The thing I love about people at Capcom is their ability to make crossovers, Capcom is known for making many brilliant crossovers, few of them are Capcom vs SNK, Marvel vs Capcom, but they never got much attention. But recently Capcom announced a crossover called Street Fighter X Tekken, and this caught a lot of attention from fighting games fan all over the world, Tekken and Street Fighter are two kings of fighting genre. With this news, there were many questions too, what will be gameplay style, will it more Street Fighter or Tekken? Namco Bandai answered this question by announcing a crossover from their side called Tekken X Street Fighter that will be using Tekken style gameplay while Street Fighter X Tekken will be based on Street Fighter style gameplay.
Street Fighter X Tekken is a blend of some of the best elements from both franchises while keeping the whole focus on the Street Fighter side, it simply means you’ll be playing a Street Fighter game but with many elements from Tekken. Few gameplay elements that were extracted from Tekken such as tag system and manual throws, both of them work brilliantly and with ease. The outcome feels new, we can say that the game is half Tekken and half Street Fighter.
Game’s roster is evenly balanced between Street Fighter and Tekken. You find have any difficulties finding your favorites among this roster. Big faces of Tekken like King, Jin, Kazuya, Heihachi and Yoshimitsu are present in the roster. Now here’s an amazing thing. Each character from Tekken has a counterpart of itself from Street Fighter roster, fighting them will result in dynamic pre-fight conversations and possibly new stories in Arcade Mode.
Gameplay in Street Fighter X Tekken is tremendously fluid and fact-paced, using the switch system, you can change your characters just with a press of a button resulting in devastating combos that can eventually lead to end of the fight without even giving your opponent a chance to get up. Switching system works like Tekken Tag Tournament instead of Marvel vs Capcom, it means that you won’t have cycled characters after one gets knocked down, you’ll simply lose the whole round if one of your character gets knocked down. Few new elements are added that doesn’t belong to either Tekken or Street Fighter series, these are Pandora Mode and Gem System.
Pandora Mode is a game changer mode, it gives you 10 seconds to defeat your enemy, and if they’re having low health, it can score you a win, now here’s the thing, you can only use one character with this mode, and you will get a full get an unlimited cross-gauge to destroy your enemy, but if he’s dodging your attacks and blocking them, it won’t take any time in getting you in a deep mess.
Gems system is possibly the best addition in the gameplay of Street Fighter X Tekken, Gems add multiple specific abilities for your fighter, there are 2 types of Gems, boost and assist, boost Gems will buff up your attack and defense, making you more strong and giving an overall ability to hit harder, these gems will activate once you reach a certain condition in the battle. Assist Gems will turn on the ability of auto-blocking and auto -cancelling, these abilities will drain a little portion of your cross-gauge. There are few Gems that will only work when you’re in Pandora Mode, before starting the fight, you can customize your Gem load-out.
Game is pretty stable when it comes to online play, provided you have good internet connection with no disconnections, the only problem I encountered was slowdowns during some matches and occasional hiccups here and there, but it was not a big issue. However, the online modes lacks profoundness, they’re not that fun as compared to MvC 3, but still feels solid. The feature of challenging other online players returns from Street Fighter IV, means players from can challenge you in the middle of Arcade Mode, this gives the feel of someone challenging you in the arcades. God, I miss those days. There are new modes, Scramble mode, where all 4 players are active at the same time and then there is Endless Battle Mode where you will fight series of unranked matches.
Street Fighter X Tekken looks like the recently released Super Street Fighter IV, it means that the highly detailed characters, bright environments and flashy fighting moves are there. And it’s an awesome satisfaction to see the Tekken roster making their way into the game, making it insanely awesome and fun to play, whether you’re playing alone or with friends.
Street Fighter X Tekken is an extremely solid fighting game, and is certainly on top of the fighting games that are available these days, with rosters from both Tekken and Street Fighter series, the game extremely fluid combat system, Gems system works like a charm and so does the tagging mechanics. Here’s to hoping that Namco Bandai comes up with something solid with their crossover Tekken X Street Fighter.
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