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JK51981's Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike (PS2)
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| [January 12, 2007 01:37:15 PM]
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I started playing against the computer in arcade mode with characters I was familiar with, namely the Shotokan trio – Akuma, Ryu, and Ken, the former with which I am most capable. I slugged it through to the end, oftentimes button-mashing in attempts to pull off the special and super moves, occasionally parrying by mistake. The fights were pretty ugly, with my clumsy handling and low marks on the A-F ranking system. I was lucky if I managed to pull a C. Though the first bonus stage was reminiscent of the car-smashing exercise of Street Fighter 2 fame, I had no absolutely no idea on how to even begin attempting the second stage. One of the playable characters controlled by the computer, Sean, would shoot basketballs at you while a simple set of instructions told you to parry them. I kept asking myself, “How am I supposed to parry?” while the basketballs made way with my face and I futilely tried to punch them away.
I eventually made it to the final battle against the red and blue antagonist, Gill, who happened to be an excruciatingly tough opponent. He has a particularly nasty habit of hitting the player really hard with fire and ice-based attacks and resurrecting to full health if he dies with a full super bar intact. This combined with the fact that I was a newbie made this an activity almost comparable to shoving bamboo slits under my fingernails. I didn’t keep count on the number of attempts my victory took, but I can assure you there was plenty of screaming and anguish.
After a good while, I played a series of human vs. human games against Paul (palani on GameLog), one of my roommates. This is where the real learning and appreciation sequence began. We sampled all of the characters the game had to offer us and figured out the intricate parrying and EX move system. At one point, we had spent at least a solid ten minutes chucking different projectiles at each other and parrying them. We had begun to break the surface of parrying, and we knew that it would take an exceptional amount of time and skill in order to eventually parry the rapid and oftentimes more random melee attacks. I had also deviated from exclusive use of the Shotokan trio at this point; finding utility in Elena, the Capoeira fighter whose attacks solely consist of kicks.
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| [January 12, 2007 05:41:31 AM]
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Street Fighter III is the long-awaited, true sequel to the legendary Street Fighter II series. Street Fighter III: Third Strike, in particular, is the third and latest installment of the SFIII series and the game that’s currently taking up the most of my time. Fan favorites Ryu, Ken, Akuma, and Chun Li are the only returning characters from previous games, while a bevy of colorful and exotic new characters fill the ranks. There are more frames of animation than ever before, resulting in the most fluid movement to date. This is a breath of fresh air that has been due for a long time, especially because of Capcom’s notorious reputation of recycling character sprites (Morrigan of Darkstalkers in Capcom vs. SNK and Marvel vs. Capcom, for example).
The gameplay, in the macro sense, remains fundamentally unchanged. The objective is still to defeat the computer or human opponent in a virtual, 2-D environment with fighting techniques executed with joystick/directional pad-button combinations similar to those used in previous games. However, many technical revamps and innovations have been made to suit this sequel. Parrying, perhaps the most significant addition, is a hybridization of defense and offense. This is executed by pressing forward right when the opponent’s attack makes contact with you, which negates all damage taken and eliminates block stun, allowing you to instantly counterattack your opponent after a successful parry. I feel this is an excellent balance of risk against reward, as failure results in the player taking the full blunt of the opponent’s attack.
Super moves have also received a revamp; each character being limited to one chosen before the match. Each super move has their own varying bar length and varying numbers of stock, which adds a greater element of strategic choice. These bars can also be used to execute EX moves, which are simply powered up versions of special moves. Like super moves, EX moves have varying bar depletion rates, which further pushes the strategic element. Players have to make choices between their wide range of abilities and when to use them, making this game a rich and complex 2-D fighter, relative to past incarnations such as Street Fighter 2. When I had first picked up this game, I was ignorant to the aforementioned technical additions and I limited myself to special and super moves. Only when I probed deeper and figured them out, did I truly develop a true admiration for the game, which I will discuss in a future post.
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JK51981's Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike (PS2)
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Current Status: Finished playing
GameLog started on: Friday 12 January, 2007
GameLog closed on: Saturday 27 January, 2007 |
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