11.12
i dont know what to say, it seems game companies these days are staffed by idiot designers.
capcom is the worst of em all. they’ve released 3 street fighter games in the last year and all of them will be Live compatible, but will do not have online components for the PS2. the most recent abomination is yet ANOTHER rehash of the same old characters, in a stripped down game without any decent gameplay modes, specifically an online mode. up yours capcom.
polophony digital / seca recently decided to screw americans once again. they have decided to strip the online mode from the game in favor of this “B-Spec” mode. apparently some genius at seca decided that people would rather watch cars drive without doing much than to actually race friends online. way to go numbnuts, brilliant design choice.
i will be opting against these games this season however and am now contemplating getting several other games. i’ll continue to follow all of them loyally through EGM (13 years subscribing and counting). i’m still contemplating Killzone.
It seems as if the fighting genre is as archaic as it is unrefined. The Street Fighter series was the Capcom cash cow ever since Street Fighter II hit the arcades in the early 90’s. With the exception of character additions and faster speeds the game has remained unchanged.
Gone are the arcade days of yester-year when there would be gangs of people surrounding the Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Killer Instinct, and each of their sequels. I would say a contribution to this would be the home gaming system becoming so powerful, and now the addition of online play will all but abolish the arcades. I would say Capcom has seen the success of different genres lately, and fighting games just aren’t it.
Gran Turismo, Grand Theft Auto (even that took several sequels before it took off), and of course Halo are the games people want now. There are always games that go under the radar or achieve a cult following, and that won’t stop. However the unfortunate & unpleasant truth to this is – fighting games no longer generate the revenue they used to so why invest more money in left for dead series?
As far as I see it they should do one of two things with the series:
1. Leave the game for dead.
2. Really take some time, develop new characters, stories, game modes, and of course online play instead of releasing mediocre, rehashed versions of the game. Even if it takes years to do – develop a solid game and then start the marketing campaign promoting its re-emergence.
Maybe this is all pure gibberish….