Capcom's Street Fighter EX series, developed by Arika, takes the standard Street Fighter 2D gameplay and throws it into a 3D world, adding a few new characters and moves along the way. The original Street Fighter EX fared pretty poorly in arcades, but after a few revisions it found a greater audience at home on the PlayStation. Street Fighter EX2 added a few new moves and characters, but it never really made much of a splash. Street Fighter EX3 takes the gameplay and additional moves of EX2, adds a tag-team element similar to that of Tekken Tag Tournament or Capcom's own Marvel vs. Capcom, and drops it onto the PlayStation 2 for a quick and dirty fighting game that seems a little rushed but still manages to be a lot of fun.

The game's main mode is original mode, where you'll pick one character and dive right into a short but sweet fighting quest. Your first match is against three competitors - all at the same time. After winning this, or any, match in this mode, you'll be asked if you'd like to recruit one of your opponents. You can recruit up to three partners as you progress through the six-match quest, which comprises tag battles, team battles, and a two-on-one match. Completing the final battle nets you a screen full of text and the ending credits. The ending credits serve as a sort of bonus stage, where your main fighter is put on the screen with six or seven generic fighters whom you can beat with only one or two hits. The game gives you an infinite combo meter and keeps track of how many of the generic bad guys you can knock out before the credits end. The other fighting modes in the game let you set up tag battles, dramatic battles, team battles, and four-player matches at will.

The game's other real bonus is the character edit mode, which is an extention of the expert mode that appeared in EX1 and EX2. Instead of having a set number of missions to complete with each character, EX3 gives you Ace, a generic-looking fighter who looks a bit more like a fighter out of the Rival Schools universe than a Street Fighter. When you first start playing, Ace has no special moves whatsoever - he is a completely blank slate. As you complete the expert mode-like tasks (block all attacks, perform a three-hit combo, execute a combo that does over 90 points of damage, and the like), you earn experience points. You use these points to buy Ace's special moves and super combos, which you'll need to complete tasks later in the edit mode. Once you've beefed up Ace, he'll be able to hold his own in the game's other modes.

While the character graphics used in EX3 look pretty amazing when standing still, the animation is the same as it was in EX2. Granted, you can't exactly add lots of frames to all the special moves and keep the game's timing as faithful to the Street Fighter series as EX3 is, but now that the 3D Street Fighters don't look all blocky and pixilated, the jerky animation really stands out. Also worth mentioning is the appearance of B.A. Baracus himself. Yes, what appears to be Mr. T's picture adorns the walls of one of the arenas. It's a strange yet heartwarming tribute to such a master thespian.

The audio portion of EX3 is packed with great effects, such as deep, bassy whooshing noises that accompany super-combo fireballs and the like. All of the hits and misses sound terrific, and the character voices are nice and crystal clear. The music, however, doesn't always fit the action. Also, in an annoying demonstration of audio streaming, the music changes tunes on the fly when other characters get tagged in, so you never listen to one song for long - one track fades into another as soon as the action on the screen dictates a change.

Street Fighter EX3 is the game that EX2 should have, and probably would have, been, had this kind of hardware power been available sooner. The tag-team fighting adds a nice new element that the previous game totally lacked. EX3 may feel a bit rushed in some spots, but overall it's a fun and great-looking fighting game that won't disappoint longtime EX fans.

Soul Calibur II Review

By definition, one cannot improve upon perfection. So, considering that 1999's Soul Calibur for the Dreamcast is widely considered to be a flawless fighting game, maybe that explains why Namco didn't take many risks with the sequel, which has finally hit the PlayStation 2, Xbox, and GameCube. If you played and enjoyed the original Soul Calibur, chances are good that you'll also enjoy the sequel since it's so much like the first game. That also means Soul Calibur II won't impress you as much as its predecessor, since you've seen most of these characters, their weapons, and their moves before, and the available gameplay modes are nothing out of the ordinary. Nevertheless, on its own terms, Soul Calibur II is by all means a great fighting game, and Namco has done a fine job of making each respective console version equally enticing.

