Street Fighter Alpha 3 MAX

"Go For Broke! MAX"

Street Fighter Alpha 3 Max.... A long title, but a good game. A welcome addition to any PSP collection, Street Fighter has a special shine in this game. Going back to the characters from Street Fighter 2, this game should be perfect. And it is close to so, but not quite.

Gameplay: Well, let's jump straight into the gameplay of Street Fighter Alpha 3 Max. It's the same as every other Street Fighter game, but that's not a bad thing. The fast paced action can keep you hooked for hours on end. The game runs pretty smoothly, encountering very little problems. It's simple, beat up your opponent until his life bar hits zero. Easy? Sometimes. There are multiple levels of difficulty ranging from very easy to very hard. It also allows you to edit the difficulty right before entering battle, removing the neccesity to exit out of the game mode, and going to options to edit difficulty. Battle is perfect. The moves are pretty good, and it never gets to easy to win. Street Fighter Alpha 3 Max gives solid gameplay.

Gameplay
10/10


Character Roster: Street Fighter Alpha 3 Max allows every character from Street Fighter 2 to be playable, as well as 4 new characters. We get all the classics like Ryu, Ken, Akuma, Blanka, Chun Li, and many more. As well as some new blood like Juni and Juli. All the old characters play the same as before, with the same moves practically. Despite the wide-character options (there's 35 or so), many characters are the same. Ken and Ryu are very similar, just with different super specials, Akuma is just a more powerful but slower version of the two, with an awesome Special move, Evil Ryu is just Ryu with Akuma's Special, and Sakura is a girl version, with slightly modefied moves, and faster as well as weaker. It's not only the case with them, because Charlie and Guile are practically the same characters, as well as Juni and Juli. Interesting characters, but too many are the same.

Character Roster
7/10


Enemy A.I.: Ok, this is perhaps the worst part of the game for me. Usually, people complain about an A.I. that is too easy to defeat. It is the exact opposite in this game. One word can describe how I feel about this A.I.... FRUSTRATED!!! The A.I. in this game is soooo cheap. I would like to have a perfectly balanced A.I. that uses a bunch of different moves, but that is not the case in this game. It'd easy to be cheap in this game, and the enemy exploits it so well They will use the same move over and over again repeatedly until you lose. I usually welcome a decent challange, but this is just too much. Casual gamers who aren't too good at the game, will most likely quit after the first couple of fights. So in all, this game brings an unwelcome challenge, that can make people hate the game.

Enemy A.I.
5/10


Game Modes: The game modes in Street Fighter Alpha 3 Max are good at best. There was some good ones like Vs. 100 Kumite and Dramatic Battles, but there just wasn't enought for me. The Free Play and Arcade fights were fine, but I feel like the game is lacking. They should've had things such as Trick Matches or Challenge Battles where you can only do a certain move or something similar. But on the plus side of things, there were some really cool game modes. World Tour was great, being able to level up and defeat enemies using certain moves, but those individual battles in World Tour weren't incorporated into standard modes, so you had to do them as you progressed in that mode. The Boss Battle mode was great as well, being able to skip the 9 levels and jumping straight to the end with M. Bison. So, there is great modes, but a lack of others.

Game Modes
7/10


Online: This game doesn't really support online capabilities, just Wi-Fi with someone within a few yards. And if they get out of 3 yards or so it'll start to glitch, which really isn't exceptable nowadays. But if you do end up near a friends who can play, you'll find it very fun. You can play your friends in tournaments, Variable battles, Dramatic battles, and R. Dramatic battles, as well as Standard battles. It's so much fun teaming up with your friend taking on an opponent at the highest level. Wi-Fi is a plus, but the lack of wider online capabilities makes it more of a minus than a plus.

Online
6/10


Sound Effects: I'm not too good on judging music, so I'll leave this section all to the wonderful sound effects of this game. I sometimes play the game just to hear Ryu yell, "Hadoken". The voice acting is great in battle, and fits so well with action on the screen. This is the best part of the game! The noised they make when they are hit, or hit someone, or even jump are simply amazing! You can even hear their clothes make the SWOOSH sound! I could go on and on about how great these sound effects are! They are better than many games on the Playstation, Xbox, and Gamecube! But I'll stop ranting about the excellent sounds now...

Sound Effects
10/10


Graphics: The graphics in Street Fighter Alpha 3 Max are the sprites that we all know and love. They have some enhancements from the Street Fighter 2, making them better than ever before! Some people will call sprites terrible art, but these sprites are really, really good! They blow in the breeze, they ruffle when they are hit, they are truely underestimated. The level designs are niceley done as well. Each level is pretty unique, ranging from a Night Club in L.A. to a peaceful town in Greece. The levels are simplistic which, in my honest opinion, is very good. There's no throwing an enemy through a table, or going to another section in the area. These simplistic graphics are amazingly brought together with the music and sound effects, making a great artistic game.

Graphics
10/10

Replayability: There is buckets of replayability to Street Fighter Alpha 3 Max. Once you beat through the arcade with each of the 30+, you can play through them again with Variable, Dramatic, and R. Dramatic battles/ you can also do the Vs. 100 Kumite, which can supply a pretty good challenge. But before long, the fire that burned through you when you first started playing will be gone. And unless you have a friend nearby that you can play with, you'll be pretty bored with the game modes. But after a while you can get back into it, then get bored, then back into it, rinse, and repeat. So on and off playing can be good... or bad?

Replayability
8/10

Final Word: Well, here it is, the end of my review. I'll finish it off by saying, Street Fighter Alpha 3 Max is a great game. It lacks in some places, and amazingly succeeds in others. It is not as good as some platform and arcade fighting games, but it gives a nice "Shoryuken" to all the other PSP fighting games.

Overall
(7.8) 8/10

TRIUMPH OR DIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 07/17/08

Game Release: Street Fighter Alpha 3 MAX (US, 02/07/06)