Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike

"Gained in some areas lost in others."

First there was Street Fighter III: New Generation then there was Street Fighter III: Second Impact and now Capcom has given us their latest Street Fighter III remake, Third Strike. Many people hold this game in high regard saying that it is the best 2D fighter on Dreamcast and even the best fighting game since Street Fighter II, bold claims indeed. I however feel that this game is overrated and over praised.

Don't get me wrong I don't think it's a bad game by any means, in fact if I were evaluating it strictly on its own merit I would probably score it an 8 or 9. However since it's essentially a special edition of an older title I feel that I must give reference to the differences between it and its predecessor SFIII: SI, when passing judgment. When it was released SI Impact took everything that NG had to offer and vastly improved upon it. Yes it was a remake, but it was a substantial enough jump over the original that it felt justified or at least more justified than TS. Plus the series only gained in content from SI, it didn't sacrifice anything for the improvements, whereas TS loses or changes a lot of things that really didn't need to be tinkered with. Let me elaborate a bit more on TS's game play strengths and weaknesses.

Game Play
TS expands on the character roaster by adding four new faces (Twelve, Makoto, Q, and Remy) and by returning fan favorite Chun Li. With these new characters the total head count has been raised to 18 (not counting a few secret ones). Having more selectable characters is definitely nice for variety, but unfortunately I very mixed feelings over many of the design choices. Capcom was trying to break away from the increasingly repetitious style that the SF series was beginning to take on by mixing in new game play elements and for the most part scraping the existing character roaster for totally new ones. The problem is that most of these characters just aren't that interesting or fun to play with compared to their predecessors. Most of their fighting styles are heavily derivative of those seen in SF II (ex: Dudley, Hugo, Necro) or are simply blatant rip offs with the exact same moves (ex: Sean, Remy). Not good when you're supposedly going for a new approach and in the case of TS the new character additions don't do much for the series other than increase the head count, save maybe for Makoto.

TS expands on SI's game play features and adds a few new ones such as the Leap Attack and Grade Judge System. Returning is the Parry System as well as Super Arts and EX Special moves. The Parry System allows you to counter the attacks of your opponent by pressing forward on the control pad when you are standing or down on the control pad while crouching just before an enemy attack connects. I think this was a wise idea not only to add a little spice to the game play but it also helps break away from those annoying Ryu and Ken fireball upper cut combo's that we all know and hate. The problem with this system is that for most gamers they are either very good at making use of it or they are completely hopeless at it (I fall into category b). My utmost respect for those able to conquer the art of parrying. Trying to choose whether to block or parry is also kind of an awkward determination in the heat of combat.

Super Arts are special moves that you can pull off after you have built your attack meter up to a certain point by performing successful attacks (it's exactly the same system as Street Fighter Alpha). Each character has three Special Arts but unfortunately you can only use one of these at a time. Now some will tell you this is good because it forces you to use strategy to pick the best gaming style for the situation but what I and most others will tell you is the opposite. Being limited to only one Super Art at a time gives you a lot less variety and options in battle. Capcom would have been much wiser to let you use all three Super Arts at once. The older games also limited you to just one Super Art so I'm forgiving, but of all the things they could have added to this version this would have made a huge difference.

As for the new features having Leap Attacks is a minor but nice option and the Grade Judge System was a decent idea albeit way too unforgiving in its ratings. Even a fairly good player will likely end up with mostly D's and E's. Another option I quite liked was being given the choice of two possible opponents at the start of most rounds rather than the computer simply choosing them for you as in previous games. This adds a bit more strategy and thought when progressing through the single player mode.

Graphics
The graphics in this game are really incredible and are second to none ...... except for SI! Yes the graphics have actually been downgraded since the earlier versions of SFIII. Animation is no longer as fluid or detailed as before. There's no reason for them not to look at least as good as the two older games, therefore I can't credit them with the same level of enthusiasm. A feature that does help distinguish this game from the earlier versions was the inclusion of totally new stages for each character. This gives TS a slight advantage over SI in creativity as most of SI's stages were identical to NG's save for a few minor tweaks here and there. But the same cannot be said for creative effort. Those of you who have played NG and SI will remember the incredible amount of detail paid to almost everything in the backgrounds. They were full of people and in some cases animals moving around doing all sorts of different things. In some stages it almost looked like the scenery would jump out at you and come to life (Yun, Ryu, Hugo, and Sean's stages especially come to mind) kind of like an anime movie. You could also interact a great deal with the environment such as breaking barrels in Hugo's stage or sculptures in Yang's stage. By contrast the backgrounds in Third Strike offer very little in the way of variety and interaction and people are noticeably absent in nearly all of them. Some of them have no movement whatsoever. I smell laziness here.

Sound
I also felt the music was a little bit lacking in this version. I'll admit there were some stages that had good or even excellent sound tracks such as Remy's (The Beep), Dudley's (You Blow My Mind), and Sean/Oro's (The Longshoreman) but for the most part it just didn't compare well to SI. It's not that I have anything against rap/techno it just doesn't seem to fit as well with the atmosphere of the game as the music in the previous editions. I don't like the sound effects in TS as much as SI either, like the music they don't seem to fit well or come across as convincingly. I also disliked how they replaced all the older voice actors for this edition. The ones in SI were great but these new ones just don't do it for me. Besides considering that nearly all of the character's attacks and quotes are the same as the last two games it's not like it would have been hard to just reuse the old voices and remain purer to the original games. But complaints aside I must give Capcom due credit where it belongs for the innovative idea of including a different remix of the stage's music during each round. This cool little feature was one I really liked and hopefully Capcom will use this in future games.

Buy?
Despite the generally negative tone of this review I really don't think TS is a bad game and if you're looking for a good Dreamcast fighter it's definitely worth a look. I think most people will enjoy this game as it is quite engaging and of all the SF III games it has the most play options. But for my money I'll take the original (Double Impact) over this one it just seems so much more complete and authentic to me. My advice is if you can't decide for yourself just try both and see which appeals more to your tastes.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 08/09/02, Updated 01/06/08

Game Release: Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike (US, 10/04/00)