For the majority of players, the most significant difference between Soul Calibur II and its predecessor will be cosmetic, though the visuals haven't been overhauled completely. The returning characters all look different and the stages are all new, but many of the animations (even for some of the new characters) are recycled from the previous game, as is the flow and feel of a typical match. As before, gameplay involves four buttons, corresponding to your character's horizontal slash, vertical slash, kick, and guard. Using various combinations of these and the directional pad, you can make your characters unleash dozens of different moves. A number of the characters even have alternate fighting stances, which they can readily switch between to vary up their attacks.

There's a two-tiered rock-paper-scissors system here that's more or less identical to the system that worked so well in Soul Calibur: Low attacks hit high-blocking opponents, mid attacks hit low-blocking opponents, and high attacks tend to beat out mid attacks. Additionally, vertical slashes tend to have priority over horizontal slashes but can be dodged laterally, while horizontal slashes can counter an opponent who's sidestepping too often. Add in guard impact moves, which all characters can use to deflect their foes' attacks, and soul charge moves, which all characters can use to power up their attacks, and you've got a deep, tried-and-true combat system. The gameplay has been tweaked since Soul Calibur, to account for some of the issues that highly experienced players of the previous game picked up on. However, most players won't really notice the different properties of crouching or of lateral movement or things like that. Of further note, the game controls well using the default PS2, Xbox, and GameCube controllers. The PS2 controller is best suited, and the GameCube's directional pad is a little small, but all of these are responsive and more than serviceable with the game.

All of the Soul Calibur cast returns either in form or in spirit. From the samurai Mitsurugi to the undead pirate Cervantes, from the nunchaku-wielding Maxi to the female ninja Taki, from the bizarre Voldo to the aptly named Nightmare, most all the old favorites are intact, each with a smattering of new moves. Some have changed more than others, but for the most part, tactics and combos that worked well in Soul Calibur still work well here. There are a number of new characters in the game, though aside from the exclusive character in each console version of the game, only two characters are completely new: Raphael, a fencer whose feints and ripostes suitably capture the elegance and effectiveness of this fighting style, and Talim, a young girl whose speed and expertise with her twin blades make up for her small stature.

The special-guest characters in each version of the game are well done in their own right and are about as fully realized as the rest of the cast. The PlayStation 2 version gets the Tekken series' grizzled old karate master, Heihachi Mishima. The Xbox version gets Spawn, Todd McFarlane's muscle-bound comic book antihero. And the GameCube version gets none other than Link from The Legend of Zelda. These characters have been heavily promoted and talked about, and though none of them fits in very well with the rest of Soul Calibur II's characters, they each look good, are competitive, and have their own unique fighting styles. Heihachi has all the ferocious kicks and punches that make him a powerhouse in Tekken and looks better than ever before. Spawn has a limited ability to fly and can inflict massive damage with his ax. And Link's got all his classic moves and all his classic weapons, including the boomerang, the bow, and the bombs.

Another character is new to the home versions of Soul Calibur II and is not in the arcade original: Necrid, a Todd McFarlane creation specifically designed for this game. Necrid is surprisingly fast and powerful and fights with a ghostly weapon that mimics the other fighters' techniques. But this hunched-over, bloated action figure of a fighting game character seems like he was ripped out of some other game and thrown in here. Surely, it's great to have as many characters as possible in a fighting game. But there's also something to be said for having a cohesive look and style across all the characters. Each fighter in Soul Calibur for the Dreamcast, though remarkably different, at least looked like he or she belonged in the same game as all the other fighters in the lineup.

At any rate, the exclusive characters represent the biggest difference between the three console versions of Soul Calibur II, and if you're trying to decide on which version to get, you should probably go for the one with the character you'd most like to play as or against. Or if you have a home theater system and an Xbox, then the Xbox version is the way to go, since it features 720p HDTV support and Dolby Digital 5.1 sound. The other two versions are no slouches either, though, and natively support surround sound and widescreen progressive scan displays.

While Kick-Ass helps praise the value of the modern day vigilante, it provides its own best example for why you should leave the heavy lifting to the professionals. Shallow brawler gameplay, bland presentation, and technical foibles plague this downloadable game, providing plenty of reasons why you should keep your underwear on the insides of your pants.

