The moment has finally come, Street Fighter V is out (well almost a week now) and the question is-
"Is it worth purchasing?"
After all the "controversial" reviews, the question of is it worth purchasing is even more common than before. Fear not, I have your fast and true honest answer to that question right here, right now.
So, is it?
Are you a competitive Fighting Game player or a player that spends most of their time on online matches and the actual fighting? Yes, this is one of the best purchases you can get your hands on.
Are you looking for a story mode single player solo campaign collecting your costumes and buying items and what not? No, wait out till June at least, then buy it.
It is as simple as that.
I stick to this answer even for Street Fighter fans, since they too are divided into those two categories.
There is no single objective answer to this question people. It all comes down to what you are looking for. Depending on what you want the answer is a full hardcore YES to a mediocre no, making it evident that the real question here is, not if SF5 is worth buying, but first, what kind of fighting game are you into?
The fact that such a large number of gamers exist that do not understand this simple logic is beyond me. Its like buying a Formula 1 car then complaining that it is not doing well on a Rally Track.
People not being able to get their target markets straight and use some objectivity along with logic leads to some pretty nasty reviews. On metacritic say, SF5 at the moment stands at (user scores) 3.3 for the PS4 and 2.4 for the PC version...
Meanwhile, the game actually achieved what it set out to achieve with flying colours, being among one of the most stable and fulfilling online fighting games on the market at this moment. A score like that is only reflecting one side of the coin.
Street Fighter was and always will be for competitive fighting, and/or, simply the fighting itself. That is it.
It's not going to change any time soon especially now that they are going for a more active e-sport front.
So the sooner people get with the program the better. I don't see anyone complain about Dota 2 having no story mode for the last so many years (and will probably never get one) because that is not the point to that game.
The difference with a game like Dota2 though and SF is that SF needs actual skill to be played competitively. Sure, Dota2 requires skill too, but of a different kind. Reflex and character control on it however will never reach the demand in skill that SF has, making the later a title not as accessible to mainstream players, leading to frustration, and then hate, for simply not being able to play it.
And that is a laughable realisation once we break it down and see it for what it is.
Going back to the racing car example (I love me those examples) its like getting a beginner driver into again, a formula 1, and having them rate the car as if it is a pile of dung simply because they could not control it and kept spinning out on corners... See where I am going with this?
Back to SF5. The game has released "unfinished" as many claim.
I beg to differ, and I will get into that detail a little later.
Although it is lacking some single player content (some, not a lot like people are trying to say it is) the game does what it is meant to do better than any other fighting game has in any launch yet.
But to get further into how much of a "pro-gamers" fighting game it is and how much of a "casual-gamer", we will notice right away that this is by far the most accessible Street Fighter there has been so far.
Mainstream and casual gaming is a downhill slope in this franchise.
This mainstream opinion has been affecting the way Street Fighter has been shaped for the last two versions simply because people whined that it was too hard to learn.
There are thousands out there that disagree (I among them). But regardless, we are not enough to keep a company afloat, and we have been putting up with these changes as best we can and adapting into versions that are trying in every way to favour beginners. (Like the wacky Ultra Combos in SF4...... you are given the most powerful Super Art to your character literally the more your character gets punched around).
We lived through that, and now we have to live through an even MORE simplified set of mechanics in SF5 to now make move execution easier.
So easy, that every time I want to combo a medium sweep, into hadouken and then cancel into a Critical Art (Super), the only thing I get 50% of the time is the Super, forcing me to need to slow down and compromise my timing altogether because the Critical Art execution is so damn easy it over-rides everything!
Even worst, I want to do a medium sweep into a dragon punch... No cancelling at all, and sometimes even then a Critical Art will come out. Completely ruining my match and the EX bars that I saved up to be able to perform EX moves (as I always prefer them to Supers) just because down, into forward, into down and down forward is close to the same thing as two quarter circles forward.
At which point, again, no complaints from the people that actually loved these games for a mechanic made for casual players. We simply adjust our timing and work around it to learn new timings and try to slow down our pace where need be, ect.
To cross this information up and prove even more that this is the case and not just my sense of things, I have seen a fair amount of comments from players stating how they can finally pull moves off in this SF and it feels easier/more fluent to them.
The entire game has been shaped to try and keep in mind both hardcore and casual, beginners and veterans, and this is not an easy task as many decisions will always lean towards the beginners and the veterans will simply adjust to them and learn the new way.
After so much work has been put into making this the most accessible Street Fighter to date, the least these casual or beginner players can do is acknowledge the choices made for them and appreciate it. As opposed to whining over not having a Story Mode right now which is just around the corner anyway, on a game that was never designed from its core to be a story-driven experience.
