"Street Fighter By Way Of Tekken Tag, with a left turn to Bad Street USA."
by Stuart Newsom

Most everyone who’s ever played a fighting game has played Street Fighter. I think it’s a gamers’ law or something. As such, Street Fighter has made eighty bajillion different variations of the Street Fighter formula. That very scientific formula?

2 parts parts tight controls
1 part Ryu
3 parts shooting fire from your hands
1 part weird monster
Directions: Shake vigorously with a stick of awesome

A winner every time, right? Well, as Lex Luthor says, WROOOOOOOOOOONG! I got fooled into thinking that myself. Then I bought Street Fighter EX3. Then the truth hurricane kicked me square in the 1% of the messages that Lisa gets when she does Game With Fame. That’d be in the wang, for those not perceptive enough to read the Kotaku articles.

“But Stu,” I hear you through a monitor, “It’s Street Fighter! It can’t possibly be bad!” First I say STOP LIVING IN MY MONITOR YOU BUM! Second, you have to realize EX3 is not in the normal Street Fighter cannon. EX3, though published by Capcom, was designed by Arika. The different developer, though they are former Capcom employees, give a very different feel to the game. For one, it’s in fully rendered 3D. Yes, I hear the gasps and screaming now. I guess it’d be the 2.5D they keep throwing around but, to me, bull. It’s got fully rendered figures and you can sidestep; its 3D. Sprites, that’s 2D. You also have to contend with the character selection. Sure, you’ve got the old standbys in there: Guile, Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li. But who the heck is Hokuto? Or Nanase? Or Doctrine Dark? And what the heck is a Skullomania? To be fair, Doctrine Dark and Skullomaina were the most fun of the new characters to play. Funny though, Doctrine Dark plays very much like a Street Fighter version of Scorpion. Hmm… Anyway. I still hear you out there in my monitor. “Ok, except for the 3D thing, that doesn’t sound too bad. You’re just picky.” Now hold on there picklebucket. Let me get to the heart and soul of the suck.

You know the first part of the equation I brought up a paragraph ago. The “tight controls” part. Yeah, THAT’S what’s missing here. You see, I grew up with Street Fighter not in the arcades, but on the Sega Genesis. I know, blasphemy. But I played the heck out of Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers, or otherwise known as OMGWTFBBQ. I learned it from there, so I’m used to the Capcom specials layout and the reaction time being blindingly fast. With EX3, it’s time to stick your thumbs in molasses because it’s slow. Like painfully slow. Every jump is floaty, not just Dhalsim’s which are supposed to be, and it seems to have a noticeable time frame between pushing the button and actually doing a move. It made doing anything feels like an impossibility and felt nothing like Street Fighter. It’s like playing in slowmo and, for me, caused me to get gang raped in every match, every time.

I see you, in your disapproving look. “Eh, you’re just an n00b who didn’t get it.” No. You’re wrong. See, I like fighters. I like old school fighters. I like Marvel vs. Capcom 2. I like Super Street Fighter 2: Variant 9001. (Yes, yes, go ahead. Scream “It’s over 9000.”) This is not that, but by name it was advertised as that. That frustrated me. And as you well know, Frustration leads to anger, anger leads to pain, pain leads to getting kicked in the wang. Yoda taught me well.

Overall Rating: 2 out of 10