You take control of one of the film's three pseudo-super characters: Kick-Ass, Hit Girl, and Big Daddy as you punch, stab, and shoot your way through the game's short eight-level story mode. All three characters handle similarly and use a mixture of light and heavy attacks to plough through wave after wave of dumb enemy clones that attack you. Holding the R2 button and hitting the square, triangle, or circle buttons allows you to spend a portion of your auto-replenishing energy bar to dole out three character specific specialty attacks. These include such things as tossing out stun grenades, temporarily increasing the damage of your melee strikes, and twirling aerial pistol assaults. There's no combo system in Kick-Ass, so these special abilities are the most effective way to handle opponents and become all too easy to overuse to get the job done.

You seldom fight foes one-on-one and can hold your own against groups, but clipping errors, enemy pathfinding, and atrociously stupid AI means it's easier to exploit ranged attacks to take down assembled enemies that are milling around waiting for you to approach. Enemies in your line of sight stand by idly as you destroy a room or butcher their buddies. Ranged damage is as much a foe as a friend, however, and it's not uncommon to be shot at from offscreen by enemies who chip away at your life bar until you can get close enough to retaliate. Environmental objects allow gruesome kills like impaling targets on a forklift or electrocuting them against power boxes, but the physics are unintentionally laughable, so it's not unusual to see your target fly across the screen as the result of a simple punch or gunshot wound.

Completing mandatory missions and killing bad guys earns you experience points, which can be spent to upgrade your existing defence, attack, and special abilities--no new skills are unlocked. There's little strategy to point allocation, and because expenditure isn't permanent, you can niftily redistribute it on the fly to stay alive a little longer or dish out more damage if you encounter a particularly nasty situation.

The story assumes that you have knowledge of the movie or comic book upon which this brawler is based, although it does take liberties with how things play out. Each level includes a boss character lifted from the film, culminating in the game's final whimpering crescendo of an on-rails shooter and a cutscene--not the showdown you've been working toward. These battles play out like the rest of the mindless brawling, only with more hitpoints. Once you've completed the game, extreme difficulty and Arena mode are unlocked--though only the characters you've already completed the story mode with are available for both. Extreme difficulty makes the AI slightly tougher (but not smarter), while Arena is an escalating survival mode in which your health can only be restored at the end of each wave by smashing crates.

Local two-player cooperative play is available and is limited to the campaign mode. There are no online competitive or co-op modes, and when playing on the same console, only one character retains the ability to control the freely rotatable camera. The same quirks found in the single-player mode (slow rotation and players standing near walls are obscured) rears their ugly head again. Worse still, there is a finite distance two players can be separated by, so it?s all too easy to be pummeled by an enemy just outside of your attack range or have an important power-up dangle tauntingly in front of you.

The small number of levels in Kick-Ass is equaled by its miniscule set of drab environments, which include the streets of New York, a lumber warehouse, a junkyard, an apartment, and a penthouse. Character likenesses are reasonable, and animations showcase the acrobatic abilities of the cast well. The game is prone to slowdown even during less intensive fights, and while the frame rate never stutters, at times, response from the characters slows to a crawl.

Audio is particularly disappointing and cobbles together Kick-Ass and Hit Girl audio snippets from the film to repeat them ad nauseam. Big Daddy's lines have been recorded by an impersonator and are way off the mark. One particularly filthy Hit Girl sample gets bandied about so often that it loses all impact long before you finish the game. Part of the soundtrack from the movie has made the transition to the game, but sound effects frequently cut out during combat when using some abilities. Chunks of video from the film are used to bridge story gaps as cutscenes, but the amount of compression used makes them look cheap and nasty.

This brawler is as basic as they come, and unless you're interested in endlessly building up your characters to the maximum level in Arena mode, there's very little incentive to come back for more once you've completed the short story. Kick-Ass is a disappointing and all-too-brief experience for its $14.99 (AU$16.85) price tag.

Super Street Fighter IV: 3D Edition Review

Super Street Fighter IV: 3D Edition is more than just a simple port of the venerable fighting franchise. Several aspects of the game have been carefully tweaked to fit within the smaller confines of the 3DS, resulting in a fighting experience that feels every bit as impressive as its console cousins. Combat is fast, fluid, and visually spectacular and is as deep as it has ever been, making this one of the most technically brilliant fighters to have ever graced a handheld. There are some glaring omissions, though, such as leaderboards and an online tournament mode. Some compromises have also been made to accommodate the 3DS's button layout, but these are largely offset by a customisable touch-screen interface that makes the game more accessible than ever to newcomers.

