‘STREET FIGHTER X TEKKEN’ REVIEW: SH*T TALKING EVOLVES

Capcom and Namco join forces and pit their premier beat-em-up characters against each other with Street Fighter X Tekken: a tag team brawler that defies expectations and forges its own distinct personality. As I write this review I find myself in the deepest, darkest recesses of an almighty hangover. For you see: Street Fighter X Tekken is not a game best experienced alone, but rather in the company of your friends. To adequately write this review I had to experience what kind of beer-fueled abuse it spawned; the characteristic cries of bullshit, shenanigans and cheapness. After all, what’s a beat —em-up without the trash-talk?

I am not entirely sure, but I think the game has a story. Something about a magical cube and all the baddies want it? Maybe. Who knows? And who gives a shit, right? Not to knock anybody’s efforts here, but my sole motivation for playing this game is to kick the hell out of the next guy. Whether it be online, or in the company of my closest friends, no further justification is needed. It’s the two biggest fighting franchises of all time cross-bred into a tag-team brawler that combines the most memorable parts of Street Fighter IV and Tekken Tag Tournament. Then, as if it’s trying to spoil us: Street Fighter X Tekken heaps on a whole extra-large portion of its own unique features. Get ready, there’s a fair few.

From Cross Arts, to Boost Combos, to Gems and Pandora Mode: Street Fighter X Tekken’s first assault is a roster of around twelve-or-so distinctive gameplay aspects that sit like a layer of frosting on top of Street Fighter IV’s body. Thankfully, they all come from familiar grounds: anyone who’s played Marvel vs. Capcom 2 will be somewhat familiar with the idea of crossover or team-up attacks and tagging. The major difference here is, as in Tekken Tag, only one of your characters needs to get knocked out for you to lose a round.

The amount of features and unique systems within Street Fighter X Tekken can seem overwhelming at first, so do yourself a favor and take twenty minutes to play the tutorial. The game loses a lot of the arcade immediacy that usually makes Street Fighter so much fun, but it adds depth and personalization to a fighter that is clearly aimed at the home market. Street Fighter X Tekken accommodates the newcomer by making the impossible, possible. It balances this multitude of features so as to never make them seem truly overwhelming and in spite of all that it adds to the genre, this game is the simplest brawler I’ve played in some time.

Gems, perhaps the most distinctive addition, provide an RPG-lite form of team customization. Getting a duo of favored characters is barely the tip of the iceberg as you also choose a combination of up to three Gems that best suits your play style or to combat that of your opponent. The Gems come in two distinct flavors; Boost Gems that can increase strength or speed and Assist Gems that can provide enhanced defenses or even simplify commands. Whether or not you really care about the Gems depends on who, and how, you play. Amongst friends and at a more casual level of competition they are thankfully easy to ignore and never make character selections as time-consuming as many feared. However, it’s obvious that as you start fighting the ‘bigger boys’ you may just have to start paying attention to your load out. In theory, this offers a fortified connection between player and team: reminding me of just how attached I became to my party configuration from Final Fantasy VII.

Unfortunately, as a single player experience it is incredibly lackluster. There is little-to-no impetus to play Arcade Mode, unless you really are somehow gripped by the paper-thin storyline. Any possibility for unlockable content has been siphoned-off for post-release DLC so somewhere down the line you will be asked to put up even more cash should you want to select from more than two colourways for each character. However, what it lacks as a single player game, it makes up for with multiplayer features. Two-on-two tag mode or the four players on one screen insanity that is Rumble Mode should not be missed and are the kind of things that can break lifetime friendships.

Tekken characters bulge and shine as if they’ve been injected with a magical Capcom serum. The gelatinous glitter-goop threatens to burst from every seam as Namco’s characters reveal their true potential, caricatured and sitting comfortably beside Capcom’s roster of near-iconic brawlers. Backdrops are vibrant, animated and brimming with personality. Whether it’s Final Fight’s Mad Gear Gang dancing in Kabuki outfits, or Tekken’s Alex cheering from beneath a lumbering T Rex: they successfully stimulate your nostalgia prostate and will milk the lifelong fan for all they’re worth. Health bars rattle and shudder and every single action has an accompanying, distinctive sound effect. This game just exudes personality and scorches your retinas with an irrepressible technicolor assault.

I’ve always felt that fighting games should be accessible. For too long, the fighting game community has been happy enough complaining when their outrageous standards of ‘balance’ aren’t met and reducing online servers to incestuous love-ins that excel at eliminating new blood. What Street Fighter X Tekken aims to do is bring communities together and create an all-new playing field that newcomers can quickly get to grips with. To a certain degree, it succeeds. Simplified inputs, a cast that spans multiple franchises and Gems that can aid you with your shortcomings: all of these aspects offer accessibility for the newcomer and potential depth for the hardcore cult.

Reviewing Street Fighter X Tekken could take me months, years even. This is simply because the best beat-em-ups are the ones that gestate over time. They transform and evolve: allowing you to figure out new methods and form new attachments. Street Fighter X Tekken is exactly the kind of game that I want to spend months with. I want to get attached to new characters, figure out new methods and grasp each nuance. It may not quite be up to the task of replacing Street Fighter IV, but it is massively enjoyable and the only game that will allow you to see a giant bear farting in Ryu’s face. Not to be missed.