What happens when you combine the greatest fighting game with one of the second greatest fighting games… you get Street Fighter x Tekken! We’ll leave you to decide who the greatest in that sentence is though!
Two of the most legendary fighting games cross paths for some brutal blows, deadly kicks and some of the most appealing and sharp graphics we’ve seen! Hardly Capcoms first venture into the world of cross fighting games this is not the first time fighting contenders from either genre have faced off either! A Japanese release only, Namco x Capcom, was brought out in 2005 for the PlayStation 2 but it featured characters from multiple games and an exclusive Street Fighter or Tekken battle. 
Announced back in 2010 at San Diego Comic Con, fans of both series were left speculating how on the game would function but both Namco and Capcom announced that both companies would be releasing their own versions of the game. Street Fighter x Tekken (x = cross) is Capcom’s version of the game with Namco involved mostly in terms of the licensing of Tekken characters.
Capcom’s version is based on the traditional style of play from Street Fighter games, with a 2D gameplay that allows for characters who possess the ability to use their projectiles (Good news for Sonic Boom and Hadouken spammers). Players select from a huge dossier of characters, picking two to face off against CPU or other player controlled Tag Teams. This version of the game is based heavily on the Street Fighter style of gameplay bringing in EX combos, Super Moves but while relying on old tricks the game isn’t resting on its laurels.
The gameplay introduces several new techniques as well as offering a more challenging combat system, hitting a combo of L M H H or L H H attacks will trigger a combo that instantly swaps between tag partners and allows you to trigger a longer combo that lets you juggle your opponent and extend the combo even further. On top of this you and your tag partner can activate up to three devastating moves, you can choose to team up and call your partner out to fight by your side for a small duration of time, you can also call your partner out to pull off a devastating combo which allows you to swap places in the battle or if all else fails and the battle seems like it is lost you can sacrifice your remaining power to boost your ally and heal them in doing so you forced them into Pandora Mode and push them into a race to wipe out the enemy team or face defeat.
Your partner is also a life saver, swapping them out at the right time will allow you the chance to recover from injuries and your health will rebuild a little.
On top of all that the game introduces the Gem System with six types available, attack, defense, speed, vitality, assist, and Cross Gauge. You can customise your characters with different gems which will activate as you fulfil certain conditions which are dependent on the type of gems you have equipped.
Online mode features various options including, four player battles, two player battles, an online training mode and a fight request option which allows you to play the game freely while searching for new blood to test your skills against.
The plot is centred around a strange object that crashes to Earth, the cube reacts and releases a water like substance whenever it senses conflict, absorbing the energy and channelling it back into the fighters. Both Shadaloo and the Mishima corporation set their eyes on the cube and will stop at nothing to obtain the power of Pandora.
Ok that’s the basic deal with the game now to tear it to shreds!
Editor-in-Chief, part-time super villain and hoarder of cats. If you can’t find me writing, I’m probably in the kitchen!
On first impression, the game plays extremely delicately, whatever spin developers put on their combat system being like that of previous Street Fighter games we were a little confused as to where the similarity lies other than the methods to pull them off. Initially we found the system to be extremely fragile and sensitive to the touch – translation – the game isn’t very forgiving of a combo incorrectly input. With a game that relies so heavily on the fluidity between attacks to trigger combos and tags, the system really requires a delicate approach.
Other than that gameplay does look pretty but it just doesn’t do enough for us to justify the price tag and it only gets worse. Online play is riddled with some serious flaws which Capcom are hurriedly trying to sort out.
If you’ve been playing the game online and you’ve noticed network problems and an even more fragile system that seems to ignore your commands or you’ve convinced yourself that you’re going half deaf fret not! It seems that online play is suffering from severe audio troubles with sound effects and music dropping more frequently than combos but rest assured the team are looking into a fix for all these problems.
It may sound like we are being overly critical of the game and we actually feel like we are being a little too harsh but for something that combines two of the longest running fighting series for powerful matches, we can’t help but feel this is falling somewhat short of the mark. There is a strong possibility that our time away from the beat’em up franchise has weakened our skills with the button bashing but we’ve given it nearly 24 hours of our time and it just isn’t pushing our buttons.
The game has started to grow on us as we adapt to the delicate combos and ridiculously fast style of combat but we prefer a game to catch us off guard at the start and pull us in with the first punch and unfortunately Street Fighter x Tekken just didn’t do it for us and only time will tell if it can find a place in our fight loving hearts.
Good
Nice visuals
Lots of characters to choose from
Bad
Delicate Battle System
Online Mode isn’t working properly
Weak plot
Rating
72/100
Editor-in-Chief, part-time super villain and hoarder of cats. If you can’t find me writing, I’m probably in the kitchen!