The basic premise of the Street Fighter series has changed little since its debut in 1987. You play as one of 35 characters (all unlocked from the start), with the aim being to knock out your opponent with a range of kicks, punches, and special moves. All the characters from Super Street Fighter IV make a return, including series favourites such as Ryu, Chun-Li, and Blanka, along with newer additions such as C. Viper, Abel, and Rufus. Each is carefully balanced, so you are never at a disadvantage, no matter which character you fight with. With so many to choose from, there are a range of moves to suit everyone. For example, Abel is a slower, grapple-style character, specialising in short-range throws, while characters like Ryu and Sakura have faster, long-range attacks like Hadouken fireballs.

Learning moves and knowing which are the most effective against other fighters' attacks is key, making each match a strategic affair as you attempt to unravel your opponent's technique. If you're new to the series, a good place to start learning moves is Training mode, where you face off against a static dummy opponent. Though there's no tutorial, the controls are easy to pick up, and moves are listed via an onscreen command list. There are also various settings to adjust, such as your target's block mode, stun frequency, and regeneration levels. An input display shows you what buttons you're pushing, but it doesn't give you any guidance on the timing of your commands. If you're used to playing Street Fighter on a standard Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 pad, then the control scheme will be familiar, though arcade-stick players will need time to adjust. By default, you move your character around using the circle pad or D pad, pushing back to block. One isn't necessarily easier to use than the other; your preference will depend largely on your own technique, but you might find the circle pad to be a little less accurate in frantic fights. Meanwhile, the face buttons launch light and medium kicks and punches, while the shoulder buttons launch heavy kicks and punches.

Combining directional moves with attack buttons launches special moves, such as Hadoukens, Shoryukens, and hurricane kicks. More-complex combinations using two or three attack buttons at once launch powerful EX attacks, as well as super and ultra attacks--devastating moves that can make all the difference in a fight. Using these moves relies on having enough charge in your EX and revenge meters, which are built up when you absorb hits or dish out damage. However, while your EX power rolls over to the next round, revenge does not. This adds yet more strategic depth to fights: you might decide to gather energy for your special, or deal out as much damage as possible using smaller EX moves. These moves aren't essential to winning a match, and a few well-placed kicks and punches can be just as effective.

Performing super and ultra combos has always been tricky, but on the 3DS the problem is exacerbated by its small shoulder buttons, which are difficult to press in conjunction with the face buttons in the heat of battle. A new control method has been implemented on the bottom screen that aims to make things easier, for both pros and newcomers. It displays four boxes, which are assigned to different moves. In Lite mode these automatically perform your character's super and ultra attacks, as well as two regular special moves. In Pro mode, the boxes are assigned to button combinations, such as all three kicks or punches, but can be customised to your liking. Newcomers will find Lite mode especially useful, because it lets you perform spectacular moves with little effort. While pros may scoff at the simplified controls, being able to unleash supers and ultras has never guaranteed a win; such is the depth and strategy of the game.

As well as EX, super, and ultra attacks, focus attacks make a return. Pressing and holding down the medium punch and kick buttons launches one of three levels of focus, with the strongest allowing you to absorb the first hit from your opponents and incapacitate them, giving you time to follow up with another attack before they hit the ground. You can also use focus to exit animations early to chain together some insanely impressive combos, though performing them requires serious thumb dexterity and some of your EX meter. You can learn many of these techniques in Challenge mode, where you're asked to perform a range of different combos against a dummy opponent. Each character has a set of combos to learn, which get more difficult as you progress. Some of the combos are especially challenging, but mastering them raises your abilities significantly, making fights easier to win and more impressive to watch.

