E3 2011: Street Fighter X Tekken Hands-On: Hwoarang and Cammy

Mash-up fighting game Street Fighter X Tekken is making a big showing at this year’s E3, and Capcom is using the opportunity to unveil two new characters to the world--Cammy from the Street Fighter series and Hwoarang from the Tekken side of the merger. We managed to get some hands-on time with both new sluggers today, as well as take the game through its paces yet again to see how it's progressing.

First up is former amnesiac and British secret agent Cammy, who is sporting a similar look to her recent outings in the Street Fighter IV titles. Her moveset, too, will be pretty familiar. She still features her cannon spike, spiral arrow, spin knuckle, and hooligan combo (along with its various end hit incarnations), with the input commands also being the same as in Street Fighter IV. Cammy vets should have no hassle picking her up, although from our brief playthrough, timing and her general pace seemed a little different.

Hwoarang is also instantly recognizable, sporting a similar look to the getup he sported in Tekken 6. The tae kwon do expert's Capcom-ised move list (that is, special moves transformed into circular motions a la Capcom's stable of fighters) includes the attack-dodging special step (dragon punch joystick movement with punch); the sky rocket antiair kick (dragon punch + kick); the hurricane kick like hunting hawk (backward quarter circle + kick); and the tricky air raid (half circle towards + kick). Of the two new inclusions, Hwoarang felt the most distinct from his Tekken days, no doubt due to some of the changes made to fit the character into a Capcom mould. It's still far too early to tell, however, just how "different" the character will feel, as it's still early days for Street Fighter x Tekken development.

What already feels solid even at this early stage is the fighting. We had a few extra rounds with the other playable characters in this E3 build--Ryu, Ken, Guile, Sagat, Abel, Chun Li, Kazuya, Nina, Julia, Bob, and Marduk--and found the brawling very engaging. As we covered in our earlier previews, while you're able to tag in a second character, you won't have a shared health bar. That means if one of your players gets knocked out before you can swap him out, it's round over, no matter how much health your other character may have. You'll need to swap intelligently, though: to swap, you'll need to hit both middle attack buttons at once, and both your outgoing and incoming character will be open for attacks for a little while during the animation. We also found that we could swap only if our character was standing (not crouching or moving backward or forward), although this may change in the final version of the game.

The safest way we found to swap was to perform a swap combo--a move available to every character by simply landing a light, medium, and heavy attack (kick or punch). The last hit will launch your opponent, and you'll automatically swap out to your next pugilist to continue the combo. You're able to chain two of these light-medium-heavy combos together.

We're feeling pretty comfortable with how the Street Fighter characters have made the transition to this franchise mash-up, but we'll still need more time with the game to see just how familiar this title will be for Tekken fans who may have never played previous Street Fighter games. One thing's for sure: we want to get more play time with Street Fighter X Tekken, so stay tuned to GameSpot for more information.