Street Fighter V review: The game has evolved
BY COLE WATSON
Enter the arena, train as hard as you can and rise the ranks to become the strongest world warrior in Street Fighter V.
It has been eight long years since Capcom’s iconic fighting game franchise received a new entry and the wait was well worth it for fans.
The battles remain intense, the combos are flashy as ever and the damage is massive.
THE GAMEPLAY
Street Fighter is a 2-D fighting game with one simple objective, beat your opponent into the corner and knock them out to win.
Every match feels like a game of chess where you’re trying to read your opponents moves and come up with a strategy to beat them.
The 16-character cast is diverse, made up of 12 returning characters across all entries in the series and four completely new ones for fans to adore.
The gameplay and design for each returning character, such as Nash and Bison, has been updated to make them feel fresh for veteran players.
The largest change to the Street Fighter formula is the addition of V-Skills and V-Triggers. These new mechanics are special skills unique to each and every character that can change the tide of battle in a flash.
Some examples of V-Skills include the ability to parry incoming attacks, absorb enemy projectiles, mobility enhancements and new ways to damage the opponent.
V-Triggers are a special ability that a player can usually use once a round. They normally are a way to enhance your character’s moves or special attacks to make a comeback attempt when losing a match.
Learning and mastering all these unique abilities is why Street Fighter V feels so in-depth compared to the focus attacks of Street Fighter 4, which was a mechanic that some characters didn’t even want to use.
MORE RELATED TO THIS:
- eSports set to redefine athletics
- Fallout 4: Welcome home vault dwellers
- Black Ops 3: A return to form
MODES
Street Fighter V has launched as a bare-bones product with only two single player modes for casual fans, survival and “story mode.”
Arcade mode is absent, offline battles with CPU controlled characters is gone and the currently locked challenges mode will be coming in a free update in March along with the online store, where you’ll be able to purchase future DLC.
The current story mode in SFV feels lazy, giving players powered up characters and putting them against brain-dead opponents that don’t offer any challenge. Thankfully in June the game will be receiving a free story mode update with rendered cutscenes instead of still artwork and hopefully an adjustable difficulty setting.
Players are left with the choice to battle others online in a ranked league or casually over PSN and PC.
Street Fighter V has fantastic online options. You can set what platform you want to fight on, how strong you want your opponents connection to be and you can search for fights while you practise your moves in training mode. It may take longer to find a fight because of all the matchmaking settings but this has been the smoothest online gameplay I’ve had on a fighting game to date.
Street Fighter V’s ranked league mode is where the competition is the fiercest. The more matches the player wins the higher their rank becomes.
This is Capcom’s attempt at pitting players against one another that are about the same range in skill.
Expect to lose a lot at the beginning but every match is a learning experience for you to learn how to maximize damage and punish an opponent’s mistakes.
Street Fighter V’s title card. (Screenshot by Cole Watson/The Sheridan Sun)
OVERALL THOUGHTS
SFV is one of the most addicting fighting games I’ve ever played, despite a lack of single player content and some wonky server issues at launch I am pouring time into the game and watching live streams to learn to become a better player.
Capcom has designed SFV to be a platform that they intend to support for years to come in the hopes that it can reach new players and develop an eSports following.
Street Fighter V is recommended to any current fighting game player. Casual fans are advised to wait for the game to be updated at a later date if they are looking for more content.