SVC Chaos: SNK vs. Capcom Review

An incredible Who's Who of fighting game superstars is largely squandered on SVC Chaos for the Xbox, which is an Xbox Live-enabled port of a NeoGeo fighting game. Much like the Capcom-developed Capcom vs. SNK games, SVC Chaos combines tons of different characters from each publisher's respective decades-old fighting game franchises, and lets them (and you) have at it in traditional one-on-one martial arts matches. The results really should have been great, especially since SNK really tends to do a much better job of putting together fast-paced, responsive, and complex fighting action than what's on display here. Diehard fans of some of these characters will find some redeeming value in this game just from seeing some of their old favorites with updated appearances and voices, but even they won't escape disappointment. Not only does SVC Chaos simply not play particularly well by the standards of 2D fighting games, but also the game's implementation of Xbox Live support is flawed.

The main problem with the Live support is that you can't choose to have a rematch against the other player once a fight is over. That means, as soon as you win or lose, you're first awkwardly prompted either to save a replay of the match or not, and then you're unceremoniously dropped at the Xbox Live main menu, where you can choose from the standard quick match and optimatch features all over again. Finding an opponent via quick match or optimatch really doesn't take that long, but the inability to easily continue playing against the same opponent after one match seems like a huge oversight. It's frustrating, especially since the handful of other online-enabled Xbox Live fighting games all conveniently let you rematch your opponent. Fortunately, there's the option to enter into a player lobby, in which you can invite and then subsequently reinvite players for a match. This is the best way to quickly play some bouts. Online play itself is functional, though the action is vulnerable to lag, which causes the controls (even on the character select screen) to sometimes feel finicky and unresponsive.

For what it's worth, there are a few decent options available when playing online, such as limiting the roster of characters only to the Capcom or SNK side, or preventing the use of some of the game's more powerful "hidden" characters (guys like Shin Akuma and SVC Chaos' very own "Violent Ken"--they normally appear on the character select screen when you press and hold the right shoulder button). And, despite the problems with the Live functionality and in the actual gameplay, SVC Chaos can still be pretty fun if you find yourself pitted against a similarly skilled opponent.

Nevertheless, the sorts of longtime fighting game fans who'd be interested in this game will be quick to pick up on the flaws in the fighting mechanics. Simply put, the game feels rushed. The fundamentals of any good fighting game--namely, the collision detection, which is to say, the stuff that happens when one character hits another character--just aren't very well implemented in SVC Chaos. Punches and kicks may look good in still frames but they just have a sloppy feel to them in practice. There's little feedback to differentiate between whether you've completely whiffed an attack, hit the opponent, or had the attack blocked by the opponent. Attacks in the game just don't have any weight to them--something that's most readily apparent and disappointing as when you finish off an opponent with a powerful special move of some sort, only to see him or her flop down to the ground without any kind of flash or drama. It's just like any other knockdown during the course of a match. So, there's no satisfaction to be found in finishing off an opponent with flair. In fact, ironically, ending a fight with just a simple jab tends to be much more impressive than doing it with a stronger move, because at least that way there's a special "slump to the ground" animation that you'll get to see.

As mentioned, SVC Chaos' cast of characters is obviously the main attraction, although little care seems to have been given to ensure that the fighters were appropriately balanced. However, the usual suspects are here, including Street Fighter's Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li, and Guile, and King of Fighters' Kyo and Iori, and Fatal Fury's Terry and Mai. Some surprising additions include Samurai Shodown II's Genjuro and DarkStalkers' Demitri, as well as King of Fighters' Athena, who is seen in her goddess outfit from the original 1986 arcade game in which she appeared. The nearly three dozen different characters in the game ultimately comprise an exciting selection of fighters, but, in another of the game's rather glaring omissions, there are very few grappler-type characters--there's really only one. Where are Street Fighter's Zangief and King of Fighters' Goro? Actually, you might suspect that the absence of grapplers has more to do with the limitations of the combat system rather than with a mere oversight. Throws are just one of the aspects of play that are awkwardly handled by SVC Chaos.

Pride FC is a no-holds-barred fighting organization based in Japan. Its rules are similar to those of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, a more well-known mixed-martial-arts tournament. The games based on these events are also quite similar, as THQ's new Pride game was developed by Japan-based Anchor, the company that developed the first UFC game for the Dreamcast. While the similarities between the two games are nearly endless, Pride FC delivers deeper, more fluid gameplay than any mixed-martial-arts game to date, making for an especially exciting two-player game.

