The legendary Street Fighter game series released the 5th one on the 16th February 2016. Despite the first game was out in 1987 developers could find the right mix of the canon aspects of the game and the modern takes of the genre, and that’s how the Street Fighter 5 was made. Here we’ll discuss the characters and gameplay to help you dispel your doubts concerning this game.
Characters
Eight iconic franchise mainstays, four long-absent fan favorites, and four newcomers make for a great mix. Here are some of them:
Dhalsim: His V-Skill - special ability introduced in Street Fighter 5 - allows him to pause his jump mid-arc and stay in place, readjusting left or right and cancelling out with any aerial move at a whim.
The Spanish matador: he can now switch between fighting with or without his signature claw. With it, his jabs are slower, but gain range and damage.
Necalli: just a savage, tyrannizing opponents with heavy block-stun inducing smashes and foot-stomps.
Rashid: can play tryhard, but he has some great pokes and a rounded toolset that allow him to play safe and solid if his gimmicks stop working out.
F.A.N.G.: created for players concerned with developing pro-skills. He uses ranged attacks that make it tough to get in close.
Others, like Vega, have been dramatically overhauled with new moves and mechanics that make them feel exciting to play and learn again.
The best thing I can say about the cast is that I kind of want to play everyone, even characters I’ve never given a second glance to in 20 years of playing Street Fighter.
Modes
You can play in offline and online mode. If you’ve just started playing fighting games, you should definetely practice offline first. Unfortunately, there’s no arcade mode, there’s only the story mode for each character, where you don’t have difficulty settings, and the only setting you can tune is the set of colors.
The online mode is the place where all the fun begins, and this mode is meant to be the place to get the ‘real’ Street Fighter experience. You gotta remember to log in when you play single player. If you do - you accumulate the experience and raise your level, and you earn Fight Money. After you’ve set the desired gameplay mode the reliable matchmaking continually feeds you matches, and then dumps you back into whatever you were doing when your match concludes.
The function that adds importance to the online mode is the replay thing: you can save, search and share replay videos in the Capcom Fighters Network. An the end of each match, the game saves your statistics, and later you can easily compare your results to another player’s ones. Street Fighter 5 also makes the search through all the replays: if the player is logged in you can find his gameplay and watch it. Later, the game helps you to track players you like watching replays of. Together with the ability to specify an ID separate from your actual PSN or Steam name, pro players and other known community members can make it easy for followers to find and compare their best performances.
You also have an opportunity to play with someone sitting right next to you in the offline local play. It’s faster, more fun and it’s full of individual strategies that are about to be discovered. Some of the strategies in Street Fighter 5 will center on the new V-Gauge system, which fills up as the player takes damage and fuels special V-Skills that vary from character to character. For example, Ryu’s V-Skill lets him automatically parry a flurry of attacks, while Rashid’s V-Skill triggers a whirlwind that can be a barrier. Learning the different tactics that various characters’ V-Skills open is a nice new wrinkle on an already solid formula.
Basically, if you’ve played previous versions of Street Fighter, you’ll admit that the 5th one is different. In the old ones, the offline single-player felt as important and necessary as the online multiplayer. With the Street Fighter 5, this hierarchy has changed, now developers try to attract your attention to the importance and awesomeness of the multiplayer, and they’re right. All the new features justify the desire of developers to get you to play online, and we rate those innovations 8.5 / 10.
