In Third Person

Despite my recent Marvel vs. Capcom 3 binging, the Street Fighter IV series will always have a special place in my heart (and in my wallet). I still enjoy playing the games, and did not hesitate to purchase this version with my new Nintendo 3DS. As much as I love the iPhone version of Street Fighter IV, it’s still just a sampling of the real deal.

From what I’ve heard of the Nintendo 3DS version, this was a much closer representation of the console experience. But does this game hold up for me as a hardcore Street Fighter IV player?

Super Street Fighter IV: 3D Edition tries it’s hardest to emulate the console version. Every character is at your disposal, along with most of their alternate costumes, which console gamers had to pay for separately. If you run down the feature list, it’s pretty close to parity. Most impressively, the 3DS game keeps most of the console’s online features. From strictly a features perspective, that makes this game’s online experience better than Marvel vs. Capcom 3. While it lacks a few modes here and there, it also comes with all-new modes that take advantage of pretty much all of the new 3DS features. The Pokemon-style trophy battling stuff is my favourite addition, though your mileage will vary, as it requires you to activate 3DS StreetPass and walk by someone who has also played the game. If you want that full Street Fighter experience on-the-go and don’t feel that the iPhone game isn’t meaty enough for you, then this is right up your alley.

I know that the screenshots for this game aren’t the greatest. However, I don’t think they do the actual game justice. On the 3DS, this game looks pretty good. The resolution may not be as sharp as the iPhone game, but I think overall it looks better. The 3D effect does make everything look deeper, which is cool. Despite running at 30fps in 3D (with some instances of slowdown) it animates well and doesn’t get in the way of the gameplay.

The big visual addition to the 3DS game is the new and optional 3D perspective that puts the camera almost over your shoulder. I think it looks great and it definitely requires you to remap your brain to play in that mode. It’s a neat add-on to mess around with for a bit and to show off the depth of the 3DS, but you’ll likely spend the majority of your time playing from the standard perspective.

How does it play? All of the gameplay systems and balance of Super Street Fighter IV are intact. Where the variables come into play are the controls. The 3DS control layout is not ideal for fighting games. I was hoping that the experience would be on par with using a Super Nintendo controller, but it’s not.

The buttons behave as they should, but the circle pad and the d-pad trip  me up. This isn’t any fault of the game itself. Ideally, I’d like to use the d-pad. However, it’s located too far down on the system to be comfortable to use. As for the circle pad, it’s great for special moves, but standard movement and blocking can be difficult. The act of double tapping a direction to dash is awkward due to the amount of ‘throw’ you have to input with the circle pad. Even simple things like angled jumps or blocking low can prove difficult, due to the fact that there isn’t really any tactile feedback to tell you when you’re in a diagonal position.

Once I put in some time with it, I was able to overcome many of the quirks and get pretty good with it. I got comfortable enough with it to execute a few more advanced tactics, such as Cammy’s ‘Tiger Knee’ Cannon Strike. I’ll always prefer to play this on a fightstick, but this will do. My coworkers on the other hand, who only play Street Fighter on a regular controller, adjusted to the controls almost immediately and had no complaints.

In order to make the game an easier pick-up-and-play experience for players of all skill levels, Capcom enabled the touch screen to act as four hot keys for moves. You can assign these four inputs as anything from singular button presses to ultra combos. For most players, this is going to make the game much easier to control. It’ll also make it much easier for casual players to get into it.

However, I’m not happy with the side effects that this control scheme brings with it. This mode allows you to do things that wouldn’t be possible in the console versions. For instance, using the lite mode, Guile can do walk forward Sonic Booms or charge-free Flash Kicks. Be prepared to run into a lot of players online using these exploits. You can filter them out, but filtering doesn’t help when almost everyone is taking advantage of the lite controls. I wish they had used the ‘lite mode’ in the iPhone game, which still required you to charge moves even if they were mapped to a special move button.

Speaking of online play, it’s impressive to see that this game supports it. Most of the console modes and features are intact, including the ability to spectate other people’s matches while you’re in their lobby. So far, I haven’t been able to get a good connection going with anyone. Every match has been pretty laggy, which really hurts the experience. If you’re fortunate enough to have someone locally to play with, you’ll find that multiplayer works awesome.

Maybe this review sounds a bit harsher than it should. Qualms aside, I’ve been putting in a lot of time into this version of Super Street Fighter IV, and I really like it. It’s growing on me the more I play it. I love the iPhone version as a quick fix, but I totally take my 3DS with me to play the 3DS version when I know I’ll have extended time to play. Most of my complaints are from a hardcore Street Fighter player perspective, which isn’t going to be the target audience for this game. If you like Street Fighter and are going to buy a 3DS, then this is a no-brainer.

If you’re planning on buying a 3DS, but have never played Street Fighter before, maybe this is the right version for you. The simplified control options do help, and there are enough things to do on your own to make this worth while without having to play online against human opponents. I can’t speak for how this holds up against the rest of the 3DS launch lineup, but on it’s own, this game is pretty good.