Street Fighter V – The Review

Street Fighter V has launched, and this time around it’s got console exclusivity attached to the PlayStation 4, but should the Xbox One users actually be jealous?

 DAMN IT’S PRETTY

The first thing you’ll notice when you boot up the game is a nicely laid out interface with the [very few] playable modes that are available to you. It’s clean and organized, and you won’t find yourself trying to figure out what’s what.

When it comes to the actual game, the artwork is stunning in terms of the colors and details added to the levels. The characters themselves look fantastic though some of the body parts look like they’re out of proportion… for example, Ryu appears to have has his feet transplanted from a gorilla that was four times his size. Despite these ‘small’ oddities, the visuals continue to impress on an overall scale.

Pulling off power moves using the V-Trigger definitely has some ‘wow’ factor and makes you feel like you’re a powerful SOB.

 BARE BONES

This is the big problem with Street Fighter V. It comes off feeling like an early access title with constant server issues and missing content, even now that it’s officially released. Last week, I couldn’t access certain tiles on the main menu, but I thought “Hey, it’s not out yet so this will just become available next week. No biggie.” Well, just before launch, those tiles updated to say “This will be available as a free update in March.” Why is this not available now? How long was this game in development? Finally, why are we paying full price for an incomplete game?

The primary single player modes include Story Mode and Survival mode, both of which I’ve spent some time with. The alleged story mode isn’t even worth your time; each characters’ story can be completed in under 5 minutes which includes the time to read the captioned art scenes in between rounds. If anything, this mode is an afterthought.

Survival mode seems to have caught most of my interest since I’m primarily a single player gamer and this offers a decent, if not frustrating challenge. The A.I. is definitely flawed to some extent. I can blow through survival rounds 1-10 without any effort on hard difficulty, but then I instantly start getting my butt kicked and ultimately destroyed by round 13. It feels pretty unbalanced as a whole.

EVER BEEN ONLINE IN STREET FIGHTER?

As I previously mentioned, I’ve always been more of a single player game so Street Fighter V isn’t really geared towards me. Its main focus is multiplayer and it doesn’t try to hide this. Versus mode allows for local play only, Survival and Story modes are basic at best – and the rest, including Battle Lounges, casual and ranked play, and the Capcom Fighters Network are all online.

Typically I get destroyed online in Street Fighter games. I don’t have a fight pad, nor am I a regular fighting-game type of guy so my skill level doesn’t really compare to that of a true fan. In this iteration of Street Fighter, players can always do cross-play with PC users which adds to the available pool of players, but I’m still finding it a little slow at times to find a match.

You can actually toggle fight request mode on and off while you’re playing in one of the single player modes, or just sitting idle on the menu. You can actively search for either a casual match, ranked match, or of course, both.

INCOMPLETE ROSTER

There are 16 characters available at launch, with more on the way. The new characters don’t really impress me though, probably because Street Fighter has always been about nostalgia for me personally. Leaving out Guile just feels criminal, and there’s literally no alternate costumes available for free, and the 10 stages in the game already feel overused. It definitely doesn’t feel like a full game, and while we all know a plethora of DLC is on the way, I think the majority of gamers would agree that they deserve a little more for their money.

AT LEAST IT’S STREET FIGHTER…RIGHT?

Street Fighter V, at its core, is a solid fighter with tight controls and balanced move-sets, but it comes packaged with dodgy network issues and a lack of content. It’s far from perfect, but for those of you willing to put the time into it, it’s got a bit of offer. Hopefully the free updates in March, combined with the likely overpriced updates down the road, the game will become more of what we like to call a complete package.

Street Fighter V was reviewed using a PlayStation 4 review code provided by Sony.