Apr 24 2009
Street Fighter 4 Championship Pack release
The championship pack update for street fighter 4 is in the hands of the fighters, and if you ask me? It definitely could have been better. What seems to be happening with games in general these days is that when the game first drops, it’s in an incomplete form, and things like this get pushed at us down the road. (sometimes even with a cost. I basically paid $80 for SF4 because I had to drop another 20 total to get costumes that were already programmed on the disk. Recession in action.)
So the all promising allure of a free expansion complete with tournament play? Can’t say no to that. So I had to check it out. And so far, I’m just bummed. I’ll break it down into details.
“Replay Mode – Record, upload, and download top matches to share with the Street Fighter IV community. Players can analyze top tiered fighters matches, leave voter feedback for others, and share their own triumphant victories.”
When they say top, they mean top 5000. You have to be one of the top 5000 players online to even use the replay feature. No saving your own local versus matches. No saving your own ranked or player matches. And you can’t even save your championship matches unless you’re a top player. Why even offer this as a function if its use is THIS limited.
The good side to this is the fact that you can download the matches that have been saved. If you’re a PSN player, you can only rate the matches. (big deal) The feature on the 360 is MUCH better, because you can save the matches, and see the inputs. No more big secrets as to how that combo works, because you can SEE how it works by what inputs were used during the match. At least THAT is useful, but it’s still a letdown. The awesome feature is only available to the people who own a 360, while the PS3 users get the consolation prize. Awesome. [/sarcasm]
“Enhanced Tournament Matching System - Skill level matching system offers improved tournament match making for beginners and mid-level players. Competitors earn Grade Points (GP) to earn entry into more advanced tournaments.”
When I read this in the specs for the DLC, I was thinking about how awesome the tournament mode was for the last Street Fighter release, Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo: HD Remix. The tournament mode in that game sets you up in a lobby, then automatically makes an 8-man single elimination bracket, then you play to win.
What the hell is tournament about 2 people in one lobby? The so-called tournament mode is nothing more than a different version of ranked matchup. There is NOTHING AT ALL tournament-like about getting randomly paired for one best 2 out of 3 with a random person. There are no brackets, no nothing. Just another version of the ranked matches we already had, painted up to look pretty with two different types of earnable points, and a disconnect rate bar slapped in the mix to give people one more reason to kick you from the lobby. Not to mention that a couple months down the road, people will more than likely find SOME way to exploit it still, and we get top leaderboard players who are good at quitting, or boosting. Now think about what that will do to the replay save feature. Boy am I excited.
Maybe down the road some of these things will be fixed. But for now, as far as I’m concerned, Street Fighter 4 is the same Street Fighter 4 it’s been since February. That’s not a bad thing at all, just don’t promise the players “updates” that do essentially nothing for the game.
What’s even worse about DLC that just unlocks what’s on the disc is that not everyone has Xbox Live, so those people pay $60 for a game and they’ll never be able to access parts of it.