What happens when two major fighting franchises clash in a knockdown, drag-out brawl? Street Fighter X Tekken, that’s what.
This being Capcom’s project, Street Fighter IV is closely emulated here, but that’s not a bad thing. The gameplay is solid, the controls are familiar, and the fighting is intense. Fighting fans will have no problem diving right in.
The E3 demo sported 14 characters, seven from each franchise, and I went with my two favorites, Sagat and King. Playing Sagat was just like controlling him in the SFIV series of games, but I found King to be an interesting anomaly. As I assume is the case with all of the Tekken characters, King had a Street Fighter-esque control scheme, which took a LOT of getting used to. I’m not used to inputting Down/DownForward/Forward for King, but here I have to. It’s a little jarring, and Tekken fans may be turned off by it. Hopefully there’s a way to control Tekken characters how we’re used to, though I admit it would be difficult. If you’ve played Street Fighter IV or any of its iterations, then you already know how to play with half the roster. The hard part will be adjusting to the Tekken side of the coin.
The 2-on-2 tag format is more similar to Tekken Tag Tournament, surprisingly, than to Capcom’s other VS series games. There is a designated tag button, as one would expect, but there’s also a combo tag that is done by pressing Weak, then Medium, then Strong in a three-hit combo. If the combo lands, the opponent will be launched, the characters will switch, and the combo can continue. Also, a round ends when only ONE of the team’s fighters loses all health, not both. This is another allusion to Tekken Tag, one that I feel works much better in this situation than the “defeat everyone” idea. It would be much harder to come back down 2-to-1 in this game than in, say, Marvel vs Capcom 3, which gives you X-Factor and Hyper Combos to play with.
Street Fighter X Tekken is shaping up to be another killer fighting game from the house that built the genre. While it’s hard to compare it to other Capcom VS games, it resembles Capcom vs SNK 2 more than it does the Marvel set, both in speed and strategy. Hopefully I get some more hands-on time with it soon, because the E3 demo made the wait that much more agonizing.
