Street Fighter V shows how Capcom wants to make fighting games — and players — better

Eight years ago, I sat in a hotel room with Seth Killian, then the community manager at Capcom, where he had invited me to get an early peek at the first build of Street Fighter IV. What I played that night was extremely different from what the Japanese publisher would release 12 months later in 2009, but it didn’t matter if that was for better or worse. The community, industry, and pop zeitgeist of our society desperately needed Street Fighter’s resurrection.

Seven years brings a lot of change. Street Fighter IV was an El Niño that drenched a dry fighting game genre that was begging to be filled. With that thirst, people were willing to turn a blind eye toward some not-so-great design ideas that existed in Street Fighter IV.

We aren’t that thirsty now.

Dimps (the designers of Street Fighter V) and Capcom are dealing with an audience with higher expectation. They’ve matured with Street Fighter IV, and Street Fighter V needs to keep up with that. Has it?

What you’ll like

Stop spamming Jab and Short like a scrub

When looking at the base design of Street Fighter V, one of its biggest departures from Street Fighter IV is deceptively small. The normal moves have shifted back to a more old-school sensibility, and the most obvious evidence of this lies in how Capcom has tweaked Jab (weak punch) and Short (weak kick).

Street Fighter IV had a thing for giving most characters a way to link a regular Jab or Short into a larger combo. This created some pretty sloppy play habits, where players would place more emphasis on trying to confirm a hit off of a wild Jab or Short.

In Street Fighter V this has completely changed. If I want to snag my opponent with a practical combo that links into one of the bigger normal moves off of Jab or Short, it can only be done if the Jab or Short is a counter hit (even then, only certain characters, in certain match ups, can even do this). Counter hits are when my opponent and I execute a move, but my move comes out quicker, stuffing my opponent’s move.

Capcom has relegated these two buttons back to their original status in Street Fighter: at best, a means to do a small 2-in-1 into a special move, and at worst, a quick wall of attacks to push someone back.

This is fantastic. It puts more value on the harder-hitting normal moves (Strong Punch, Fierce Punch, Forward Kick, Roundhouse Kick), which are much riskier than flailing Jab or Short to confirm a hit. This change strengthens the emphasis on being in the right place, at the right time, executing the right move. It’s pushing players to play smarter.

Related to this change in Jab and Short’s properties is another nice alteration: Street Fighter IV’s crouching throw tech option select doesn’t work anymore. This was an unintended technique in Street Fighter IV, where a defending player could hold down back and hit Jab and Short, with Short being a few milliseconds earlier than Jab.

What this would do is trick the game engine into accepting two moves at the same time, throw or crouching Short kick. So if my opponent went for a throw, the game engine would assume I was trying to tech their throw, so it would execute my inputs as if it were a throw. If my opponent went for a move instead, the engine would assume I wanted crouching Short kick. This technique made it so I didn’t have to read if my opponent was going for a throw or an attack. I just let the game engine short cut it for me, which is lazy play.

It’s not in Street Fighter V anymore — and this is a significant improvement.

Cleaner comeback mechanics

I hate comeback mechanics. Those systems that fighting game designers put in that try to give losing players a big super move that will swing the match in their favor. And out of all the comeback mechanics in fighting games, I hate Street Fighter IV’s Ultra system more than any other. Ultras were often the most damaging move in the game, and were earned by filling the Ultra meter. That meter filled based off of players taking damage, the one thing no one should be rewarded for in a fighting game.

Street Fighter V wipes out the Ultra system, which pushes Street Fighter IV’s EX meter to the foreground. This is great, because the EX meter is a really good idea that deserves to blossom.

Players earn EX meter by performing certain moves, and with it, they can do one of two things: spend a chunk of the meter to perform an EX special move (think a buffed-up fireball), or blow the entire meter on one big move called a Critical Art (essentially a Super, which is one big powerful move, that is usually the most damaging move a character has).

The EX meter makes the comeback mechanic so much more strategic in nature because the decision needs to be made on whether to spend all of that meter early on EX moves or save it until later for a Critical Art. In Street Fighter IV, players could spend EX like crazy, tossing out EX moves and not worry about saving it for that meter’s big super move — if things went wrong and the player found themselves eating damage, the Ultra meter would fill and take priority over the super move.