It feels like a double slap to veterans at this point as well. The game is in some ways dumbed down because casual gamers had a hard time getting to learn it, compromising our experience, and at the same time they also bash on it o.O Talk about overkill.
The story mode is not the most important part of SF, it never was, it never will be.
Sure even the veteran gamers are looking forward to this story mode and waiting for it. It's about time we got it. And even in its completely unfinished version it is more than we ever got in any SF to date. If this was all we would get, then we too would complain. However, ultimately we wouldn't care in the long run since we are here for the fighting, and not a tv show.
Knowing that they are working on something THIS detailed makes even more reason for us to say, "ok, its almost here, the main core and most important part of the game is however finished."
This new story mechanic is indeed quite detailed. I know a lot of you like to compare to MKX... This is already almost as long as the MKX story in its unfinished and easy mode version. It feels also shorter thanks to the single round matches, which are much more fitting for a story mode.
Unless I am mistaken, MKX story was just as easy to start off with, and guess what, you didn't get to play more than some rounds with each character there either.
SF5 on the other hand is evidently offering separate story-lines, and is already looking to shape up into something a lot larger and more intriguing than what MKX ever was.
(Don't get me wrong, I liked the story of MKX, but seriously I really don't care one bit about playing with the Cages, or characters I barely give two cents for. Having the option to follow a single characters' story from start to end is by far a superior model).
End of the day, these changes and additions aren't too far off, and evidently the missing arcade mode is probably a choice to try and steer clear of story spoilers, since arcade mode always offered an ending for the character used.
Of course a casual gamer would not know a lot of this, and that is why I set out to cover all these details, to make sure they are finally on the same page.
SF5 is first and foremost a competitive fighter. Capcom focused to release it out of the gate as balanced as possible, accessible, also advanced, with the best netplay it could have, cross-plat-forming, and released on both platforms on the go. It is clear that the most important part of the job is now done, and we are simply waiting for the icing on the cake.
For those, again mainstream voices saying it shouldn't have released now...... Why exactly? All the rest of us completely disagree. Why? Because we do not want to be waiting another 3 months to start fighting against each other and learning the game along with enjoying all those matches we would enjoy in all that time. And to find out that they could have delayed release just because the story mode was not finished? No thanks. Give us the game NOW, let us play the best part of it that we will be enjoying for years to come NOW, and we can live with a small delay on the story-mode.
 |
| Hold your horses people, its just around the corner, not a year away! Online matches however are all available now! |
We see all the choices Capcom has made taking to account mainstream and casual players, and we still don't complain. And yet that very same market that could be very well compromising all this time the quality of the franchise, is whining over something so trivial that is not meant to be the core of the game to begin with? Even when everything else is done almost to perfection and with said content being around the corner?
Talk about being completely in the wrong place and time and being ungrateful about it too.
If it is so hard for you to look past all these "single player" delays then think of this as an early release, a beta if you must, until the game is for the rest of you "completed". An early release that the rest of us wanting to simply get into matches are grateful for as opposed to waiting all thanks to a story mode.
Since I rubbed on the topic of comparing to MKX, I will lead off this last part with that comparison again.
MKX stands at a user score on metacritic of 7.7 for PS4 and 5.1 for PC......
Have any of you, any at all, the slightest idea how bad the online play for MKX is? It has been so bad for the last whole year that they only recently announced they are working on a new net-code the likes of GGPO to fix it.
That is completely irresponsible of a company as large as Nether Realms. MKX is about the LAST game on the planet that still doesn't use a GGPO styled netcode, and it is lacking a lot because of this. And don't get me started on the balance. It's not completely bad, but its not better than say what SF4 was on launch, if not worse. And that is ok, because not every fighting game needs to be some competitive experience. MKX is a lot of fun and personally I love it for different reasons and different moods.
But the online play is completely unforgivable. The second half of the game, that being, the fighting with other people online, has been broken for not a couple months (like the delay for the SF5 story mode) but for an entire YEAR.
And yet people are cool with it.... Why? Again, casual mainsteam gamers that only care about single player content as if they are playing an RPG. 80% of them probably never even knew these problems existed and never even bothered to play a single online match. And if they did, they probably shrugged off the latency issues not knowing that this is unacceptable and better has been available and done for years now.
It also had a rough online start, and the PC version was more than just rough. The entire game was completely unplayable.
Upon being fixed, it only went so far, since as I already mentioned, it still had issues online for an entire year.
