After beating the original Street Fighter arcade game as part of my Capcom Classics Collection Vol. 2 package, I’m fortunate to have played Street Fighter II first (and I’m sure a lot of people have). Say what you will about the toughness of the bosses in SFII, but they’re a cakewalk compared to many of the enemies that you have to fight in the original game. Besides Retsu and Geki, all of the opponents after them are grossly unbalanced, who can hit harder than you and move faster than you (why is Mike able to knock me down with just three punches?). Your special attacks can deal lots of damage to them, but the stiff controls make it hard to execute them with any degree of regularity. Even then, only the Hadoken seems to work at all. It’s not a good thing when copious abuse of save states is a requirement to get past even one round of any given battle. The original Street Fighter definitely shows its age here, and even back then, it wasn’t all that good. It’s best left as a reminder of how far the series has come since then. This one’s only worth 1 star out of 5. Skip it.
Pros: one of the first one-on-one fighting games with special moves
Cons: unbalanced game difficulty, controls that don’t work as they’re supposed to
You’d be surprised to find out that Disney has its own division for video games. Predictably, most of its output is based on its Disney Channel shows (Hannah Montana, The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, etc.), so your enjoyment on those games will most likely depend on whether or not you’re in those shows’ age bracket. Skewing toward a slightly older crowd, on the other hand, is Spectrobes: Origins, which I’ve heard compared to Pokemon and Phantasy Star quite a bit. They wouldn’t be too far off, either: the game features a boy and a girl who can control these creatures called Spectrobes, and they’re traveling across the universe to save various planets from a monstrous race called the Krawl.
If you think you’ve heard parts of that story synopsis before, you’re probably right. However, just because the story sounds unoriginal doesn’t mean there isn’t fun to be had. You’ll get quite a bit of mileage out of sending your little monster buddies to dig for fossils, which can then but cut, carved and chiseled to create new Spectrobes (and there’s an online leaderboard for posting your best times). You can raise you new pets by having them fight/search alongside you, or you can give them power crystals, which makes them grow faster.
I’d only played the game for a total of two-and-a-half hours before I had to take it back to the video rental store, but I still can’ t help wondering if the combat will evolve beyond “mash the A button/wiggle the Wii remote to win”. Dodging is a bit awkward, too, as you’ll have to flick your control stick to get out of the way of enemy attacks, and this sometimes throws the camera off, making it harder to center yourself on the enemy’s position (thank goodness for a lock-on function). At least the graphics are colorful and vibrant enough to keep you focused on the battles long enough to want to stick through them. From what I’ve seen so far, I’ll give Spectrobes: Origins 3 stars (out of 5). Rent it first, and see if it works out for you.
Pros: decent graphics, digging for fossils is fun
Cons: sometimes clunky camera controls, repetitive combat
Category: Video Games
Author: WillyFourEyes
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Tags: 1-star reviews, arcade, capcom, partial reviews, street fighter 