In Third Person

Yesterday, Capcom lifted its embargo on the media coverage done for Captivate 2011, which is Capcom’s big press event used to promote its upcoming games. To be honest, I didn’t really care for anything Capcom presented. Sure, Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition news is nice, but nothing at that event got me genuinely excited for Capcom’s lineup. Well, almost nothing.

When  Street Fighter X Tekken was first shown last year, it didn’t appear to stray very far from the Street Fighter IV formula. Months later, the latest gameplay trailer (featured below) demonstrates that Street Fighter X Tekken won’t be just Street Fighter IV with Tekken people.

What wowed me the most in this video was the emphasis on the 2-on-2 tag element. Sure, it’s not going to be as frenetic as Marvel vs. Capcom 3, and tagging is limited by the amount of super bar you have, but I loved watching the various ways tagging could be used to your advantage. From what I saw, my head is spinning from all of the potentially cool possibilities that tagging can lead to.

The other part I was impressed with was the combo system. I love the Street Fighter IV engine for what it is, but Marvel vs. Capcom 3 has me open to playing more games with big combos. From what I saw of the video, there’s more of an emphasis on juggling, which is generally more of a Tekken thing.

Speaking of Tekken, it appears to me that they’ve translated pretty well so far into the Street Fighter IV engine. It looks like many of them have dash moves that let the maneuver around fireballs, just like in regular Tekken. It also seems like their fighting techniques and play-styles are for the most part, intact. I’ve read that die-hard Tekken players can actually play the game using four buttons instead of the Street Fighter standard six buttons and still be able to play the game a lot like they did with Tekken.

From the Street Fighter side, they’ve revealed Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li, Guile and Abel. The first four are dead obvious, while Abel is an interesting choice, at least from a popularity perspective. I don’t see him having the buzz as most of the Street Fighter main-stays, but I think his grapple style will work well in this game.

As for the Tekken characters, they revealed Kazuya, Nina, King, Bob and Marduk. I don’t know much of anything about Tekken, so I won’t bother trying to make things up to sound smart. I just hope they pick all the characters that the Tekken fans would want.

My interest in this game his piqued thanks to this recent coverage of the game. 2012 can’t come soon enough!