Capcom Fighting Evolution…How ironic is that title?
Overview
When people think of 2D fighting, the most common answer you will get from the players is Capcom. It seems Capcom has done it all to showcase what can happen in the 2D world. From their famous confrontation with the cast of Marvel comics to taking on their fighting company rival SNK, they have enhance and took dream matches to a whole new level with signature games like Street Fighter Alpha 3 & Street Fighter 3: Third Strike. Capcom looked unstoppable.
Since Capcom vs SNK 2, no fighting games have really been release from them…until now. Was it against another company giant? Well, no. So what you do when you have no one to fight outside your company? Easy! You have your Capcom fighters fighting each other. It seems like a good idea. So with the release of Capcom Fighting Evolution, will this game yield the same great results like the other Capcom versus games?
Graphics 5/10
I don’t mind them taken fighters’ sprites and paste them on another game, even all the people from Red Earth adjusted quite good, but when the people of darkstalkers stick out like R. Kelly in an Ms. Teen USA pageant, the least you could do is clean them up so they somewhat don’t have the obvious body outlining. Pyron’s standing sprite, if it was old or new, is horrible to view and will indeed strain your eyes. Seeing Guy, Urien, and Zangief get a ‘face lift’ made no sense and could have been just left alone. The stages are rich in colors and provide tons of cameos from other fighters…some who should’ve been put in to help the roster. However, when the active fighters are put if front of the stages, you will see how those two do not blend so well and how boring the stages ‘move’. The character artwork, done by Udon, is really the only high point of the graphics.
Gameplay/Controls 5/10
The main spotlight of the game, Evolution tries to be unique from there other versus series, but go nowhere. Depending on who came from what series, the super meter and play systems of that particular series are assigned to them. The SF people get the one long super bar and plays like they were in the Street Fighter 2s (funny last I check in SFII, each person had only one super, not two), SFIII fighters plays like their SFIII selves (parrying and all), the SF: Alpha guys get the custom combo meter and not much else, the Darkstalkers get their quick simple combos and ground attacks, and finally the rare Red Earth stars fight like…just like the others, except their super meter is very irritating to use and they have a very useful ‘Ultimate Guard” method. The only new fighter is Ingrid, who isn’t really anything special as many people consider her a poor man’s SNK Athena and to a certain point, I have to agree with that. If you were given the chance to pick the super/style system, like in CvS2, it could have saved the gameplay a little.
In this version, the object of the battles are to pick two fighters and from then on, each round goes only one-on-one with the victor getting the first two wins. There’s no tagging switch in the middle of the fight. Nope, you can only switch partners until the round is over by either pressing two punches or two kicks to choose the fighter you want to be in the next round. The buttons, combos, and specials/supers are as easy as they always been. The computer AI leans on the…stupid side. While people like Pryon is a sad excuse for an end boss, others, like Demitri and Ingird, will go psychotically smart on you. It’s good to be surprise, but even that’s temporary short in CFE. When all said and done, the entire project ends up flat on its face, below expectations for an arcade game...
Sound/Music 5/10
First up, the music sounds a hell of a lot better then the crap that was MvC2’s soundtrack, but it that doesn’t mean it’s the best. The music can be pile of weirdness. The tracks range from being a little too laid back to trying too much to sound cool for its own good. Like I said before, other then Ingird, all the voice acting is exactly the way with whatever game they came from. (However, I’m not sure on Red Earth’s part) The hitting and defending pleasantly sound nice and the announcer is okay.
Replay Value 3/10
Unless you are going to fight a friend the whole time playing this, the only other reason to play by yourself is see what kind of combos you can do. The buildup is just a couple of regular fights and boom, you’re done. It’s more of a chore, then exciting. Having them restrict the fighters from 5 series limits the extra potential this game needed. Having each fighter use only one certain super bar was a dumb thought, too. The fighters’ endings do look killer with their comic book style setup, but then after that, there is nothing to go back on.
Overall 4/10
Why Capcom decided to change the “Jam” into “Evolution” for the American copy’s title will always boggle my mind because to put “Evolution” in a game like this was a very bad decision. CFE did manage to drastically change the way people looked at Capcom, but for all the wrong reasons, as they went totally went backwards. It could be worth a rental, but even that would be seen as a waste.
- By Mr. Boombada
