Video Games Today

The weight of a new Street Fighter game is not to be taken lightly. After about 10 years of ridiculous turbo hyper super extreme installments which added a new character or a new combo meter in piecemeal, we’ve finally gotten a full-on, true sequel in Street Fighter 4. And as someone who’s not even that big of a Street Fighter fan, it’s easy to see just how good it is. It’s the best 2D fighting game I’ve ever played, the best looking fighting game I’ve ever played and is definitely going to be a standard for a long time to come.

The basics: 25 characters, six of which are brand new playable characters in a Street Fighter game. There’s an arcade mode (a series of AI battles, book ended by story-driven animated sequences), a challenge mode (basically AI Time Trial and Survival challenges for leaderboards and unlockables), a training mode to walk you through each of the characters moves and online play. From a feature-list perspective, it’s pretty basic stuff. There’s no Virtua Fighter-esque quest mode to earn in-game cash or conquer virtual game arcades. There aren’t even minigames to beat up cars! But in place of all that, you have near flawless gameplay.

It’s hard to summarize the depth of Street Fighter, but the comparisons to chess in high speed seem pretty accurate. Everything has a counter, every character can beaten by someone of a higher skill level, and, unlike Soul Calibur, button mashers will be annihilated within seconds of stepping up against another opponent. To a certain extent, this makes it hard for newcomers, as you’re better off playing people around your skill level, but the whopping number of characters means you can always handicap yourself by picking someone you’re not really familiar with.


The biggest new additions to the fighting mechanics are focus attacks. Activated by holding down the Medium Punch and Medium Kick buttons, a focus attack is basically a charged attack that can absorb a single attack from your enemy, allowing you to unleash fury back at them. It’s easy to pull off, requires no complicated button combos, and adds another layer to the combat.

Ultra combos are also new. After taking a certain amount of damage, you’ll be able to unleash an extremely devastating attack back at your enemy. Usually this requires some complex button presses, but if the attack lands you’ll be taking about 1/3rd of your opponents life. It’s hugely telegraphed, but if you’re in mid air or getting up from the ground you may not be able to block it. The idea is to keep everyone in the game. Even if you’re getting crushed, you can still hope to land an Ultra and make a comeback. They also come with super flashy animations and are unique to each character, which makes pulling one off even more satisfying.


The visuals, though, may be the start of the show in Street Fighter 4. The level of detail poured into each and every character and fighting arena borders on OCD. Eyes bulge when hit, barrels knock over when you land an attack near them, monkeys do backflips in the background. Street Fighter 4 is full of life, and looks crisp and bright, a nice change of pace from the browns and dark greens of this generation of games.

There are qualms to note, though. In testing the online play alongside the public, we had major issues when trying to play ranked matches or quick join games. Either it wouldn’t let us connect or we’d be left playing in extreme lag, with a slideshow level of frame rate. Playing against friends in player matches seemed to cure this problem, but the lack of a party lobby system (as seen in Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix) means that you can’t have all-night round robin sessions.


The other big issue to consider is that the standard PS3 and 360 controllers are pretty inadequate for playing Street Fighter (or pretty much any other 2D fighting game). You can get by, for sure, but anyone with a joystick or a special gamepad will have a definite edge on you. That’s not really a fault of the game itself, but it’s something to consider if you’re looking to pick it up.

Lastly, we were a bit bummed by the lack of character customization in SF4. The game allows you to unlock 10 alternate colors for your characters, but secondary costumes are relegated to DLC. After seeing incredible character customization in games like Soul Calibur 4 and Virtua Fighter 5, it’s a shame Capcom didn’t go all the way with this one. We would’ve loved to have seen Guile with a big kitty helmet.

With all that said, though, Street Fighter 4 is an immaculate fighting game. The depth of play matched with the incredible visual fidelity makes it a new standard for 2D fighting games and may just revive what has become a niche genre.

Final Rating:8.5/10

Enjoy!
The VGToday Crew

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Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has been announced and is expected for release in Fall 2009. This game will be developed by Infinity Ward and published by Activision, as usual. Infinity Ward has stated they have no intentions to ever return to WWII, anytime soon, if at all. No word from Treyarch, but it seems we will be on a Modern-WWII yearly rotation from now on. I personally cannot wait for my modern guns again, and a great single player! Wait, did I say that out loud?

Source: http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2008/12/03/activision-announces-guitar-hero-5-new-tony-hawk-call-of-duty-modern-warfare-2-more-at-in-game-ad-conference/

Enjoy!
The VGToday Crew

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Xbox Live is currently down for a majority of it's users. So far Microsoft has released no details other than Major Nelson saying the following on his blog:

In the past few hours, the Xbox Operations Center noticed that large number of members were disconnected from Xbox LIVE, some more than once. Our Engineering teams are actively working to determine the root cause of this issue and to prevent it from happening again. If you are disconnected, you should be able to reconnect after a few minutes. Thanks for your patience as we work quickly to solve the issue.

