Well the time has finally come and we are now able to get a taste of what to expect from the highly anticipated Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix game.
Whats the verdict?
Keep in mind that this IS a BETA and these things I am about to mention could and hopefully will be addressed in the now 8 weeks until the full Street Fighter II HD Remix game is released. I will use these screenshots and video I captured of this BETA to also show you the good the bad and the ugly.
The games menus look great. (click for larger)
The BETA itself seems to have some very huge bugs and it crashed on me at least 5 times before I could get an online match going. Each time the Street Fighter II HD Remix Beta crashed I had to completely restart my Xbox 360. Very frustrating.
Here is a video of the menu and intro:
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When I was able to get a match going I was disappointed by the art in the game. There is just something weird about it. For the most part it looks good but there are some key frames that just look awkward and seem to screw the overall aesthetic presentation of the game. The main pose/frame for Ken is one in particular that just looks weird. He has these HUGE black eyebrows and his body position looks way off. I was never one to nitpick at the art when the first character art or even later art hit the web and was posted on Capcoms blog but then again this art is not of the quality of the first preview frames were since they announced they had to decrease the quality. In any case they need to redo some of the frames. And the loss of the shading seems to have effected the quality much more than I anticipated. It looks alot more like a Flash game.
Here is a shot of the awkward Ken frame. (click for larger view)
The problem is that the frame as seen above is displayed often. (click for larger version)
Another major issue is the twitching of the characters at the beginning of the match. it looks weird also. I understand that the game is sped up but I hope they can find a away to smooth that out. You can see the twitching in the video below.
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I do like the widescreen mode. The characters are noticeably bigger in the widescreen mode and the black bars on the side of the widescreen screenshot below does not show on the screen. It did show up in my captures as shown below. There must be some scaling that prevents the black bars from showing on my HDTV screen but it does show in these captures. I like the fact that Capcom added the widescreen option and they should be commended for listening to the community.
Here you can see the differences in widescreen vs. 4:3 (normal) screen modes: (click for larger)
Widescreen Mode
4x3 / Normal Mode
Below is another Street Fighter II HD Remix Beta gameplay video. Note that the game is online. I had mixed experiences playing online. For the most part it was choppy and a few times it played pretty well. I am hoping they work the kinks out. It was not up to par with GGPO online play from the 6 or seven games I played.
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The verdict is that the art in the game as it stands now still needs polish. Alot of polish. There are frames that don't look right. I thought that when in motion the game would look better and I would not notice some things that did not look right in released screenshots but I actually did notice them when playing. Capcom USA and Backbone still have some real work ahead of them to get this up to snuff and ready for release. I am not a competitive player and I was slightly disappointed by some things so I know there will be major bitching by fans and expert players. If Capcom USA does not get the final game right they will look bad because Capcom Japan is about to release Street Fighter IV in a few weeks and that game looks much better than this HD Remix and Street Fighter IV was announced after this Remix was announced.
Despite everything negative I said the BETA is still fun to play, the menus look awesome, the game is crisp, the music is excellent (when it works right) and HD Remix will be worth the $15 or so it will cost. Also I know Capcom USA can get it right. They have a great track record so I will just wait and see what happens when it is finally released. I am pretty sure the final product will be classic.
