I’m ushered, ticket in hand, by a Sony staffer past the seemingly endless lines for Gravity Daze and Dark Souls III, around the monolithic black walls of Sony’s booth. They’re the type of walls that are so unremarkable you just know it’s inversely proportionate to what’s inside, and oh boy is that the case. Being inside Sony’s booth is like being inside some kind of gaming fetish fever dream. Everything is backlit or underlit, the noise is palpable and every inch of floor space is taken up by a playstation or someone using that playstation. I’m suddenly very grateful for my friendly sherpa.
Street Fighter V has a big presence at TGS this year, both at Capcom and at Sony’s booths, and Sony’s line to play it was considerably shorter than Capcom’s, in that there wasn’t really a line at all. Once inside, I was paired with a Japanese journalist and we were sat down almost instantly. What followed was pretty impressive as Street Fighter V is shaping up to be a worthy entry to the franchise, even if there was little to the demo that set it drastically apart from what’s come before.
For the first fight, I played as Chun-Li. The graphics, we were playing on PS4 obviously, look like an updated version of Street Fighter IV‘s 2.5d manga style, the character’s facial features and animations are a little less goofy than before and everything moves with a fluidity almost reminiscent of Dead Or Alive. I’m also happy to report that the controls you’ve spent years perfecting in the various iterations of IV, are still in place here, and even happier to confirm that Chun-Li is still a goddess. I walked away from my first fight victorious.
Our second round was a little different. My opponent and I decided that we wanted to see each character’s special more than either of us wanted to win, so some very polite fighting – and many “sumimasen”s – later, we finally saw some big moves. As ever, they’re visually impressive and some of them are total game changers. Vega’s special absolutely annihilated me, as Cammy, despite my health bar sitting confidently at just over 70%. The only disappointment was M. Bison, whose special is distance sensitive, and despite our best efforts, when the time came I was a few steps too far away for anything to happen. We laughed, but we both hated me a little.
In our third round I got to try one of the new guys, an Arabic character named Rashid. Rashid has a flowing fighting style, almost capoeira-like but not quite, and his special moves seem to hint at some kind of power over wind. He was a lot of fun to play as and dealt a lot of damage. He’s not quite as fast as the girls, nor as hard-hitting as some of the boys, but he seems like a nice entry-level character for newcomers to get used to Street Fighter’s infamous rhythm.
Street Fighter V is a lot of fun, and the promise that it will come in one constantly updated version, instead of an endless string of suffix-riddled sort-of-sequels, is certainly a good thing. I’m no expert, so it’s possible many of the subtle nuances were lost on me, but I didn’t see in V the same kind of drastic leap we saw from III to IV. Not that that’s necessarily needed this time around, mind you. Street Fighter has always been sensitive to the changing styles and tastes of its players and V is setting itself up to be, for a while at least, the definitive version of the SF experience. If you like Street Fighter, and let’s face it; who doesn’t, you’ll probably already be eager to get your hands on this and you probably hate me a little for getting mine on it first. Fear not, Street Fighter V is definitely worth the wait, provided what you’re waiting for is more Street Fighter.
