I am truely shocked at how horribly bad this version of Street Fighter II is.
Within seconds I was already irritated. Why can't I shoot a damn fireball?!! Why is my character jumping when I am pushing back to block?!! Why is the CPU AI so cheap?!! Why did I just drop $10 on this game?!!
I have been playing games for over twenty years. And there aren't many games I can think of that I can honestly say that have annoyed me to the point where I find it tough to say ONE good thing about. Unfortunately, Street Fighter II Hyper for the Xbox 360 is one of those games.
This game is absolutely terrible and a disgrace to any longtime fan of the series. Like I said earlier, I am not a huge fan of the Street Fighter games. But I know fighting games (and games, in general) & this game is a travesty. Sure the game is ugly because it's old. That goes without saying. And the visuals might be the highlight of this awful package. The sound is terrible. It's hard to concentrate on a match when you have elephants in the background making the worst damn noise in videogame history!! All of the other sound effects come off as cheap and just sound terrible.
Like Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 for the 360, this version of SFII suffers from the same crappy controls. It's obvious the 360 controller's d-pad was not designed to be played with arcade games in mind. Especially not fighting arcade games. There were many times that I could not do a move for 3-4 tries, which resulted in my death. Then there are the times where I was just trying to move backwards and my character would jump for some reason. In fact, the only moves that are easy to control are the ones where you just pound on a button multiple times (E. Honda's hand slap, for instance). It's so bad that I am wondering if this game was even tested before Capcom sent it out the door.
The one-player game is absolute garbage. Even on the lowest difficulty setting, the CPU AI is incredibly cheap and way too hard. I know this game was supposed to get me to spend money in the arcade, but WE ARE NOT IN THE ARCADE. Of course, just like UMK3 (another cheap and terrible single-player experience), if you want to actually beat the single-player game.......be sure to set aside A LOT of time. As we all know, however, fighting games are usually pretty crummy without another human to beat up on. So how does this game fair in that area?
Just as bad as it does in every other area of the game!! The online play is terrible due to an enormous amount of lag and unbalanced characters. Most players online stick to either Ryu or Ken and just fireball you to death. This is obviously very annoying. Not to mention the fact that between the lag and the, previously mentioned, control issues it's near impossible for newcomers to get into this game without getting very frustrated. The 'Online Quarter' mode is stupid and pointless. Why do I want to specatate someone else's match online? Oh that's right........because I get five achievement points for it and it's more fun than actually playing the game!!
I don't think I have ever written a review with this many exclamation points in it, but this game really ticked me off. It's an absolute disgrace for any gamer, especially fans of the Street Figher series. Even the achievement points are distributed poorly and aren't worth getting. Whatever you do, no matter the temptation, DO NOT download this game. This is the worst game I have played in a long time and it's not worth $2, much less the $10 Capcom is trying to rip you off for.