Street Fighter x Tekken: Redbox Review

Intro
Street Fighter games I've played:
SFII, SFII CE, SFII SCE, SFII Turbo, Super SFII, SF Alpha, SFA2, SFA3, SFIII, Super SFIV
Tekken games I've played:
1, 2, 3, 4 (briefly), Tag Tournament, 5, Dark Resurrection, 6
I generally prefer the generally projectile-less Tekken style of gameplay, but Ryu and I go back a ways. Two great tastes that taste great together, right? ...kinda.

Highly Lethal Artwork
The visuals and sound are straight from Street Fighter IV, which make this game a sight to behold. The characters and backgrounds have a cell-shaded look that make them appear to be graphic novel panels come to life. Each paired team has custom pre-match animations, which range from spine-tingling aweseome (Ryu & Ken) to just silly (Zangief & Rufus). Throw in victory-screen dialog and cinematic ending videos, and I found myself playing through the Arcade mode for the storylines. There weren't very many backgrounds, but they were quite colorful and animated, with cameos by SF and Tekken characters that didn't make it into the roster. The music is fitting, but none of the songs were particularly memorable.

Getting Up to Speed
For all the SF and Tekken games listed above, I've never devoted myself to truly mastering a character, much less getting competitive with one. Therefore, first stop for me was the Training mode. In an effort to get new players up to speed, Training mode has twenty Trials (read: exercises) per character to make sure you know a character's special moves and some combos. It's wonderful in theory, but the implementation is rather awkward. For each Trial, the sequence of moves is displayed on the screen, but only the names of special moves. If you have not memorized the names, pressing the Back button (for Xbox 360) displays all of the key presses for the entire sequence. It works, but for multiple attempts to learn a combo with a handful of Japanese terms in the directions, the process gets old really quickly. Also, completion of an Trial displays a victory sequence, with animations for both characters on screen. This isn't a problem if you're looking to master an individual combo, but for running through a sequence of familiar fireballs, hurricane kicks, and dragon punches, those extra moments add up. An example of a well-done list of exercises is the Dead or Alive series; their training mode will cycle through on-screen commands as fast as you can execute them. This may be my lack of devotion to a single character/game showing, but I found myself plateauing around exercise 13 or so, even for familiar characters like Ryu. The game will not show you what the combos are supposed to look like, so you're left to trial & error to figure out the tempo of button presses.











Call me a Luddite, but the ever-increasing complexity of systems in fighting games have been a turn-off in the last few years. (How many ways can I use Cross Gauge energy???) Thankfully there's a tutorial for the unique mechanics in this game, but like the Trials, it's awkward. The infamous Dan from SF games makes a cameo as an instructor, complete with narration. At first it's amusing to hear him ramble on and generally act dorky, but you'll find yourself hammering on the Start button pretty quickly to get to the actual instructions.

In the Fight
As much as I dislike multiple systems to keep track of in the heat of battle, it's nice to know that there's multiple ways to switch between characters. This is encouraged because a round is over as soon as one character is knocked out. This also makes it easier to learn a new character, since you can pair them with someone you're already familiar with to provide backup. Another system that affects you within matches is Gems, a concept almost harkening back to Marvel Superheros and one that I'm on the fence about. Each character has two loadouts for trios of gems; you edit loadouts outside of matches, and choose a loadout when you select characters before a match. Gems can be used to augment abilities (deal more damage, move faster) or assist you (reduce damage taken, auto-block), and have conditions for when they're activated, such as after sustaining X number of hits. Customizability is always nice, although there's something to be said for knowing that the only difference between your opponent and you is their characters and player skill. Also, the numbered list of available gems has quite a few holes in it, hinting at unlockables, so there may be balance issues if the most skilled players also have access to more powerful gems as well.

Online Play: No Noobs Allowed
Hopefully this issue will get fixed in time, but as of 3/15/2012, lag is so terrible that online matches are nearly unplayable and often are reduced to slideshows. When you can get a decent connection, you'll get the joy of experiencing a poor matchmaking system. This may be from a small pool of players from which to be paired against, perhaps a flaw in determining a well-matched pair, not promoting skilled players quickly enough, or a combination of any of those, but even when set for the "same" skill level, I was being paired with opponents who were vastly superior to me. They get bored from no challenge, I get frustrated at the utter inevitability of death, no one wins. At this point my only recourse is to play offline until I'm able to pull of a 15-hit juggle combo, and then I can begin to play online.

Something worth noting separately is that although two players can fight cooperatively online, for Xbox 360 it requires both teammates to have their own console and XBL Gold account. (Four players can fight in pairs locally, however.) Allegedly this has something to due with the architecture of XBL, although other games *cough(Halo series, UT3)cough* prove that it is fully possible.

Bells & Whistles
Every developer now seems to think that they need unlockable player titles, and Capcom has implemented this in the same way as SSFIV. As far as additional modes, there is a fairly useless character editor, due to lack of color options beyond defaults+white+black, and Missions, where you're given a unique condition for the match (no special moves, only Supers, etc.).

Conclusions
Street Fighter x Tekken is meant for hardcore fighting fans. Although there are systems in place to attempt to ease newcomers into the game, they are not implemented in a user-friendly way, and the gameplay has so much depth as to be unfathomable for anyone not already used to Capcom 2D fighters.

There is something else, however, that will keep me from ever buying this game unless a Game of the Year edition is released: on-disc DLC. Roughly a third of the content in the game is inaccessible, including 12 full characters, and you must pay to unlock it. I have no problem with DLC (it gives the development team something to work on after the game goes to the DVD factory), but if content is finished by the time the game "goes gold" and it's on the $60 disc, it's a blatant money-grab to intentionally withhold it from your customers. To add insult to injury, Capcom has allegedly had Youtube videos removed that show the "DLC" characters in use. I understand Capcom is a business and businesses exist to make money, but as long as this practice continues I refuse to further financially reward a company that has this little respect for their customers.