That was posted earlier today, and as of now the problem has only gotten worse. Now you can connect to Xbox Live, but you cannot play any multiplayer games. This is shown in Call of Duty 4 having a mere 500 users online right now. Maybe it is not so bad, they might give us a free Arcade game like last holiday, but I doubt it.

EDIT: It appears as Xbox Live is back up. Post a comment here if you are still having issues.

Dark Kitsune:
Well Major Nelson has released another update.

From reading comments, I see that some folks are still having issues. The Operations center is investigating.

I'm one of those unlucky people who are still having problems. This has throughly messed up my gaming weekend.

Edit: Another update! Though it isn't very helpful to me!

We’re noticing a few members are still having issues. We’re investigating. Thanks.

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Left 4 Dead is Valve's latest project which releases next Tuesday, the 18th of November. The game is a survival horror which brings the "survival" part of the genre to the fullest. You are one of four survivors of a zombie infection, which is very similar to the Resident Evil series, who must fight to stay alive in the infested city. From what I gathered from the demo you must work your way, in the campaign, to escape the city and get to a government refuge. At the intro of the game a government helicopter is shouting to the city for survivors to head to the hospital for evacuation.

So you pick one of the four survivors you want to play as, none of any has an advantage or disadvantage over any other of them. There is a table in front of where you spawn with a pump shotgun and what appears to be a MP5, or other SMG. You may pick one of them and grab the First-Aid kits on the table, which you will need. You also have a pistol that has unlimited ammo. As it stands, the pistol is way to powerful for it to have unlimited ammo. I found myself using the pistol more than my shotgun because of range. I'd only use the shotgun if the zombies got up close to be, which happens alot. Valve needs to make the pistols have an ammo cap, or lower damage. As is, it takes 2-4 hits with a pistol to kill. Also, if you find a pistol on the ground you can dual-wield.

The co-op element of this game, and it's major selling point, is great. It is probably the best co-op experience I've had it awhile, if not ever. If you are constricted by a smoker zombie, or tagged by a boomer zombie, or on the ground because of a hunter zombie you NEED the help of your allies to survive. There cannot be a lone ranger in this game because of that. Also, the AI Director keeps this game fresh. Each time I ran through it, it was different. The zombies never came the same way, nor in the same numbers or types. This will give the game untold amounts of replay value.

Since this is only a Demo Impression and not a full on game review I will stop here and give more time to reviewing this game when it releases. I highly suggest this game, and it will most likely have my vote for game of the year.

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With only a short while left before the release of Valve's Left 4 Dead, they release a video showing the opening scene of the campaign mode. In Left 5 Dead you can play as any of the 4 characters in 4 player co-op. This is sure to be one of the best zombie survival games this year!

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Gametrailers just put this up on their website:



I am super excited about this game now. At first I was worried about the game being a redo of Call of Duty 4. This looks sweet, one of my most anticipated things to do this holiday season...along with Horde mode of Gears 2.

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After one day (24 Hours) of no Xbox Live worldwide, it is back. Incase you didnt know what this update was, here is what Major Nelson said:

On Monday, 9/29/2008 from 12:01 AM PST for up to 24 hours, Xbox Live will be offline for maintenance. As a result, Xbox LIVE and the ‘My Xbox’ section of Xbox.com will be unavailable, and the Xbox forums will be in read only mode (you won’t be able to post.) The remainder of Xbox.com will be available with limited interruptions.

This service maintenance is in preparation for the new Xbox experience which will be available later this fall.

Let me reiterate: When the service returns, you will not have any new features and you will not have the new Xbox experience update. That will happen later this Fall.

So I will once again say for everyone that you will NOT be getting the new experience when you turn on your Xbox today.

Anyways, Xbox Live is back online and hit me up if you want to play, my gamertag is at the right.

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Welcome to my new blog. I have been in the "blogging business" for awhile now, and have blogs on Affiliate Marketing, and a blog on just general things I want to rant about. I closed those down so I could open up my own blog here and focus primarily on it.

This blog will contain reviews, previews, interviews (Hopefully!), editorials, and much more. I hope you will stick around and bare with me as I get some blogs up to start me off. I'd appreciate to have you subscribe to the blog, and/or even "follow" me, if you are a Blogger.com user.

That is it for my opening post, hope to write more soon. Until then,
Lava~

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