
<MAP NAME="boxmap-p8"><AREA SHAPE="RECT" COORDS="14, 200, 103, 207" HREF="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm/privacy-policy.html?o=1" ><AREA COORDS="0,0,10000,10000" HREF="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect-home/thearmchairem-20" ></MAP><img src="http://rcm-images.amazon.com/images/G/01/rcm/120x240.gif" width="120" height="240" border="0" usemap="#boxmap-p8" alt="Shop at Amazon.com">	Platform Playstation 2 Genre Fighting Publisher Capcom Developer Capcom ESRB T (Teen) Released Q4 2000

- VERY good looking game - The game handles multiple characters very smoothly (no slowdowns)

- Voice acting can get very annoying at times - Fighting styles seem to mesh into one another

Capcom vs SNK (Dreamcast) Review Soul Calibur (Dreamcast) Review Virtua Fighter 3 (Dreamcast) Review
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Street Fighter EX3

Score: 8.0 / 10

Street Fighter. The name conjures up memories of me wasting my allowance at the arcade beating the crap out of all the newbies. (I'll remember my childhood my own way, thank you very much). Capcom has once again dusted off their Street Fighter series and given it a shot in the arm or at least a really good Indian Burn. This game is completely 3D rendered with all of the characters looking spectacular in their new high resolution environment. Some of your favorites are back for more, like Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li, Dhalsim, Guile, Blanka, Zangief, Vega, Sagat, Sakura, and of course M.Bison. To round out the roster of 25, an additional 14 characters have been added. To someone like myself who hasn't kept up with the whole "alpha" and "ex" craze, most of these people are complete and utter strangers to me.

To make things more interesting, nine of these characters are blocked and until you release them, you cannot use them (two of them are Sagat and M.Bison). Gaining access to them isn't anything special – just win the game as a character and you will unlock one of them. However, finishing the game is a little more difficult than in past incarnations. Street Fighter EX3 (SFEX3) brings a few new match styles to bear in this outing with the familiar "tag team" matches, dramatic matches (where you fight an opponent with back up or double team one of your opponents) and all sorts of variations on those themes. At higher difficulty settings the opening match, where you face off against three opponents, can be really difficult (although they are at lower health, they can still whip-up on you). As you can expect, when fighting multiple characters the enemies come at you from different angles. To combat this your character "targets" one of the enemies, but don't be mistaken – a good roundhouse kick will still connect with an enemy who isn't directly in front of you. To help defeat some of the opponents, you can recruit defeated enemies onto your "team." Unfortunately, it's the last person you knock out, so make sure you don't get stuck with the whack-job idiot.

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I can't stop raving about how good this game looks - I was extremely impressed with the great detail of the character textures. Even the little extras like the small thuds they make when hitting the ground don't go unnoticed – all the visual and aural details were well taken care of. The most detracting aspect of SFEX3 is some of the voice acting. A few of the characters have the most grating voices and unfortunately it’s usually the ones who belch out the most incoherent and loudest screams during the most routine of moves. (I actually had to mute the TV while playing against some characters.)

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The game play you ask? Very good – load times are minimal and more importantly, there was very little slowdown during multiple character action. Sure when there are four characters on the screen you might have some problems, but only minor ones when three are doing "power moves" but that's to be expected. What about the action itself? Well, there you've got a minor problem – the fighting styles appear to be melting into each other and are startingto become indistinguishable except for the power moves. If you put 25 people together from all around the world they are going to have different base fighting styles. Where are the Capoera boxers? The Kung-Fu stylists? People using Aikido or Judo?

There is one further addition to the game: the generation of a template character named Ace. Ace grows as a fighter as you perform in combat – perform certain moves and you earn experience points. These experience points can be used towards purchasing better moves and eventually power moves and such (kind of like the dollars used in the mall in No Mercy for N64). It gives the game more of an RPG feel, if that’s possible for a fighting game.

All in all, this is a good game for those who love their fighting action.

Tazman

(April 23, 2001)

"What's the matter Colonel Sanders? Chicken?"