My review of SFV as it was released.
The good:
- Game looks better than SFIV
- The character BGMs are pretty decent
- The netcode is good
- You can change the Menu music to a comination of Character and Stage BGMs
The eh... whatever:
- Gameplay is OK. Nothing special. Some people will like it, some people
won't.
- Only 16 chars and 11 stages at launch
- Stage BGMs are just as overproduced as the ones in SFIV (even the good
ones). Two of the better ones don't sound like they belong in an FG.
- The person that decided that character move sound FX should all be
different should be dragged out into the street and shot.
- Stage transitions were a nice idea, but it seems like Capcom gave up on
the idea early into development
The Bad:
- Story mode is a joke
- Overall aesthetic direction is questionable, to put it mildy.
-- After 8 years we are still seeing swirly trails ala SFIV and SFxT.
Seriously? Noone at Capcom/Dimps could think of anything else?
-- So we have these swirly trails, so you'd expect some uniformity right?
Except there's none. Ryu has a blank ink trail like in SFIV, but why?
Chun Li has water like in SFxT, but why? Cammy has the colours of the UK
flag, Karin has... the colour of her costume 1!? What's next? A character
whose colour trails reflect what he had for breakfast?
-- Why do they still insist on this dumb idea that every stage needs a
dominant colour? It's stupid and limits creative freedom. London Stage is
yellowish just because. Gief is stage is brown (WTF). India is yellow.
FANG stage drank too much Kool Aid.
-- What genius had the idea of making the portraits Red and Blue? What
purpose does that serve besides confusing people during mirror matches? I
personally like the minimal UI and theme, but the portraits were badly
executed.
-- SSFIV had a stage where hippos got out of the water during a Solar
Eclipse. The best SFV can muster up is a helicopter and Bison doll.
-- The EX and Fire FX suck, and overlaying those silly swirls over them is
garish
-- Some of the alternate costumes just lack any sort of imagination
The Ugly:
- Barebones release. No arcade mode. No VS CPU mode. Only 2 player
lobbies. No spectator mode. No trials.
- Pointless "server" messages that repeat because Capcom has no idea how to
write an API
- Training mode features still don't work properly
- It still doesn't save training mode settings. FFS I bet even Yie Ar Kung
Fu got this right
- Besides the art direction, this game is also graphically a step backwards
compared to SFIV in some other aspects:
-- The plasticine hair
-- The robotic, lifeless spectators in the background
-- The clipping on the char select screen
-- Poor handling of clipping in general. Even SFIV got the basics right:
http://i.imgur.com/DQwzOoz.jpg
The You Have Got To Be Kidding Me:
- The matchmaking is still broken. Even SFIV has better matchmaking in
that it allows you to select people in your region to fight. Isn't this
exactly what the beta was meant to address?
- The game has a SLOWER frame rate on PC than the BETA VERSION. HOW IS
THIS EVEN POSSIBLE!?
- No keyboard rebindings on PC (can't wait till TotalBiscuit gets his hands
on this)
- No DInput support
- Story mode hangs occasionally. Game needs to be restarted.
- When the game launches it runs at Max Settings and goes straight into
tutorial mode. Fuck you if you need to change your GFX settings. You have
to mash start and watch the shit play in slow motion. Let's hope your
controller works...
- Can't switch freely between Full Screen and Window mode. This really
sucks for recording stuff.
- When you try to change your GFX settings, it makes the changes on the fly
instead of doing it like every other game on earth does it (wait till
you're done, then applying the settings). Extremely frustrating.
- No benchmarking feature. A giant FU to PC and x-platform players.
