X-Men, I would like you to meet Street Fighter…
Street Fighter, I would like you to meet X-Men…
Overview
When people saw Akuma hidden in X-Men: Children of the Atom, people were shock to see the raging demon, inside the mutant universe, fit so well. In one of the weirdest dream matches you’ll ever see, the Street Fighter franchise will team up with Stan Lee’s X-Men, to bring you what’s sure to be derange and groovy fun time. Who would have thought seeing someone team together like Ryu and Cyclops or Dhalsim and Wolverine to ever happen? Do these two entities go good together like chicken and waffles?
Graphics 8/10
Capcom puts the Street Fighter crew as their Alpha style sprites while some of the X-Men came through their release in "X-Men: Children of the Atom". The new ones, like Rouge and Gambit, enter the fighting game world in an impressive showing and Cammy makes her return in a stylish blue spin of her original attire. The stages are mostly wonderfully colored and are big since you can do super jumping. The best thing is almost no breakups on animation. It is amazing to see two Juggernauts fighting each other and their colossal amount of sprites don’t affect the screen.
Seeing the Street Fighters in action donning special powers like that of the X-Men, doesn’t seem so farfetched then I thought. The characters faces showing up right before executing their supers is a cool scene. The funniest part is when in battle, the first defeated member of each team getting knock out and then bouncing their way off the screen. To differentiate in their own terms, I enjoyed the street fighters getting the bright ‘alpha’ explosion when they finish the last fighter with a super, while the X-Men people get a purple variation but with an “X”. No doubt, that kicks ass.
Gameplay/Controls 9/10
Your task here is to pick two fighters and battle other team combinations until you reach the final boss. The big detail that separates it is the fact you can switch teammates at will by pressing the strongest punch and kick at the same time. Hitting that will have your teammate blitz through at a fast pace and become the active fighter. All you got to do is time it well or else you’ll eat pain if your opponent gets an open opportunity.
If you pay attention to the life bar notice that for each hit there is a red empty area in it. If you switch your fighter and they have the redness in them, give them time and they will begin rejuvenating some life back. However, bringing them back while they are in recovery mode will automatically have the bar remove the red portion that wasn't filled. A great strategic idea involve during the rounds.
One of the best inserts is if both members of your team is still fighting, gain enough super level meters and you can perform a tag team super for bigger damage. Some team ups could provide some nifty supers, like Ryu and Ken doing a Super fireball together. Now that’s team work. Many qualities from both series and been mix to form a very fun worthy experience, favoring the X-Men gameplay more. Street Fighter brings in the three level super meter, while X-Men brings in super jumping, air combos, super move executions, and those zany special effects. It quite awesome seeing Ryu throw his super fireball in a huge beam motion, just like Cyclops does his Mega Optic Blast. Some fighters also get cool concepts like Rouge’s kissing special which will let her steal and perform one of her opponent’s known special moves. It’s a sight to see when Rouge is doing a spinning piledriver onto The Red Cyclone, himself or doing a berserker barrage onto Wolverine.
The computer AI this time around isn't really dangerous, in fact there dumb for the most part. For all those who are worried about Juggernaut’s and Magneto's ultimate powers, don't. Capcom knew these guys were fan favorites and downgraded them to even the two sides so moves like the Magnetic Shockwave didn't take half of your energy bar. The one thing that bothered me was when taken on Apocalypse (who isn't really a push over, except his drill move); some of the fighters only have supers that involving grabbing or auto-combo a person. So warriors whose supers, that are auto-combo or need the opponent to be grabbed, are going to have much harder chance beating this behemoth of a mutant.
Sound/Music 8/10
I particularly like the crushing sound of the hard hits and it does give that satisfying sensation when you do combos and supers. Just about all the X-Men people have gotten their voices to match, as they mesh well in the arcade game format. Some are the voice actors from the cartoon animated series, and others for the better, like Magneto’s sinister voice tone. The announcer’s voice sound like something you would expect to hear if you read a comic book with a voiceover.
The music tracks are fresh and exciting. “Being shock” would be understatement when you get to listen to the themes for the Marvel fighters. It was something I didn’t think Capcom would ever make tracks like that in their soundtrack department at all. I wasn’t into the versus music clip as it was too soft and bland for my taste.
Replay Value 9/10
Representing the Street Fighter side is Ryu, Ken, Chun Li, Zangief, Dhalsim, Charlie, Cammy, and Bison. Akuma is hidden in this game as well, but I’ll leave that unanswered since it’s not that hard to find him. Over on X-Men’s side are Cyclops, Storm, Wolverine, Gambit, Rouge, Juggernaut, Sabertooth, and Magneto. Apocalypse is the last boss and will show you real power by become a giant so big, his life bar will be located on the bottom screen. If you manage to beat him, a final battle will take place with you against the other teammate who wasn't active when you landed the final blow on the boss.
The endings are something to look forward to as seeing X-Men people talking to Street Fighter people in several conversations is quite a sight. This is must have for any fans of fighting games who want the tag team battles to go to the next level. This help boost the two player battle to a whole new level. Be cool if there a way of putting four players together taking one fighter each, like Saturday Night Slam Masters. It would be complicating, so no complaints.
Overall 8/10
X-Men VS Street Fighter is one of those games that sound so funky to combine that it just had to work. Cause in the end, this helped introduce Street Fighter fans into what X-Men was all about, including Japanese players, and vice versa.
Even after all these years, XVSF somehow manage to stay current with most fans. This is the ultimate “Odd Couple” of fighting games dream matches. Go get it and you won’t be disappointed.
- by Mr. Boombada
