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Street Fighter has always been a standard for 2D fighting games, and has always set the benchmark for them too. Combine all of the great Street Fighter games best qualities, and you have Street Fighter Alpha 3 MAX.
First off, Im gonna talk about the difficulty level of this game. I've played my fair share of fighting games in my time, but this game's CPU can be wickedly hard to defeat at times. You can change the difficulty from the option menu, however I felt that they made the difficulty a bit too hard for the normal setting, so rookies beware when buying this game. It'll take a lot of practice to come by the CPU.
Other than that, I hardly have any cons. The PSP's screen makes this game look better than ever, and its another game that makes me wonder why developers don't make more 2D animated games for the PSP. It looks fantastic. The controls work perfectly, although you may find yourself taking breaks from the intensity of your playing. The menu screen is a bit clunky, and they could definitely have condensed it a little more, but thats hardly a problem. It even sounds really really good.
You've got dozens of characters from the Street Fighter series, and you can set a different play style for each. Ad-hoc play is nice, especially with the dramatic 2-1 play mode, where two players go up against one CPU.
The major turning point in buying this game would be difficulty, but if thats any problem to you, just bring down the difficulty by a few stars. No problem, and I even recommend it. However, fans of the series will find this game a major pleasure, and it is not to be missed as the PSP's best fighting game yet
84
I love Capcom. I Love Street Fighter. For many of us geezers, Street Fighter is the epitome of quarter crunching fun. Some of you youngins' probably weren't around when Street Fighter was all the rage, but many of us fondly remember the tournaments, the rivalries, and the sweaty palms as we "Gadouken'd" and "Sonic Boom'd" our way through puberty. Those were the days. If you told me in the future, Capcom would bless me with a portable version of anything Street Fighter, I'd call you nuts, but bless us they have, with a pixel perfect port of Street Fighter Alpha 3. The fact that they've graced us with the most feature rich version in MAX, is a godsend.
Many of you have probably played SFA3 or some kind of Street Fighter game in the past, and what Capcom presents here is pretty much a straight port of the above game, albeit with a lot more play modes and around 40 characters. You've got classic characters from the first Street Fighter 2 such a Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li, and Guile and characters from newer alpha games all presented nicely with their own unique story lines and backgrounds. Along with their repertoires of moves, 'isms' are introduced. 'Isms' are three different play styles that you're allowed to choose for each character at the start of each battle. X-Ism from SF2, A-Ism from SFA and V-Ism a custom combo unleashable by pulling strings of moves together to form devastating attacks. All the 'isms' are unique in their own way, and they bring a fresh approach to battle by allowing you super hits and combos for your characters which can only be used by use of a full combo meter at the bottom of the screen. You can also set the turbo speed when fighting, which is a nice little addition as well.
Once you're in the thick of things it's quite fun. You have your usual array of moves and combos by way of you're three Punch and Kick keys. The default setup of button assignment works the best, with your Hard Punch and Kick buttons set to the left and right trigger buttons respectively. This brings me straight to the controls. I know most of you are wondering how this thing plays, and the controls in my opinion are great. Now, mind you, I've been graced with lean fingers and I have no problems pulling off the moves that are required for this game. Would it be easier on an arcade machine?
Of course. Rest easy, this game controls really well. It does have a learning curve to it, but it's very short, and once you get accustomed to it it's all gravy. Speaking of gravy, those of you with chubby pickle fingers will probably have reason to complain about all of the PSP's controls in every game, so stay away from the brown stuff.
Throws are performed by pressing two buttons simultaneously, which I actually found harder to do than most other moves quite frankly, so this can be odd. There is also a block disabler which leaves constant blockers (better known as pricks) vulnerable to all of your attacks if they try and block to much, a feature which I like.
If Capcom had included more modes into SFA3 MAX I think your PSP would explode. There are literally tons of modes present. Classic Arcade Mode, Tournament Mode, 1 on 2, Edit Mode, the list goes on and on. It's pretty safe to say that you won't be putting this game aside anytime soon. SFA3 MAX also supports multiplayer play through AD-Hoc mode but Infrastructure Mode isn't supported. This sucks. Having Internet play would have put this game over the top.
The PSP has a beautiful display and SFA3 MAX looks fanstastic on it. Nothing was added to enhance the graphics, but this is basically a pixel perfect rendition. It definately stands the test of time as SFA3 was released a while back in the arcades, but it really allows us to see how talented the artists at Capcom truly are. Everything moves fast as well, without nary a hiccup to be found. Wonderful. Now if only Capcom could have made that mode screen look nicer than what it looks like. Make no mistake. It's ugly! Capcom have also included the ability to play in normal aspect ratio with the use of wallpaper for the sides of the screen, but I prefer and recommend Widescreen.
The sound is also fully intact and sounds fine through the use of Capcom's Q-Sound and is complete with that dorky but hard to hat announcer voice. Load times are also slight and this game requires you to install firmware 2.50.
If you're a Street Fighter or 2D brawling fan at all, you owe it to yourself to pick up this Street Fighter Alpha 3. With all the options present, I can safely say this is the best version of Street Fighter ever, and it's on a handheld, go figure.
Pros
• Great graphics and gameplay.
• A wealth of play modes.
• Most fighters ever available.
• 'isms' and character edit add to gameplay.
• Short load times.
Cons
• Butt ugly mode menu screen.
• Simultaneous button presses harder to pull off than regular moves.
• No Internet play.
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