"And so it ends here."

Street Fighter III: Third Strike

Ryu wasn't feeling too good. He'd entered the same tournament so many times with the same people that life was starting to feel like it was on a constant repeat, but only with minor changes! The first few were fun but what Ryu needed was a big revamp.

He cast his mind back to the good old days when he and his friend Ken were still the stars of the show and were quick and nimble. He thought about the days of busting out super combos and smacking his unforgettable adversaries in the face with his awesome uppercut. He even remembered that annoying schoolgirl and how fighting was an excuse to punch her in the face.

Good times, good times, thought Ryu.

To his surprise a new tournament opened up!Run by a strange organization, just as the others were! Ryu decided to enter. He built up alot of hype in the hope of seeing his friends and showing off his flashy new moves.

However...whilst things aren't the same, it's not a good thing.

Street Fighter III: Third Strike is, as far as I'm concerned, the last 'proper' Street Fighter game, probably forever (Capcom of Japan feel the series has run it's course now and have semi-retired it). I had alot of hype built up as many a person would bang on about how brilliant it was. With my experience with 3rd Strike, however, this was not to be.

Gameplay - Shin Tiredfranchisezu Boringpuken!!

After milking and milking and milking Street Fighter 2's desert-dry teats, Capcom decided they wanted another way to make money so they decided to actually make a proper sequel (after making 3 prequels!!) a complete revamp, something new to the fighting game scene, right? If you're gonna make a new Street Fighter, it's got to be above all.

This isn't. It uses a new engine, yes, but the gameplay is exactly the same as the more recent Street Fighters. Super Combos, energy bars and the like are all present. But it's been done so much before. After playing Alpha 3 quite a lot, I found hardly anything new in this game at all. Everything's good only because it's featured from other, superior games.

The 'parry' system is awful and not needed. Tap towards your opponent when attacking and you flip the scales around, giving you the advantage. It's not that hard to time and can make matches pathetically easy. The 'new' characters (which I'll get onto in a bit) tend to play like the old ones. Also, due to the really long animation for some attacks, they take ages to execute. Some call it tactical, I call it stupidity for a fast-paced fighting game about combos and the like.

In my opinion, the gameplay of Street Fighter is pretty tired now. Classic for one or two games, but I'd say it suffered by not moving to 3D in the correct manner. A properly done 3D Street Fighter could be revolutionary and even better than the 'king' that is Tekken.

Alas, Capcom decided to remake the formula that they've been milking for many a year. Sure, it's still good Street Fighter when it gets going, but there's just nothing new. I feel like I'm confined instead of breathing a beath of fresh air.

There's plenty of other things, like how you can only choose one super move for a match, and unless you get a Game Over and continue, you can't change it for the rest of your game! Using the same Super gets very stale indeed. Also, not much to do outside the Arcade game.

Controls - Hey, these work!

Responsive and customizable, so no complaints here. I'm not too keen on the Dreamcast pad, especially for fighters, but sure enough if I want a Hadouken pulling off then Ryu and Ken don't hesitate at all. Sweet.

Graphics - They still hold up. A little.

Street Fighter 3 has some of the best looking sprites ever. Clothes ripple, everyone's beautifully coloured and shaded, it's just like watching a side-on Japanese cartoon. Some characters look a little silly - the 'rotoscoped' Elena (basically her animations are that complex because they're traced over the movements of a real person) doesn't really work, and Makoto's feet are much bigger than her head.

The length of some of the animations actually hinders the gameplay. I'd rather attack quickly than attack slowly but look good whilst doing so, which is what happens with quite a few characters. The backgrounds are very bland and don't reflect the characters as much as those of Street Fighter 2 and the Alpha series, with next to no animation to boot. A shame in that factor.

The menus and presentation are functional, but definitely not great. The character portraits look alright though.

Characters - GUYS!? WHERE ARE YOU!? GUYS??

Oh dear. This is where the game really chokes on it's custard creams and falls flat on it's face. Four of the original Street Fighter characters return, the remaining 15 or so are totally new. Which would be good if more than a few were, you know, decent.

Firstly, you've got some plain awful characters. Q is a robot masked Inspector Gadget thing/stock mysterious character. He is rubbish. He's brown and grey and has no origin or anything. I hate him. Awful for any series, but a fighting game needs a much more interesting cast than a man in a brown overcoat.

Twelve is a hideous shapeshifting thing that even the Guilty Gear cheacters would consider a freak. He's nasty to look at and is even worse to play as. He has no personality or real origin country, and is coloured a horrible white/grey colour.

Urien is a man in a thong. And nothing else. Zangief could pull it off 'cos he was a Russian badass, but Urien just looks stupid. Akuma, the worst character from the previous games, returns in all his 'am evil lol' glory. Oro, an old man who fights with one hand and wears a sack, makes me feel sick.

Then we move onto the 'okay, but I'd rather have...' characters. These have nice designs but control just like some of the old characters! Elastic man Necro is a splice of Dhalsim and Blanka, Hugo is an updated Zangief, Remy is a skinny, girly French Guile (an idea which SNK used too, how original of them!), Dudley is a British Balrog (though he plays much better), Yang and Yun are similar to Fei Long, and Sean is your typical gi-wearing karate fighter.

That leaves the remaining characters that are original and also well-designed. Ibuki is a cool ninja girl with some swift moves, Elena is a flashy African dancer and my personal favourite Makoto is a cute karate student. She's like Sakura but not as annoying.

And now for the big boss of the game. Gill. Ohhhh dear. What a mess this thing is. A man wearing nothing but a white thong, who glows, has floating blonde hair, and ....wait for it....half of his body is blue and half is red. Gill is the most terrible final boss I have ever seen. He's strange but not comically, it's altogether very disturbing fighting him. I thought Akuma had a bad design, but geez!

And so, Capcom, why did you ignore your heritage? Your own classic characters? New characters don't make a fresh game. If it weren't for Ryu, Ken etc, this would feel like a cheap knock-off because there's no other staple characters there! Where are Sagat and Vega? What happened to Zangief and Cammy!? Why did you put in a stupid experiment and Inpector Gadget On Crack and a smelly old man? Where's the comic relief of Dan Hibiki when you need him!? And WHY OH WHY did you have to put that AWFUL Akuma in!?

...I'll stop ranting.

Sound

Effects are crunchy and sound as they should. The soundtrack is very original and IS a breath of fresh air. Very dancy with some hip hop, it strangely fits the fighting genre and does bring back the meaning of the 'Street' theme despite being destroyed by the game's awful plot.

Story

It involves Gill and is therefore automatically bad. Characters just seem to enter for the sake of fighting and the endings are pointless for the most part. Plus, although you travel the world, it really doesn't feel like it. More like different parts of the same country.

Pros and Cons

+Street Fighter still holds up! Kinda.
+Nice soundtrack
+Ten or so well-designed new characters.
+ You can punch Gill in the face.
+Some brilliant 2D animation

- Gill.
- The classic gameplay's grown stale.
- Four awful, nasty new characters.
- Loss of classics such as Cammy and Sagat
- Not much to do outside the Arcade Mode.

Conclusion

A disappointing end to the milked Street Fighter series. Some cool new characters and nice music, but definitely not essential. And if this is the best Capcom could do, then I'm glad the series has been put to rest. It's 2007 now, and fighting games have changed, much more complex and fresh than SF was.

Still, there's always that glimmer of hope for a Street Fighter IV.

6/10

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 02/06/07