Oh, I knew it couldn’t last too long before I caved in and reviewed a fighting game. With the recent flow of fighting games coming in from the last couple years, Capcom has remade arguably its best fighting game of all time (in my opinion, of course). That game is Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike. Sporting all 19 characters (20, counting Gill as a playable character) of the game’s original release and an arcade-perfect engine, the game’s back for the new generation, as well as us gurus.

The game has five selections from the main menu: Single Player, Multiplayer, Ranking Boards, Help & Options, and Downloadable Content. First we have Single Player, which has its own menu: Arcade Mode, Trials Mode, Training Mode, Challenges and Vault. Arcade Mode is your typical ladder run through various opponents (most rounds you can choose between two random opponents; the last couple rounds will be predetermined (second-to-last will be a character-dependent rival battle, last will be a boss showdown against Gill). Trials Mode is perfect for beginners and veterans alike, in practicing character-specific combos, parry strings and “handicap trials” which have you playing as a set character against another character with a significant health advantage (your health is but a minimal fraction). Training lets you choose between normal training (which has its own training menu and customizing to let you get the best out of your sessions) and parry training (has you record a set of attacks as the second player, and then lets you practice parrying them as the first player). Challenges keep track of certain accomplishments earned by performing certain actions in game, including playing through arcade mode with each character, completing their trials, and displaying mastery of certain gameplay elements such as super arts, throws, and parries; completed challenges award VP, or vault points, which can be spent at the Vault, the shop. You can unlock music, concept art, character endings and videos here.

Multiplayer covers Local Match, Ranked Match, Player Match, Tournament, Replays, Challenges and Invites. Local Match is a standard 1 on 1 fight against you and a buddy in the same room. Ranked Match pits you against a random player fighting for rank; the outcome of the match is recorded on your profile, so only come here if you intend to win. Player Match are for fun and relaxed play against people you don’t know, or friends over the net. Tournament is just what it sounds like, a party session that is used to determine the best of a group (a notable point to be made is that matches cannot play more than one at a time, some people don’t like watching matches, so that might be a bad thing for some). You can save replays of matches to be watched in the Replays area, as well as upload them to Youtube and the match server. Challenges are also recorded similar to its Single Player counterpart, except while many are reused for Multiplayer, the numbers are kept separate from each other, and instead of Arcade and Trials, it gains Ranked, Tournament, Status (overall ranking in online play) and Social (has to do with replays). Invites allows you to pick friend invites for player matches and accept or decline them. My experience with netplay has been highly favorable, which is to be expected since it’s GGPO (prominent online play coding for PC fighting games). You can also encode a replay to post on Youtube, as well! I hear this isn’t on the 360 version as is, but will be patched in soon.

Ranking Boards are simply Leaderboards. They display your ranks in various departments, such as character exclusive rankings, to tournaments won, to overall rankings. You can also filter it to show just your rankings, as well as friends. Help & Options covers Settings, Controls, How To Play, Credits and NAT Info. Settings covers volume, round count and timer, difficulty, and some graphical filters to maximize gameplay output and preferences in relation to arcade perfection. Controls allows you to adjust your control scheme by mapping buttons to the commands (Jab/Strong/Fierce, Short/Forward/Roundhouse, 3P and 3K). How To Play shows you small instructions in both Basic Moves (moving your character, basic combos and specials) and Advanced Moves (red parries, dizzy, combos, techs, taunt perks). Credits show you who made the game and what they did, and NAT Info basically shows you the connection type icons and tells you how to determine if the connection between you and your opponent will be favorable. Downloadable Content has “Playstation Store” (“Xbox Live Arcade” on the 360) and “My Content”. The former takes you to the respective marketplace to buy new stuff (nothing there except for stuff you can already unlock by playing the game), and the latter contains 2nd Impact color packs to switch from default 3rd Strike’s.

The gameplay is identical to the arcade version’s. Each character plays the exact same as they used to. The music consists of songs found in the PS2 version as well as new remixes; arcade music is sadly absent from the game as far as I can tell, though I imagine it’ll likely be a strong contender for future DLC, as there’s not much they can offer without considerably changing the game, aside from possibly backgrounds from the previous iterations of Street Fighter 3, for example. If you’ve ever played a Street Fighter game, you’ll have a general idea what to expect with standard controls, with the 3-punch and 3-kick scheme. Further, assuming you skipped 3 and only played from 2 to 4, you’ll see EX moves and Super Arts “return,” using the same meter. Instead of having only one meter, however, you can have up to 3, depending on what Super Art you choose at the beginning of the battle. EX moves take up half of one meter and a super takes up a full meter. A primary aspect of 3 that were absent from 2 and 4 is parrying. If you press forward the instant an attack lands on you, you will parry tech it, taking no damage (whereas you’d normally receive chip damage on block) and be able to recover faster than the opponent to punish. You can also parry combo strings and even supers, though these are obviously much more difficult and require some serious practice. It can allow you to make a serious comeback, however. Just Youtube “street fighter the moment” and see what I mean.

This game is specifically designed to cater to everybody, and getting everyone on equal footing. It can and will teach willing beginners how to get up to speed to the most advanced techniques in the game, and it can and will allow veterans to get back into the game and raise their game to the next level. The trials start easy and quickly get hard, but they are by no means impossible. You’ll even be finding yourself reenacting “the moment” in parry trials! The key to this game (and enjoying it) is all about the rhythm. This game is one of the most technical fighters and demands precision and execution, but once you get the game down, it can be one of the most fun experiences you can have with video games. So if you’re returning to the strike, simply skipped the Street Fighter 3 series, or aren’t really into fighting games at all, you should think about picking this game up, or trying out the demo. It’s a challenge to get into, but this is the best time to get into the game as it’s going to get, and for a reasonably cheap $15, it’s definitely a steal for one of the greatest fighting games of all time.

7/7