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Gamer Roulette: Crossing The Line With Street Fighter X Tekken

Eric Parra |
March 10, 2012 | 2:06 p.m. PST

Staff Columnist

Kanto to Hyrule, Mobius to Santa Destroy, Planet Reach to Little Big Planet, Cinema Student, Screenwriter, and all around gamer, Eric Parra is a bad enough dude to bring you your weekly fix on relative gaming. Whether it’s reviews, previews, or FAQs, matters that are professional or just personal, make sure you check Neon Tommy every week for all sorts of interesting tidbits in the world of video games. And remember, it’s dangerous to go alone.

So quite a few things have happened lately in the game world. Assassins Creed Triple-I (or three for non-Roman readers) was revealed and set to take place in colonial America, which is pretty awesome and might just get quite a few new people into the franchise, myself included. 

Valve, a well-renowned game company (Half-Life, Portal, Team Fortress 2) and creators of the widely used online game store,

Mass Effect not featured in this review, but one day... (shacknews)
Mass Effect not featured in this review, but one day... (shacknews)

 “Steam”, have made announcements of trying their hand at making their own console, so far dubbed the “Steam-Box.

And then some games came out on March 6th that I was really excited about. Unfortunately, I only bought one of them, and so I’ll have to get back to the other sometime in the future, probably after I’ve beaten the first two games in that series.

So, if you read the title you’d already know this, but I’m going to take a bit of a look at Street Fighter X Tekken (the X is pronounced “cross” for some reason I don’t feel like analyzing.)

The "Dead or Alive" part is the fighting game. The beach volleyball is the money-making part. (galax covers)
The "Dead or Alive" part is the fighting game. The beach volleyball is the money-making part. (galax covers)

Now, I’m a bit of a fighting game fanatic. When I was a kid, I’d always play Marvel vs Capcom in the arcades, and that grew into owning and learning how to play at least ten different series of the genre. Then one day I realized I had bought myself a fight stick (essentially a giant box modeled after the controls from arcade systems) and I was playing Street Fighter IV competitively whenever I wasn’t watching professional fights streamed online. I won’t get technical with this, but as I described to a friend recently, fighting games are essentially very fast-paced, reaction-based chess matches with explosions and fireballs. 

Also, school girls with bodies that tend to jiggle with every punch, but that’s neither here nor there.

So Street Fighter Triple X Tekken is essentially that, except simpler. The checkers to Street Fighter IV’s Chess. Capcom really made this game super easy so that anyone could get into it. Remember when you used to mash buttons and random cool things would happen? Magnify that by a hundred and you get this game.

Since there are only about 3 or so people (all of which I could name) reading this who know the technical terms I could use to describe Street Fighter Holy Cross Tekken, I’ll just skim over them. Street Fighter characters are the same as they’ve always been, if you’ve played a Street Fighter game, you can play as any of them. Tekken characters, a 3D fighting game from Namco, all have moves from their original series, but their inputs are closer to Street Fighter, and so they’ve basically been made easy for anyone.

You’ve got your typical special moves (hadoken, shoryuken, etc.) and you’ve got ultra moves that change the camera angle and basically give you a tiny movie that involves beating up your opponent to an impossible(y cool) level that would in another situation leave a human crippled beyond repair.

 What’s really cool about this game, however, is that it’s tag team based. You pick two characters and get the option to switch one for the other at any point in time. If you’re really good (read: me) you can create a whole bunch of options to keep combos going and go for really flashy moves. You can even cause longer cinematic shorts that involve one character doing something crazy and sending the opponent flying into their partner who continues the madness with another ultra special combo move, referred to in the game as Cross Arts. 

The game really shines in a party-like fervor if you have four controllers and four friends all playing the new scramble mode. In scramble mode, each player is on the screen playing simultaneously, causing a scenario right out of Smash Bros, but way more cinematic, hilarious and frustrating. All in good fun, of course.

I haven’t played story mode, but you rarely get a fighting game for the story. I know it has to do with Pandora’s box and Antarctica and time travel maybe, but that’s about all I cared about before inviting my friends over and playing scramble mode for two days straight. 

Then of course, there’s DLC. Usually that stands for “downloadable content,” in the case that not everything is done for a game, companies will sell additional game features that can be downloaded onto your system to further your gaming experience. Capcom has had a bad track record (with their fans at least) about how DLC works, and instead decided to lock game content on the disk that can only be activated for additional fees, now referred to as “disk-locked content.” So my game currently has 12 new characters and really awesome costumes (which I’ve seen thanks to game hackers) already stored on my paid for disc, but I can’t access them until Capcom decides enough time has passed and they can charge me to unlock what is already technically mine that I got when I bought the $70 special edition.

The perks of buying a game for an additional $10 before it comes out.
The perks of buying a game for an additional $10 before it comes out.

It did come with a nifty little arcade/piggy bank, though, so I guess I’ll let it slide for now.

So if you like Street Fighter, if you like Tekken, if you like fighting, cinematics, having fun with friends, or just something easy to pick up and set down, definitely get your hands on Street Fighter X Tekken. Or you could just come over to my place and I’ll be happy to beat you. 

Reach columnist Eric Parra here or follow him on Twitter.

Check back next Saturday for Eric's next column.



 

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