Now, in Street Fighter V, if things go wrong and you used the EX meter poorly, there’s no big damaging move to act as a safety net. You made your bed spending your EX meter, and now you lay in it.

The V-System

Technically, the EX meter didn’t replace the Ultra system. Much more clever ideas — V-Skill and V-Trigger — did.

The only hard rule about V-Skills and V-Triggers is that the V-Skill helps fill the V-Gauge, and the V-Trigger spends V-Gauge. This makes each character’s comeback mechanic unique.

But I hate to call it a comeback mechanic here. Activating V-Trigger is often more of a match-dynamic changer than one big direct blow to the opponent. In the case of playing a character like M.Bison, whose V-Trigger gives him boosted moves and speed for a limited time, it’s not a big super move that can result in a lucky K.O. I’m simply trying to tilt the entire table slightly in my favor.

A lot of the V-Triggers are like this. They do something that enables the character to gain a match advantage at a slower pace than a Critical Art, without sneaking in one big move.

And I love it! For one, it’s a clever way to inject extra play style into a character’s design. It also gives players an artificial rebalancing of the playfield, which Capcom has been infatuated with adding to the series for 20 years, without being blatant and ham-fisted.

Diverse cast of playstyles

Whether you love or hate the character lineup in Street Fighter V, the cast Capcom chose represents a wide range of playstyles. You’ll find no overlap in how any of these characters play.

Even the classic complaint of Ken and Ryu being clones of each other (protip: they haven’t played the same since Hyper Fighting) doesn’t work because they are designed to complement totally different approaches to Street Fighter. The unique qualities of the V-System further emphasize this. Another part of it is just good character design.

If you want to play a highly offensive rushdown style, you’re covered. If you like grinding out a win from mid-range, they’ve got it. And if you want to carve away at your opponent from far away, there’s some of that as well.

With that said, I can’t possibly comment on the balance and character tier list in Street Fighter V right now. That’s a good sign. I see good intentions with every character, and no one character has really jumped out at me as being completely overpowered. But it will take a community of thousands of players, playing the game competitively for a few months, to really suss that out.

Capcom Fighters Network

I really like this idea, and I think it’s something Capcom needed to implement a lot sooner. The Fighters Network requires a unique log-in and tracks your stats throughout your time with Street Fighter V. It also has standard online components such as community updates, a message system, and a replay archive.

It’s cool that Capcom is now putting these things upfront as opposed to burying them in the back behind the UI. The entire Fighter ID and network thing has a ton of potential. Hopefully, this becomes something that carries across multiple future fighting games.

Cross-platform play

This has been working well since beta, and it’s a great feature. I like that I don’t have to swap from platform to platform to play against people. I mean, we all have those friends who will only play on PC or who will only play on PlayStation 4. Now I don’t have to buy two copies of the same game.

What you won’t like

Critical Arts link off damned near everything

I almost had nothing negative to say about Street Fighter V’s comeback mechanics, but then I saw someone land a Critical Art by canceling Ryu’s Dragonpunch. Then I went into training mode and canceled a low forward kick into a Critical Art. Then a standing Jab.

Palm, meet face.

This is either laziness, or Capcom thinks the player base isn’t ready for legit super-move design. The granddaddy of super-move design, Super Street Fighter II Turbo, should be the example to follow here (Team Ninja’s Dead or Alive 5: Last Round is a good one as well).

Super moves in fighting games should be designed to make a certain element or style of play dangerous during the latter half of a round. The classic design is the projectile-gobbling super move that will pass through a fireball and hit the opponent. This super move is designed so that I have to specifically trick the opponent into throwing a fireball at the wrong time.

When I can land that super move off something as mundane as an easy to execute combo, it dumbs-down the strategic potential of the move. A lot. It makes everything I do incredibly dangerous for the opponent. I don’t want that. I want to think my way to a K.O.

Jumping over cornered opponents

In Street Fighter IV, I thought being able to jump over an opponent in the corner was a technical glitch — something Capcom had to pay to the game engine gods for bringing Street Fighter to a 3D environment. It’s reappeared in Street Fighter V, and now I am convinced Capcom thinks it’s a good idea. I hate it.

