When Street Fighter II invaded arcades back in 1991 dozens of people would line-up to put their quarters in and then dismantle their opposition. Since it’s availability on the Xbox Live Marketplace thousands of gamers are once more flocking around this highly addictive 2d brawler that hosts a set of the most diverse characters that have ever been induced into a videogame!
SFII:HF offers a nice trip down memory lane. It’s just as fun and intense as it was 15 years ago with an additional element ala Xbox Live providing “around the world 2d carnage” at it’s best. Of course it’s only at its best when you and your opponent both have stable internet connections. If not then you’ll periodically find that your character will freeze up during a fight at which point you’re transported back to the menu. Other times you won’t even get that far because at the matchmaking screen you’ll be connected to a player watching the timer count down to 0…at which it gets “stuck” and stays there until the connection expires forcing you to go back and reconnect with another player. Don’t fret though as these are usually minor complications and don’t render the game unplayable.
As a word of warning you’re going to need to sharpen your skills in the arcade before making your way to Live as there are plenty of people who know what they’re doing and you’ll quickly find yourself with 20 losses and 0 wins as I did. It’s almost as if these “experts” have been playing ever since its release for 15 years on either a personal arcade machine or SNES.
In the Arcade mode you can choose from four sub-modes of play. In the original arcade more you’ll participate in the “story” part of the game with each character having his/her own ending which gives the game a great deal of replay value. In Versus you and a friend can chill at your house and play on a single 360. Training is used for honing your skills (trust me you’ll need to do so to compete over Live) and finding which characters style fits you best. Finally, Battle mode is unlocked after completing Arcade mode once. This mode makes every character fight as if it were a boss as they receive a boost in speed and damage.
Even though its graphics and sound track/effects are outdated they still fit the game like a glove. However one thing you will have to become accustomed to, are the controls. The D-Pad is too stiff for unleashing your combos leaving the thumbstick as the next best thing, but no worries as you’ll soon become used to it and start decimating your foes at will, with a little extra training of course.
SFII:HF really does bring you back to the good ol’ days, and with new arcade classics being re-introduced every week with Xbox Live Wednesdays, Microsoft really is letting the good times roll!
