input display and player marker, so you can see which buttons a player is pressing, how much damage they’re doling out, and track the combo’s that they are unleashing on their victims. This all loads up pretty quickly which I found rather impressive.
• Rankings: View the rankings of the top players in the world, sorted by friends, the players you are following, or the top global players. Rankings can also be divided into regions, but in the Street Fighter X Tekken universe Africa doesn’t exist, with the world divided into 4 continents, Asia, Europe, North America and All –  who knew?

TRAIN!

The next two menu items revolve around training:

Training: A mode where you can test your moves. This can be played by two players.

Challenge: A single player mode which facilitates the honing of skills through one of three options.

• Trial: This is where you choose a fighter and learn to master all of their abilities by completing 20 trial events. In each you are taught in a rather frustrating way on how to complete certain moves. The frustrating bit is that there is no example of how to do it – the buttons are just displayed and you must wing it. I did find that the more I played the easier the combo’s became, so I am led to assume that either I am exceptionally slow or the game has a rather steep learning curve.
• Mission: A mode comprising of 20 missions which challenge you to certain tasks such as beating an opponent without using special moves.
• Tutorial: A guide through the basics of the game with a nice wordy tutorial divided into 20 categories.

FIDDLE!

The last three menus are:

Customise: Add a personal touch to your character’s colour, setup quick combos which allow you unleash a burst attack by pressing two buttons, and edit your battle profile which is your avatar in-game. This gives the player a cheesy slogan to be attached to their character – case in point, mine is “Cream of the crop need only apply”.

Options: Pretty self explanatory, although one cool setting was the ability to move the gauges around which I thought was a nice touch – thanks Capcom/Namco.

Store: Again, self explanatory. Here you gain access to the Street Fighter X Tekken PlayStation Store Portal so that you can purchase DLC such as additional characters and costume packs.

The Core

The game has 43 characters 20 from Tekken , 19 from Street fighter , Pac-Man , Mega Man , Kuro and Toro who are apparently the two Sony cats. I have to state in shock and horror that Blanka is only available in the Vita Version which was a major disappointment.

There are 9 levels to fight on, all incredibly detailed. They range from a Jurassic Park themed dinosaur research facility which two T-Rex’s beating each other up in the background, through to a giant hovercraft travelling through Antarctica which is being chased by a Pandora’s light possessed oversized wooly Mammoth. The fighters movements are very well animated and when a special move is performed some of them are rather cinematic and very imaginative.

Multiplayer

I’ve had this game for over two weeks and I have not once managed to fight someone in ZAR. My review was delayed because of a Telkom fault and I wanted to give the online play the benifit of the doubt, sadly it would appear that the game was only sold in Korea and North America because you can only ever fight against a Korean or an American.

This is extremely frustrating as lag quickly kicks in and frustration reigns supreme as thoughts of rage quitting constantly flood your mind. The lag is unbearable when playing internationally; maybe if you have a 10Mbps unshaped line you might have some luck.

Playing with mates locally is a completely different beast – this is where this title shines and there is nothing more satisfactory than watching your closest friends get digitally beaten to the ground and earning bragging rights!

Sounds right too

The game’s sound effects are fantastic, from the hit noises to mindless ramblings of the characters. The music is a upbeat dubstep infused ball of energy from start to finish. I did not once think that a voice or song didn’t suit the what was on screen.

Conclusion

This game is a must have for any fan of the arcade beat ’em up genre, the Tekken franchise as well as the Street Fighter Franchise. Its very nice to look at, the scalable difficulty adds real depth to the title, and it is best played with your mates. It’s just a pity that only the PS Vita crew get to play as Jack and Blanka.

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