Call SFV story mode a lot of things, just don't use the word 'story'.
By bonbolapti 30 Comments
Maybe a story mode in Street Fighter V was too much to ask for.
I mean yes, they seem to be pulling out all the stops when it comes to the way the game is being handled. Systems are broken, characters can’t make their release window. If I was playing this game a lot more than I am, I’d be able to give an honest opinion on whether or not the damnable fate of SFV affects me.
I would have cared a great deal about story mode. It’s like junk food. Ryu’s ongoing struggles with his inner demons, the quest to take down shadaloo, camaraderie between fight bros. It’s always sucked me in. I have various animated films, comics and mangas about how ridiculous Street Fighter lore is. It’s not like the bar for a quality street fighter is high enough, so SFV could have easily pulled something out of their ass without trying, so what went wrong?
No focus for one. There’s a lot of characters on the roster, and I understand they’d want to give as much air time as they could to everyone, but you still need to have the one character to move everything along. It started out interesting with Charlie, coming back from the dead and being greeted by a mysterious Russian parka in the middle of a jungle. But then you have all these subplots competing for equal attention. Ryu is sitting down through most of the story, Rashidoooooo has a friend, Chun-li wants to have a baby. Characters that don't really have much of a story are designated to being loud, obnoxious and slapstick, because they needed to be included anyway so why not give them the roll of grunting paperweight? It becomes various moments of action figures smashing into each other and they all play out like a series of vignettes rather than weaving a consistent plot.
Which is probably due to there being no smooth transition between story and gameplay. In between each instance is a 10 second-or-so load time chopping up the pace, which depending on your own patience can really take you out of it. (who has patience these days.)
The series of events plays out, then the only thing left for anyone is for Ryu to show up and be Goku. Then everyone stands in front of an exploding building as if they’re watching the smouldering hot mess that is SFV unravel.
Is it good enough to wait for? It’s hardly the price of admission. Story mode would have been a lot more effective if it stayed at those little single character story beats. At least then, they could have used them as a ‘try before you buy’ to characters you haven’t purchased yet. Hell, they way they did story for the normal arcade mode in the previous games was good enough, or dare I say, more effective?
It sticks out as a thing that took too long to come out, which is an ironic twist for something that clearly needed more time. Motivations/and scenarios are put together with tape, and character development is non existent.
The only thing that really stood out for me is that Chun-li wants a kid, and I’m pretty sure she just decided to steal one in the end.
I could say that Capcom tried their best with the story mode... but did they?
Now I have to play catchup on some things:
Overwatch competitive mode is out although I haven’t had much of any time to play it this week. But how do we feel about it? Was competitive going to be the make it or break it moment for you? Have you had more fun, or have the more serious players turned you off from the experience? Do you do well enough on a solo queue and play nice with others, or do you roll with a crew because strangers give you anxiety?
How come there’s not any love for Symmetra? Is it because a lot of people think of her as pointless because her Ult is a teleporter? I always find it very interesting to see how people play her. Yeah a lot of people seem to just pile all of the lasers in one spot, and some have actually done a good job hiding them. and for the most part that's probably all she can really do because she's so squishy, but I love seeing that character get use because of how different she is from the regulars. I don’t know why I find myself to be such an apologist/defender for that character most of the time, but here we are.
I'm currently jumping between both PC and PS4 versions of the game, because I have friends that play on both, and it's certainly night and day the types of people I'm playing with. I do play a controller with both versions because why the hell not? It's actually pretty easy to be just as good as those with the keyboard and mouse, maybe that's the way Blizzard designed it.
But with the way PC games are these days, would you find yourself preferring the controller or is it Mouse and Keyboard all the way?
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When I'm not at home sinking into OW, I’m still playing a hell of a lot of Hyrule Warriors on commutes. (I've actually put more time into the 3DS version than the Wii U one at this point, poor reviews of the game be damned, it's still a lot of fun.) That Marin DLC was released on Thursday and the best way to describe that character is ‘Constantly shaking water out of a bell.’ But it’s great that their batch of dlc characters are focused on the portable Zelda games. In the case of Marin, is pretty cool to see a 3D model of a character that would have otherwise been lost to time.
And hell, this is the largest roster of female characters that any Zelda game has ever had right?
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Before I end, I should mention and share that the News Friends podcast that I run, actually had the time to get together and talk about video games. Specifically E3. It was a lot of fun and worth checking out. Since I spend every week talking about news, it’s kind of a relief to sit and talk vidja games.
But we don’t have enough time to make it part of the regular family of podcasts, and I’m not really sure if there’s enough interest in doing something weekly.
But when we do get around to it, it’s fun. So please enjoy.
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