Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike

"Live up to the series? No. But does that make it bad...?"

I played Street Fighter 3 like once when it came out and didn't like it at the time. This was a very long time ago and it was before I got a renewed interest in the Fighting game genre from the Fatal Fury anime and Capcom Vs. SNK though. Anyway, after that period, I got hooked, and found Third Strike for rental on Dreamcast. Being DC incarnations are usually Arcade perfect, I decided to give it another try before buying it. At first glance, I was still extremely annoyed by the graphics style (I have a huge love for SFA animation), and I didn't like the fact Ken and Ryu (and Chun Li and Akuma for SF3:3rd Strike) were the only returning characters. However, as I played more and experimented, I learned what makes this game a well balanced game, and though only 2nd worse in the series (The worst clearly goes to the original SF), it still holds a worthy name in the SF line up.

The animation was possibly the best in any game yet, and I don't see how I didn't realize this at first. It's very seemless and some characters animations look nearly 3D, like they were cel shaded. (Elena, despite being a bad character, had some of the best animations I've seen.) and each character is designed with a unique look. Aside from Animation, backgrounds were very detailed, though pretty boring. Barely any of the backgrounds had any animation except reactions to power attacks (The leaves shaking on the ground whenever Makato did her chop attack on the ground rocked). For example, Elena's stage. The sun setting on an african field was beautiful, but other then that, there was nothing to the field. Just... grass. Not very exciting.

Speaking of Graphics and what not, whoever designed the characters should be shot. While some of them are excellent (Ibuki will always have a place in my heart) but the majority are freaks (Oro), Science experiments gone wrong (Twelve) or SNK Boss rip offs (Gill). Only a good minority of them were actually real fighters, and though most of them were done exceedingly well (Alex, Yun, Ibuki...), some were just either meant to be there to fill in the roll of the missing SF2 characters (Hugo), or were just plain bad (Elena).

The music was pretty good, though Elena's theme getting stuck in your head is definetly not a good thing. This game though is a MAJOR improvement over Capcom's recent attempts at music (Marvel Vs. Capcom 2) and though the themes aren't as catchy as they were in Street Fighter 2, they are good enough to get you into the fight, so long as you can stand the rap in the intro and character select screen, and I'm sure most people can.

Audio shined pretty well. The voices are surprisingly well done and fit each character to the T. The American characters even sound American, not like a Japanese person trying to speak English (Gotta love Alex's new york accent... ''At ease, Losah!'') and the female voices aren't as annoying as they usually are (No matter what anyone tells you about Ibuki-chan!). Hitting your opponent sounded more like shattering glass though, but barely any Fighting game has realistic fight sounds sampled for the game. Why? I don't know, but it doesn't sound like it'd be that hard to do, but that's a rant for something else.

But what's most important here is the gameplay, which is Standard SF fighting fare for the most part. The most notable difference is the fact you can only use one Desperation move at a time, and you have to select which one you want. This is ok in some aspects, but it leaves alot to desire in terms of strategy. Sometimes, some Desperations are needed for different characters. Each Desperation has a different meter. Some DMs have longer meter then others, and some let you charge up to just one meter, 2, or 3. Once you gain a little to each meter, you can use up a little of it to perform an Ex version of each special move. So, Ryu's normal Hadouken with Ex is a red fireball which hits twice, in exchange for a little meter.

Another new aspect, possibly the most controversial, is parrying. Basiclly, you press forward right before an attack, you take no damage, and are given the chance to counter attack. This can get particuarlly interesting when fighting takes place between good parriers (Back and forth parrying between counters.) but also particuarly annoying for someone who can't parry worth crap who is a decent player (Read: ME!) is fighting someone who is extremely good at parrying, but sucks as a fighter. Either way, though, no matter what you think of it, this adds a whole new level to fighting, and I suggest you take the time to practice though some won't find practicing it (Read: ME!) doing any good for them.

Difficulty factor is another thing, It's pretty high compared to Capcom's recent fighters like CvSNK and MvC2. I can plow through both of those games and SFA3 on the highest difficulty, no problem, this game I have trouble on the lowest difficulty. Though I give the credit to Capcom for making some decent AI for a change, Gill, the last boss, is just plain cheap. This is the only Capcom Boss I've seen to suffer from SNK Boss Syndrome. He can use all 3 of his DMs, one which takes 50% of your energy, one which can be an instant kill if your not careful, and another which can restore all of his energy if you don't stop the move and QUICK. Other then that, he is extremely fast and uses alot of hard hitting combos. The cheapness of this boss is just to much to bear, though still not as hard as say Goenitz or Omega Rugal '95.

And extras... Well, There's ways to edit the games options a little more with System Directions, which you can unlock new pages to with beating the game, and you can face a hard CPU opponent, Q, for meeting certain conditions. Other then that, if your looking for alot of cool features and neat additions, better look for CvSNK instead. This game doesn't offer much reason to go back to it, except for multiplay and the sheer gameplay.

All in all, This is not the best Fighting game ever. In fact, it's simply an Above average game over all thanks to the bad character design and overly cheap boss. Everything else, is really fine, so long as you can accept Ryu no longer being the main character. IF you shoto freaks can do that, then this is a good game for any Fighting game freak, though I suggest renting it if you only enjoy Fighting games once in a while.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 09/03/01, Updated 09/03/01