A Game for Fighting Fans

Capcom and SNK have been the life of 2d fighting games. They've kept them alive, feeding fresh ideas to the genre throughout the years. Many have considered them rival companies. Creating two of the greatest series of all time, the Street Fighter series by Capcom, and the King of Fighters series by SNK. This game is a match up between characters from each of the series, and from a few other games by each of the companies. This game however was created by Capcom. So how does it fair compared to other Capcom games? It's a great game. It has everything you could want: great graphics and animation, huge character selection, and a good fighting system.

All in all the graphics in this game is amazing. Capcom's renditions of SNK's characters are beautiful. Capcom just seems to have a way with making the characters look good. New colors have been added to the characters, little details show up nice. Capcom took all the SNK characters and just added Capcom's own look to them, and what you end up with is a work of art. They're absolutely beautiful. The only problem with the graphics, is Capcom redid all the SNK characters, but just used old character sprites from Alpha 3. So what they did, is took the drawings from Street Fighter Alpha 3, and used those in this game. What happens is that you get a not so good of a look as the other characters. They did however redraw Bison, and he looks very cool now. He's thin, sleek, and he just looks much meaner. Not to say the Alpha 3 sprites were bad, but I just wish Capcom would have redrawn all the characters, rather than just the SNK ones and Bison. With all the characters though, new effects and better animated motions have been brought in. Fireballs have been very spiffed up with the 2d handdrawn look gone, and a new 3d, shiny look. The lightning effects are just gorgeous. You see all the separate bolts and the way the move actually looks like electricity. The fire isn't so corny and doesn't just look the same for everybody. The fire has particle effects, and a isn't the 2d hand drawn fire anymore. All the new looks of these moves just add to the picture and creates and even more beautiful piece of art. The graphics in this game are great.

Along with the great characters, come amazing backgrounds. The backgrounds in Capcom vs. SNK are polygon backgrounds wrapped with nice beautiful 2d pictures. So what you get is a very smooth, 3d background, that looks handdrawn. Very pretty. Capcom sneaks some little things into the backgrounds, that just add to it. Like when you're fighting in this building that is being constructed, and while you fight it falls down, if you read the sign in the back, it's Ryo's dojo. Stuff like that. Little details. Like in the arcade, look at what game the kids are playing in the back. The details are just great. Capcom paid so much attention to detail. To the puddles on the ground, to the fire burning in the torches, to the hologram in the background of Bison's stage. The backgrounds are just beautiful.

As for the characters in this game, it has a huge selection. Not as many as Marvel vs Capcom 2, but still, this has enough variety to keep you playing. It has the same amount of characters from Capcom games as from SNK games. The characters are pretty well chosen. You have some of the best Street Fighters(Ken, Ryu, Guile, Dhalsim) against some of the best SNK characters(Iori, Kyo, Ryo, Geese). It's a great selection. All your favorites from SNK might not be there this time around, but many of the good ones are. Capcom has done well chosing the characters in this game and give a good selection. It's hard to say what characters should have been chosen since both companies have created so many great characters. The roster for this game might leave some disappointed, but you can't expect them to make everybody happy.

Ah, now the fun part, the gameplay. As far as Capcom vs. SNK goes, it's pretty standard gameplay. Instead of chain combos (going from light, to medium, to fierce), you now have links again. What that means is that timing is everything. You can't just mash stuff out, you have to actually wait and time the combos. You can still do a light into a fierce, but you have to link it, which means you have to wait for the light to finish and then do the fierce real quick. It requires more skill than chain combos. The biggest change in the gameplay has to be Capcom making it only four buttons. Almost all of Capcom's fighters are six button fighting games, and all of their Street Fighter games are always six buttons. SNK's games are four buttons, so for this game, Capcom made it only four buttons. What that changes is that the jab and fierce buttons are not exactly what they were when you played Street Fighter. Using directions and normal attacks, will get you some of the moves you're missing because of losing two buttons, but it just feels a little different. Thats probably the biggest change. The game also lets you choose between SNK groove and Capcom groove. What it is, is Capcom groove keeps the basic super meter charged up by attacks, three levels, and you can use one bar at a time. SNK groove charges up while you press for it to charge. You press and hold the buttons, and your character sits there and charges up meter, and you can then do a super. And if you get low on life you can do infinite supers when your meter starts flashing red. This creates a little strategy, because in Capcom groove you can have up to three meters and do three different levels of supers, doing different damage and comboing differently. In SNK groove you only have two supers and might only be able to combo into some supers with a flashing red life bar and a fully charged meter(that combination allows for the equivalent of a level three super in Capcom groove). No groove is actually better than the other, it's personal choice. It creates a deeper level of strategy. You're required to find which way works best for you and what you want to sacrifice, infinite supers when low on health, or more supers because you constantly build meter from attacking. It makes for some characters to be more powerful in certain grooves and some combos can only be done in certain grooves, so the level of depth and strategy just takes a huge leap. Another big change is you always fight with teams, based on a ratio system. The characters are all give a ratio, one, two, three, or four. You choose a team and the total ratio can only add up to four. So you can have four characters on a team, if they're all ratio one, or just one character if it's a ratio four character. One means they do less damage and take more damage, four means they take less damage and do more damage. What ends up happening is you can create tons of different combinations choosing many different characters trying to create teams that suit your taste. You might not be able to choose two of your favorite characters together because of the ratio system, but you most likely will find some combination that will suit your taste. All fights are done with this team then. If your character gets knocked out, your next character jumps in for the next round. Fights can go rather long, but because of the new team choosing and ratio system, strategy level is shot up even more. You can choose a team that you think will do better against the opponent's team. So you can try to use characters that you think will match up character for character against their characters. You might only have two characters on your team, and your opponent could have four. It creates a nice new level of strategy and adds a lot to the game. Though some might be disappointed with the ratio system at first, you get used to it quickly and don't mind it so much. Those are the biggest changes in gameplay. The other changes are small. No air blocking, like in the old games. You can get guard crushed if you block too much, meaning that you block too much and then your block breaks for a second and you can get attacked. Basically it's good old fashioned fighting with a few new tweaks, that I talked about above.

The bottom line is this is an all around good game. It has great depth, great characters, and good graphics with some nice animation to top it all off. It's the matchup of a century, SNK and Capcom going neck and neck. People have been waiting years for it. The game is definitely worth picking up. It has a few flaws, like the old sprites and some people might find four buttons as a flaw, but it really is a great game. The flaws hardly do anything to the game. Pick up, play it with friends, unlock all the secrets which should take you lots of hours, and enjoy the game. With great replay value, this is definitely worth the cash.