Gaming Bros

Since I am a big fan of Street Fighter series, I keep tracking what’s happening after the last SF, which was Street Fighter 3 Third Strike. Capcom have recently (Ok a few months ago, I was busy to write about it) announced Street Fighter 4, which is already released on arcade as of writing this article and is scheduled to be released on PS3, Xbox 360 and PC.

They are planning to ditch all SF3 new characters and go back to the roots of SF2. So almost all SF2 characters have made it back such as Rye, Ken, Chun-Li, E.Honda, Guile, M.Bison, Sagat, Vega, Zangief, Dhalsim, Blanka, Balrog and Akuma. in addition to new ones: Abel, C.Viper, Rufus, El Fuerte and Seth (Boss). The list is already nicely long yet rumors say that more characters will be added to the ones already available on the arcade version.

Capcom are going back to 3D with this version while maintaining the traditional 2D fighting system. As long as this isn’t another Street Fighter EX, then I won’t be worried. Though from watching some videos, it seems the art is unique and has it’s own style and the animation is fluid and at the same time fast to cope with the furious fighting.

The game is said to play more like SF2 than SF3 and parrys have already been thrown out (was introduced in SF3). After reading a few articles, it seems the move to 3D did not affect the old and yet satisfying 2D fighting system gameplay which is always a good thing. You still got your Super combos in addition to Ultra combos which, as it’s name suggests, is a more powerful version of the super combo.

In terms of Story, the game’s timeline is after the Alpha (Zero in Japan) series and before SF2. As much as I wanted something totally new, Capcom made a wise decision of where to start the story for this version of SF. Lets see how it turns out. Do note that the home versions will have cinematic cutscenes (anime) to show more of the story which is a great move and something totally new in a SF game.

The nice thing is that you can also play online with this version of SF which will make it’s lasting appeal pretty long (I hope we in Oman don’t have problems with latency by then, hopeful but doubtful).

For more in-depth details of the game, checkout www.streetfighter.com (There are some awesome must-see fight scenes using a mix of the game engine and stylish art animation). I also stumbled upon www.streetfighter.org which also has a little bit if nice information.

Infinity Ward (the developers) just can’t stop surpising us with their war FPS games. Just when you think that this genre has been done to death with the hundreds of WW2 and/or modern war variants, they come and prove that there is still lots of room for improvement and excitement. After missing on Call of Duty 3, which landed only on the consoles, Infinity ward comes back with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.

The new sequel is based, from it’s subtitle, on modern age war. Using everything you ever know about current weapons and tactics. The game uses an updated version of the graphics engine used in previous Call of Duty games. Simply put, it is brought to current age graphics with up to date shaders and effects. Simple reason, and good one too, of updating from a previous engine is that you get access to a wider configurations of PCs when focusing on that market only. Optimized graphics engines that don’t have to be cutting edge is always a plus (Take a hint Crytek). Graphics can keep the wow factor for an hour or so, gameplay can keep it as long as the game lasts. Which brings me to probably the only annoyance in CoD4, it’s length which is about 4-6 hours long for it’s single player campaign, that is if you are slow. Other than that, you are in for a heck of a ride.

I never played a realistic FPS war game that is so engaging. As soon as you start a level, you get the feeling of really being part of a team that are storming, ambushing, defending and whatever other means of actions you get to do in the different levels of the game. The enemies also put you on your edge and going guns blazing rambo style won’t work here, and it never worked in real life too. Taking cover and being non static is the way forward. Stick too long behind a single cover and the enemies will swarm on you or will flush you with grenades. The missions themselves have interesting variety in them, from one of the best sniping missions to spectacular base assaulting missions. You also have to always check your flank, the enemy is so good at this that you can easily get carried away by focusing on the ones infront of you and then suddenly get killed be someone from behind. The thing is, when you are going through the single player campaign, you get that cinematic feeling that you might find in a Metal Gear Solid game which is of course nice to have a little of. Maybe because the music is composed by the same composer that did the music for MGS series, Harry Gregson-Williams.

One small thing I noticed is that rag-doll physics are absent almost throughout all Call of Duty series. The physics when it debut, was of course silly and funny but current implementations are far more realistic that before so it might have been a good time to have it implemented. It isn’t a big issue but rather a slight note that won’t affect your experience in this amazing game.

Now from all the three versions: PS3, Xbox 360 and PC, getting the PC version is best if you have a good setup simply because of the keyboard+mouse control which is almost always better than the controllers used in consoles for FPS games. Still, whichever version you get, you will be sure that you will have a blast playing this game.

So do you have both Xbox360 and PS3 and don’t know which version of GTA4 you want to get, well, here is the answer: PS3. Reasons: Anti Aliasing + Faster load times. Still no matter what console you own, the game is getting bombarded with 10 out of 10 reviews all over the place. Since I don’t own an Xbox360 or PS3, am hoping the PC version doesn’t take long to be released.