Here’s the thing: When I am backed into a corner in Street Fighter, I am in one of the worst positions in the game. I’ve given up my capability to back up and gain space, and now my opponent has the vast majority of control over the spacing and pacing of the match. I’m not dead, and my opponent isn’t out of danger, but my options are far fewer.

My opponent being able to cross my character up, which is jumping over a character and having the ability to choose between an attack that hits me on one side or the other (forcing me to guess which side to block), stacks my disadvantage. They have an additional guessing game that I don’t have, and one way of preventing the cross up from happening, such as altering where I am standing, is gone.

I’m sure a case can be made for this being a great idea. Maybe the person jumping in and putting themselves in the corner is the trade-off. In practice, I don’t see it playing out well for the person who was originally in the corner.

Are we sure this artwork is by Bengus?

When Yoshinori Ono, lead on Street Fighter V, told me that Bengus would do the character art in the story mode, I was hyped as hell. Bengus (pen name) was an illustrator in Capcom of Japan’s art department during their incredible ’90s run. This was a time where that art department pumped out some of the greatest concept art, marketing illustrations, and 2D sprite work in the industry. Bengus was involved in a lot of Street Fighter art that we covet today.

As a huge fan of Bengus’ work, I find the illustrations in Street Fighter V’s story mode shocking. I’m not a stickler for accuracy on stylized artwork, but the anatomy and proportion decisions are creatively strange. In some cases, they are just visually unappealing and inconsistent. The line work also lacks depth, and the sense of volume on shapes is really hit or miss. I get the sense that these were quick competent thumbnails for a more finished piece, that were blown up, quickly inked, and colored.

It’s nowhere near the quality of the sort of work I am use to seeing from Bengus. It’s not even close to what I expect to see from the franchise, from any artist. I hate going on record negatively criticizing an illustrator’s work like this, but what happened here? This is so far off-base from what I expected. If it’s Bengus or not, these illustrations come off like the artist was rushed.

Capcom … give me a log-in feature

Maybe this is something that will clear up on release, but throughout the beta and into the review version of Street Fighter V, the Capcom Fighters Network system has been a pain in the butt all because of one minor flaw: I can’t log in or out of my Fighter ID.

This creates quite a few issues. If for some reason the Capcom Fighter Network logs me out or doesn’t recognize my copy of the game, it asks me to create a new log-in. If I try entering my Fighter ID, it just tells me my Fighter ID has already been claimed (no shit!).

Or what if I have a sibling? What if I share my PS4 with someone else in the house? We both have to use the same Fighter ID? What if I am really good and they’re not? We have to share the same stats? And what if I can’t connect to the Internet? I can’t play, then.

At the very least, please implement a manual log-in and log-out option.

Conclusion

People who got into the fighting game community with Street Fighter IV may not want to hear this, but from a base design, Street Fighter V is by far the superior game. Capcom has paved over and smoothed out a lot of the things I didn’t like about Street Fighter IV’s design. A lot of those issues created poor play habits, which makes it feels like Capcom is making small steps to mature the game, and in turn is trying to mature how the player base plays fighting games.

With that said, Street Fighter V has some missteps. Capcom creating a great comeback mechanic system, yet allowing the most damaging moves in the game to combo off of very simple set-ups, is baffling. The Capcom Fighters Network absolutely needs a log-in and log-out feature. And I don’t know what Capcom did to the artist that worked on those illustrations (did they rush them? Did they piss them off? Did they not offer enough cash?), but they need to correct whatever they did so the artist (presumably Bengus) can push out great work.

So, who should pick this up? Everyone that’s into fighting games. If you’re into Street Fighter, chances are you already have Street Fighter V preordered, and you’re here to see if I validate your opinions on the game (or you want to invalidate mine). If you’re going to stick with Street Fighter V, I think that’s a good decision. If you’re thinking of skipping it, you’re going to miss out on something enjoyable.

Score: 90/100

Street Fighter V releases Tuesday, February 16. Capcom provided GamesBeat with a copy of Street Fighter V for PlayStation 4 and PC for review.