Pride contains 25 real-world fighters, including Kazushi Sakuraba, Ken Shamrock, Don Frye, Wanderlei Silva, Renzo and Royce Gracie, Gary Goodridge, Carlos Newton, and Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira. The game's fighters handle roughly the same as one another, giving the game a good "pick up and play" feel, but once you've mastered the controls, the characters' differences really start to shine through. For example, Silva is a savage striking machine, while Sakuraba is more of a well-rounded fighter. The different fighters aren't exactly balanced so that one isn't any better than another, but there aren't any "impossible" matchups to be found, either.

Like previous games of this type, Pride FC maps one of the controller's four face buttons to each of your fighter's four limbs. When combined with movement on the D pad, you can use these buttons to perform several different strikes. Combining button presses lets you attempt to grab your opponent and bring him down to the mat, counter strikes, and put your opponent in a submission hold, among other things. The game features a few positions and situations that haven't been represented in any of the UFC games, such as some standing sprawl and clinch animations, which can even result in a match-ending guillotine choke. You'll also find that some strikes can knock a fighter down without rendering him unconscious, setting up a situation in which one player is standing while the other scoots around on his back, snapping kicks up at the standing player's knees. The additional situations, combined with the much-improved submission-move dynamics, really make Pride FC feel far more fluid than any of the other games in the genre. Simply put, Pride feels less like a series of canned animations and more like a real fight.

Pride FC also contains a create-a-fighter mode. The visual options for your created characters are pretty standard, letting you choose tattoos, ring attire, facial hair, and so on. What really sets the mode apart from the pack is that it lets you configure all your fighter's moves and combos for each of the game's different fighting positions. You can create multiple branching combos for each position, and the game gives you some good statistics on each move, helping you create more-damaging sets of strikes. The only thing missing here is a way to jump directly into the ring from the create section to test your character out. Instead, you have to jump all the way out to the training mode and load your fighter. Even then, there's no way to get a look at your list of combos.

While Pride is easily at its best in its multiplayer modes, it does have some single-player options that will hold your interest for a time. The grand prix mode takes you through a 16-man Pride tournament, the survival mode puts you up against fighter after fighter until you lose, and the one-match mode lets you set up any fight you wish. The grand prix and one-match modes are the two options that allow for multiplayer combat. Grand prix even lets you set up tournaments with up to 16 human players. The fights are frantically fast and, with only a few exceptions, rarely last more than a couple of rounds. The action-packed bouts are made exciting by the gameplay's heavy focus on countering and submission moves. For any situation you find yourself in, there's always a way to escape, and once you've learned how to properly play the game, you'll never find yourself feeling like you've lost control. The combo system has a huge buffer, letting you mash out all the presses of a combo while the first hit is still coming out, if you so desire. A slightly more timing-based system might have been a welcome challenge here.

Graphically, Pride looks great. The fighter models are all well constructed, and for the most part they animate incredibly well. The game makes good use of facial animation to properly convey pain during a submission or the unconscious collapse of a fighter going down to the mat. As nice as Pride looks, though, it could have used a bit more work in the collision-detection and clipping departments. In some cases (such as when a downed fighter attempts to punch at a standing opponent) punches will land even though the polygons don't appear to connect at all. Clipping rears its ugly head when you're on the mat, but it's most noticeable when you see fighters' heads or limbs moving right through the ring ropes.

The soundtrack is designed to mirror the Pride events themselves, including the regal ring music and the various fighters' entrance music. Unfortunately, there is no color commentary, but the game does have authentic ring announcing, oftentimes done in both Japanese and English, just like the real thing. The strikes and other moves in the game have an exaggerated sound to them that adds a bit to the action. The strikes land with loud thumps and the submissions sink in with an audible cracking noise.

While casual mixed-martial-arts fans might not see too many differences between Pride and the series of UFC games that are already on the market, the additional gameplay depth and loving attention given to the details of the license make Pride the best mixed-martial-arts game on the market. Some more single-player options could have added a bit of longevity to the package, but as it stands, Pride is sure to please fans of the genre and, to a lesser extent, fans of fighting games.