Just ordered myself a Mad Catz Street Fighter IV Round 2. I actually ordered the Zangief one, as for some reason he was a lot cheaper! He is also one of my favourites characters, along with Dhalsim, E Honda and Dan who has to be the most underrated character in the game. I can’t wait to try it out as frankly, using the standard analogue stick for Street Fighter just doesn’t cut it for me any more. All of my online friends seem to be using one of the £100 arcade sticks which seems a little excessive to me, so this is a happy compromise at a mere £20
Mad Catz Street Fighter IV Round 2 FightPad - Zangief
Well I received my game on the 20th as promised by Sendit.com. I excitedly opened the case and put it into my xbox. I spent the next 5 hours playing on the various game modes, trying out all my old moves. What can I say about this version of Street Fighter? It’s great! Probably one of the best versions I have played. Graphically of course it is the most pleasing to look at. The characters have a slightly stranger style than I was expecting. They all look very muscular, but some of them just seem a bit odd to me. An example of this is Chun Li. Maybe it’s just me.
The gameplay is solid and similar to EX Plus Alpha from what I remember of it. I’m not too keen on the new characters that have been introduced. There’s a big fat man called Rufus who looks like a morbidly obese version of Bruce Lee. He’s quite funny, but I didn’t find him very playable, truth be told.
With Capcom’s failure to sort out the leaderboard bugs on the Xbox Live version of this game, I was keen to see how they handled the ranking system here. I was not disappointed. Statistics are recorded faithfully, although there are a few thinks that I think they have missed. Firstly, its impossible (as far as I can see) to work out if an opponent you are about to play is at your level or not. There are custom titles that you earn as you progress up the ranks that are intended to give some indication of skill, but all to often you start to play a self proclaimed beginner only to find out it was all a ruse and they are a Street Fighter mater of the higher order. Within 20 seconds you have lost your rank and are vaguely aware of your own shouting at the television screen. I guess its a good game that gets you so involved, it means the game is doing its job and affecting you. Still, it’s rather annoying. Secondly, scores between friends aren’t saved after you leave the session. This is a shame because it’s good to be able to compare your win percentage with people you play often. Other games like Dead or Alive 4 have this.
The online play is great fun. I have only had a few games that are laggy. You really get into the game and I would say it’s much more fun than arcade mode, which is also fun in it’s own way. One criticism of the the online play is the fact that lobbies can only contain 2 people. Even the XBLA version of Street Fighter which I have talked so much about in the past has mutiple players as well as an online tournament match. Still, I guess maybe this reduces the overall lag in the game which is a good thing.
All in all this is a great game. If you enjoy games such as Dead or Alive 4, Soul Calibre 4 and Virtual fighter 5 then you will not be disappointed with this. If you have never played any of the aforementioned games, but are a street Fighter fan and own an Xbox then you would be silly not to pick up a copy.
Already reordered my copy, can’t wait, just a few more days now. But I tell you one thing, I bet those guys at Capcom don’t fix the annoying glitches on the XBLA HDR version before then. It’s been over 3 weeks since they announced the patch, and still nothing has been released. I understand they may be busy building the new game, but maybe a good idea for future games is is to finish one before starting another one! Ok, I’m probably being naive here, but Jesus the leaderboard bug annoys the hell out of me! It makes the game incomplete, so give me a bloody refund you Zangief loving knob jockeys!
Man this is frustrating. The best thing about Street fighter 2 was always kicking the arse out of someone, and measuring yourself against your peers. Well it seems there’s a massive bug with the leaderboard system on the XBLA version of this game. In the last couple of weeks I’ve been playing a lot of ranked matched and I haven’t moved at all in the ranking system. The guy above me has a much worst record than I do (1 loss and 0 wins compared to my 64 wins and 52 losses) so this is pretty annoying. Apparently a guy who only played one game and lost it is better than me, even though I win the majority of games I play.
Mildly frustrating admittedly, but it does take away the point of having a leaderboard. When will they fix it? My guess is never as the bug is not well known. When I tell my friends about it they tell me I just haven’t played enough games, even though I try and explain the details.
