Street Fighter V‘s much anticipated story mode (“A Shadow Falls”) released over a week ago, and my impressions can be summed up as “Too much story, not enough time”. There were so many interesting story threads and themes explored in the prologues that very little of them really had any time to breathe in the main story. What I loved about the prologue system is that it introduced what every character “wants” as a way of setting the stage for a larger intersecting story. This is a huge deal to me because “wants” are the bare minimum one must have for characters in a story for it to be even remotely good, and you would be absolutely shocked to find out how often stories have lead characters who don’t really “want” anything in particular. For the most part, this game’s story avoids those pitfalls but falls into a few of its own due to its very nature. Street Fighter has a pretty large cast of characters, and the question of who to focus on becomes the chief determinant towards whether or not a story is a good one. This game tackles that issue to mixed results.

*SPOILERS BELOW*

Continue reading “Street Fighter V Story Review – A Flawed, but Admirable First Effort” →

Street Fighter V is on its way, and in its wake came a large discussion about the nature of execution requirements. To sum up, should combos be made easier or remain as they were in Street Fighter IV (not so easy)? This question has caused quite a bit of division, and here I will share my thoughts on how things should be done. First, we should go over the basis of both these viewpoints.

Continue reading “We Don’t Need Tight Execution for Our Fighting Games” →