SF5 on the other hand put the nail in the coffin for online fighting games. Less than a week and it is ironing out whatever problems it faces and providing out of the gate a hands on experience to the online fighting that MKX still hasn't achieved.
Both games lacked in a certain way. Its a matter of choice at that point. One company focused on getting the fighting and netplay and cross plat-forming right, the other focused on single player content. And both are striving to have both aspects completed.
The difference is, Capcom will delay the complete single player half of the game for some months, and Nether Realms has delayed the multiplayer half of the game for a year.
As for all those ladder and towers and factions and what not in MKX. Don't get me started on those. A title has never felt more gimicky than MKX with all that nonsense. Its a fighting game, stop trying to make 100 and 1 ways for it to feel diverse when it is still one thing and one thing alone, a player vs another player or cpu, and that is all!
It comes to question at this point, with so much wrong in MKX that many of us have seen and are frustrated over (especially because we like the game and want to see it thrive) how on earth does it land a score so high with praises and SF5 is bashed out the gate for doing things (in my and others opinions) better?
Because of mainstreams that unfortunately are more in count and care little about what a fighting game is really all about. And that is ok, personal preference is personal preference. Knowing however the difference of a title that is cheating you and not putting effort in and a title that has actually achieved a technological wonder for its genre, as well as what kind of game it is and perhaps for who it is made for, goes a long way.
But at this point it seems to me that people simply want to hate either for hating sake, or because they perhaps are shaking in their boots at the inevitable. That once that last piece of the puzzle is complete (their single player experience) there is nothing to stop SF5's road to success. Perhaps this is their last cry to try and delay the inevitable, taking advantage of whatever they can to whine.
One very evident example of such attitude is in the whole notion that "I wont buy it until Super SF5 Ultra Hyper Turbo Edition HD is out". Even though Capcom has stated it over a year now that there will be no more versions to SF5. You buy the game once, and all future characters can be unlocked with in-game currency. And people still don't get it.
They recently came out and said it again, "Street Fighter 5 is the only version you will ever pay for".
I rest my case. If that there is not proof on its own on the biased of casual fanboys, then I don't know what is.
I popped the game in. First thing I went and done was play training. With absence of the Arcade mode (possibly for story-spoiler reasons as I am assuming, and an understandable move since this is the only SF to release on console and PC instead of Arcade first) the next thing I went into was Survival.
I miss the "Round 01, Fight!" and playing against the CPU in a best of 3, 5 or 7 format as per usual. No excuses on that but at least it is right there (sort of) in training mode, and exactly the way it should be for versus mode and online modes.
The first thing I wanted to do was finally get my hands on this new fighting mechanic. As any player into fighting games would. The last thing we do this side of the border guys is sit there and play story modes. Even for MKX, I jumped into the arcade mode first, and I took longer than most to complete story mode because I kept wanting to simply enjoy what the game was made for.... the fighting!
The fun I had on survival mode is actually stellar and close to the arcade experience. It has its advantages and disadvantages. The one thing I love about it is something I always wanted in an arcade mode, that is, a long seemingly never ending list of fights to go through.
However the drawback as I said before, is the 1 round system and the survival mechanic on the health depletion. On the other hand, the "perks" you buy and carrying your Critical Art meter over is again an advantage.
Point being, its give some take some and the end result is for an addictive experience as addictive if not even more than the arcade experience I am used to playing.
Online matches are bliss.
And the story mode I finally got to was, even in its unfinished form, more fleshed out than anything SF ever made. In length its probably already over half the story mode in MKX. Add the coming cinematic, and the entire rest of the story itself, and it looks to be shaping up into being among the best fighting game story-modes of the genre.
Whichever way you look at it guys, it is a win. Its not like the story mode is not on its way at all. And its also not like you need to wait another 4 months to play the game altogether. You have access to it now. This isn't what you want? Cool, simply wait for June or when they said the story mode will be released. Capcom clearly over-reached, and that alone is something to praise. They aimed for their traditional February release date, wanted to get ready for tournaments, and they delivered at the cost of the Story being a little delayed.
They could have done a half-assed job and sat comfy on nothing more than just a simple arcade mode of old. They didn't and they are trying their best to provide the best.
Hating on this is childish.
And now, I'm a head out and have me some more SF5 action. It has become so addictive I can't believe the game is finally here!
Those waiting for a story-mode, see you in 4 months.... Don't complain though that the rest of the gaming community has an advantage over you because they have been practising! The game is already as accessible as it gets. Enough with that complaint. If it's not one thing with casual players and fighting games it's always something else to complain about. Just chillax and have some fun already.
Peace out.
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