sábado, 15 de fevereiro de 2020

Street Fighter V Review (English / Metacritic)


Street Fighter V is at the same time, a game that revolutionizes the franchise for the current trend (online) and a real disaster for the old guard of casual fans (offline). After the hype soon after its announcement, what was seen at the launch was a game with a full price ($60 USD) but unfinished, without content but online. This situation caused huge frustration to the fans who made SF the most important franchise of fighting games.

It is clear that the franchise could not fail to be part of the online gaming revolution that is happening (long time ago actually) but almost abandoning the offline mode for casual players brought terrible reception to the game that, except by the "nonsense" contentless, is a great game with an incredible gameplay (in my opinion better than SF IV but still so far for the best SF in terms of gameplay ever released, SF III).



As I said, its qualities are its competitive mode (when the server works, of course) and its gameplay. There are exciting new features, new skills and a drastic change in the style of classic characters, which caused some displeasure but brought new perspectives. However, its qualities end here.

Among its many weaknesses, there is the terrible choice of turning SF V into seasons. What initially seems like a good idea to keep the game always interesting, is a bad business for needing to buy season pass over the years. I'm not totally against games with season pass but if the idea was to do this, it's absurdly unfair to sell it a full price of the game at its launch. It'll be fair costs about $20 at the launch and the other $40 would come for at least the first two seasons (the others seasons could be a bonus additions). The justification for this is its second biggest weakness: the F*** 'fight money' (FM). Again, if we it were fair there would be no problems but Capcom's greed is something that always surprises negatively. Basically it is possible to buy all the additional content of the game using only the game money. The problem is that to make enough money you must be a PRO player (what 95% of players aren't) or you simply spend real money. This pathetic situation is identical to the online mode of GTA V. It makes you think that the company cares about the player giving him the opportunity to get everything "for free" but, in fact, it makes the game's content inaccessible to a huge part of fans forcing them to spend even more real money. Something that should be abominable by everybody is still defended by crazy fanboys, even if that most part of them can not even achieve enough FM to get the full content of the game.



Other negative aspects are technical aspects. Even the graphics being beautiful - which is an obligation with the capacity of the current generation -, the exaggerated cartoon style causes bizarre situations. It is not uncommon seeing hair or part of the fighter's costume to go through them bodies. The scenarios are very beautiful but they've to be bought as well (absurd). The alternative costumes are great and bad at the same time. Great because they offer good options like the classics (always the best) and terrible cause there are plenty of nonsense costumes with no relation with the characters (gangsta Ryu for example).

More negatives are the arcade mode finals (which came as a free DLC a long time after the original release), which are just a frame with a simple art (and dubious taste). The story mode has very fast fights and, most of the time, put in the game only as a pretext to justify being a fighting game, including the poor script - which is not uncommon in the series that always has a simple-bad plot.



The game is a landmark in the franchise. It has the great initiative to introduce even more the franchise to the competitive (what I do not like but it is very very necessary in the present days) and brings great gameplay, making the game really addictive. At the same time, it is the worst SF ever released in terms of content and (lack of) characters available available to casual gamers since SF 1 (1987).



If you are an almost pro player, very competitive and a long-time fan of the franchise, it is mandatory. But if you are part of the vast majority of casual player, it is not recommended (unfortunately). Street Fighter V became a niche game (for pro and online players) inside a niche (fighting games) of industry.

My Metacritic Profile: https://www.metacritic.com/user/Nysp


0 comentários: