Review: Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike Online (360)

"First Time Strike Out For One Of My All-Time Favorites."

It’s no secret that I’ve had a severe addition to Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike for about a dozen years. Thousands of dollars spent between quarters in the arcade, as well as retail copies on several systems. Sometimes I’ll find myself drifting away for a few months, but out of the blue, that hunger like no other consumes me, and I just need to feed off the energy that it always gives me. Not to toot my own horn, but if I had cared about tournaments more when I was in my early 20′s, I would have had a legitimate chance to place. Hopefully one day I’ll be able to beat Justin Wong (Lemon), though I have come rather close (three years ago.) With the amount of time I’ve put into this title and the money spent on it, I sorta feel like I can give this a much more fare shake than most other reviewers out there, who might not have had such a prestigious history with it like I had.

Okay, maybe not prestigious, but I can pretty much say I know the game in and out much better than most reviewers, with all due respect of course.

That’s why I’m a bit miffed with the latest incarnation of this ageless fighter. Not because I had high expectations, but because so far, the “selling point” has not worked properly whatsoever, amongst other things.

This is Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike: Online (3SO). The addition of “Online” to the title more or less signifies an emphasis on the online experience. I’ve played over a thousand games on the Street Fighter Anniversary version of 3S online, before Microsoft pulled the plug on the online gaming for its previous console. For the majority of my experience with it, from day one to its final days, lag was never too much of an issue. Maybe out of every 50 fights, I’d have one completely lagged up fight against someone. There would be bouts here and there during a stable match, but nothing that would throw off a Yun SAIII in progress. It really was heaven on earth for the most part. No fancy netcodes, no gimmicky additions to make the online play smooth. 3SO on the other hand, not so much.

GGPO was used for the online portion of 3SO. For those who are not quite familiar with what GGPO is, here’s it is in a nutshell. I’ve never had any prior play-testing with any GGPO enabled emulated titles on my PC, so I can’t boast about its successes or failures. What I can talk about is how botched online has been for 3SO, despite this addition.

Trying to connect to a Ranked match is a literal chore. I hit Ranked match and proceeded to watch the spinning wheels on screen, which is supposed to signify that the game is attempting to establish connectivity. On average three minutes will pass before any kind of progress is made, and either it will show me the player that wants to battle it out, or give me an error and throw me back to the Multiplayer search brackets. The latter happens at least 65% of the time I attempt to connect to a Ranked match, with 20% connecting me to a player waiting to accept my challenge, and the last 15% has me hitting B to back out because I’ve waited nearly 10 minutes (sometimes longer.) Lets say I find someone that wants to play….most everyone has a yellow or worse connection rating, which does matter quite a bit more than most other fighting games with color coded latency indications. Anyone I pick that has yellow or worse, the lag ranges from rough (hard to time parrying from slight stutters on the opponents behalf) to practically unplayable (huge stutter steps all around, attacks coming from no where, etc.) Most anyone with a green latency rating is either silky smooth, or has minor hitches. For some reason, disconnect rates and ranks change their calculations between when you find a person and when their latency color shows. If something chops up slightly at certain points during any online battle, audio cues become a distraction. While playing, I hit a blocking opponent and hear “KO!” yet it was a block. There are few audio anomalies that occur where a hit is blocked, yet the audio registered as a hit, mostly because of the GGPO set up going on. It gets quite sloppy at times, and can throw a person off from time to time. Apparently this is an existing oddity from the PC version of GGPO, where rollbacks will invite these annoyances. If a consumer is paying any amount of money for a product, kinks like these should have been ironed out before release.

(each video shows the quality of the upload only, not the latency, and all were won by me)

I played a good number of Player matches with a few friends from my XBL list and almost every game was completely smooth (I was invited to these rooms.) Other than one person having a yellow latency off and on, everyone was green and everything was playable enough. Trying to get into any other Player match rooms results in long waits, and most of the time I wouldn’t even connect to the room. There were even three occasions in which I was automatically thrown into a Player room when I did a manual search for each room available, and not a Quick match. Playing in a four player online tournament met with some excruciating lag from each player that was involved. It turns a battle of skill into who can send out the fastest, longest range pokes on a consistent basis. This is anything but a “flawless” or “lag free” environment, as I have been reading time and time again. Ironically enough, not everyone is suffering with these problems, though there are quite a number of folks that are.

The one promising feature that needs to be addressed though, is if the player is only fighting against a single person in a Player match room, the option to Rematch adds immensely to the package. Selecting this option will dump you right to the versus screen, in which a half second later, the match begins. This was a major sticking point to the home ports previous to 3SO, as players would have to jump back to the character select screen even if they want to continue playing the two characters preciously chosen.

In fact, access times all around have been streamlined to such a point, that nearly everything in 3SO has no waiting to it….aside from the atrocious Ranked match mode. Single player matches load quickly, multiplayer matches load quickly, even accessing Trials is a cinch. Maybe the only other delay present, besides Ranked mode, is the Evo Moment #37 Advance Parrying portion. Mistime the first parry, and it’s a waiting game for the combo to end and the couple second reset wait after the fact. Not a major issue though.

There’s also a YouTube uploading portion to the online play of 3SO. Win, lose or draw, after every Ranked match or Player match, there’s an option to save the preceding battle onto your HDD. From there, players can access a Replay Channel which will let them view those saved replays, or even replays from precious matches that would be best forgotten. Each save can be renamed and tagged and uploaded to a dedicated YouTube channel. As of the morning of August 26, the Microsoft side of things updated the YT functionality. Naturally the encoding isn’t a swift process, so have a little patience when having a match uploaded onto the site. Players will be locked out of any kind of activity while the encoding and uploading is occurring, so if there’s a vast library of matches that begs to be shared with the world, have something on the side that can kill some time between each encode and upload. The quality is more than viewable, and are reminiscent of a VHS recording of two players battling it out. The fact that it exists is a bonus, regardless of the quality of the videos.

There’s more to 3SO than its online functionality (though again, it’s 3rd Strike Online), with a healthy amount of training sections in total. There’s the standard Training Mode, which is a staple for any true fighting game, but then there are Trials, which will have players attempting to perform combos, as well as Basic Parrying, Advance Parrying and Handicap trials. Being that 3S in general is more of an advance players fighting game, anyone jumping into this experience complete raw, will more than likely be deterred more than encouraged by attempting these trials. Basic Parrying will be a cinch to most anyone coming in or anyone that’s a veteran to this title, but good luck to anyone other than an expert attempting to take down all five Advance Parrying trials in the immediate future. While I’ve been able to blow through the first four with relative ease, the final one (the infamous, overblown Evo Moment #37) seems to have random timing at the end. The parries (for me at least) are elementary by now, but the timing of the jumping roundhouse after the straight up final parry, seems to randomly change. Sometimes I can get it and then get off the low forward (then mess up the final bit) but most every time it will say “Failed” even if I landed the hit at the right time. Some players are saying it’s a matter of timing, yet others disagree.

In regards to the trials, every character will have five combos that the player will be asked to perform. The early couple of combos are standard fare that a novice wouldn’t have much trouble pulling off. Some character however, have some of the most timing and spacing precise combos that most any other player wouldn’t even think about trying. Dudley’s low roundhouse x5 > Ducking Upper > Super will be fine for someone like me, but who’s going to know that you have to walk forward very slightly between each low roundhouse? There’s no CPU demonstration either, so players are going into this completely blind. It’s the same deal with the Street Fighter 4 series as well, but with the amount of content and bonuses thrown in, wouldn’t it have been wise to have the aid of a CPU performing it for the player, so they know where to stand and when to time things better? There are even a few oddities in terms of completing the goal set, yet coming up empty. The Chun Li double head stomp on Hugo trial has issues registering for many players, including myself. I’m performed it immaculately on a number of occasions, witnessing the combo register on the left side, yet it never registered that I completed it. It wasn’t until I cornered Hugo and did two slow head stomps that didn’t register as a combo, that I completed the trial. There are several other trials with issues registering proper inputs and completions (Twelve’s close standing forward into a jump canceled Super Art II in the air seems to register when it feels like it, regardless of how many times it connects), which really degrades these additions to the product.

I’ve gone into parrying before in my 300th 365//365 review of 3S on the Xbox, but I’ll go into it just a tad bit more once again. This system is arguably what separates most players in terms of skill. Pressing forward, towards an oncoming attack as it’s about to hit you, will unleash the parry. Pressing down on a low attack that’s about to hit will set off the low parry, and forward in the air for the air parry. Multiple hits require specific timing to parry for the most part, which can become second nature once you get in a certain rhythm with these attacks. This is where the Basic Parrying tasks on the Trials section succeeds, as it clearly demonstrates the most basic parrying techniques. Depending on which type of attack is parried, the player that performed that parry has a very brief window of opportunity to counterattack with a choice blow. After nearly a dozen years with this game, I still have trouble every so often, but being able to parry out a massive attack that’s incoming, is a rush and a half. It’s not a 100% necessity for every match, but capturing the fundamentals will get you a lot further against the CPU, or even your friends. It’s a system that’s far more intimidating and technical than anything the Street Fighter 4 series ans introduced, and many faithful to 3S will point out parrying as one of the key reasons why the game is so well built.

Character balancing isn’t the greatest, as usual for a Capcom fighter. No attempts were made to re-balance anything or anyone, as this is an “arcade port.” Re-balancing did touch up Super Street Fighter II: Turbo HD Remix, and made it a bit more entertaining, though any attempts to re-balance 3S would have met with opposition, regardless of whether or not it would be optional. Though the roster is much smaller than recent fighting game releases (19, excluding the boss) there’s a sense that every kind of option was accounted for. Hugo is the massive grappler build, whereas Necro has the stretching arms of Dhalsim and the electrical components of Blanka. Dudley fits the boxer build, and Remy is slotted as the charge character, similar to Guile in many ways. Of course some fare much better than others, such as Chun Li’s insane poking prominence, as well as Yun’s speed, strength and third super art. High level play can be exhilarating to watch, though the Yun/Yun, Ken/Ken and Chun/Chun mirror matches can slightly deteriorate the thrill.

All the other additions are welcome, though hold little meaning in the long run. The VP system is clever, giving out VP points to those that accomplish a myriad of goals (taunt X amount of times, finish an opponent with a taunt that damages, etc.) These points can be used to purchase a wealth of odds and ends, such as artwork and music. Even the epic intro from the arcade is an unlockable. The remixed music is pretty disappointing, though the default music that’s been around for years never did much for me. Zune + Metallica, Chimaira or Slipknot = battle music that got me going. Also, button mapping on the character select screen, and in general, has been pulled up with a brilliant success. No longer must players scroll to set which button to what functionality; simply pressing the desired button at the desired attack location will suffice. So instead of scrolling for ages to set the RT button as roundhouse, I can move the cursor to the roundhouse icon and press RT. It’s all a magical series of button presses that streamlines the annoyance of button mapping that has been the norm as of late. Strangely enough, 3 punch/3 kick cannot be disabled. For many high level players, these usually don’t come into play, especially when playing on an arcade stick with all eight buttons present. Disabling the final two buttons on the right side eliminates any unwarranted commands, which can significantly cost them within their match. For most other gamers however, this will be a non issue, and even be welcoming to those that prefer to have a one button accessibility to EX attacks.

After some extensive playtime with a friend on the local multiplayer portion of 3SO, we discovered a handful of borderline game-breaking issues that have been noticed by some players, especially on the SRK boards, yet in no other publications. For the most part, this has been proclaimed as “arcade perfect” in said pieces, yet it’s farthest from the truth to those that have had years of hands on time with the arcade and previous console ports. For one thing, this isn’t the arcade soundtrack. But the most crippling issues come with any commands that require two button presses (EX moves, taunts, universal overheads, throwing, etc.) Simply put – they are not registering as they should. What one of us wanted as an EX Rhino Horn from Elena or an EX fireball from Ken, was 50-60% of the time a regular Rhino Horn or regular fireball, despite the fact that we were pressing two buttons. Instant overheads (pressing both medium attacks at the same time) had the same success rate, translating to a whiffed medium punch. Same with taunts and throws, however, throws have a whole other level of inaccuracies.

The range seems to have been reduced, or is just completely bugged in general. There were numerous times that my friend and I performed the action right on top of each other, yet nothing happened outside a whiffed throw attempt. Not only that, but these throws can now grab an opponent through attacks that should not be possible, such as most every super. There was an instant where I performed Alex’s diving attack (in the air press down + fierce), crossed over Elena, Elena then performed a grab while I was still mostly airborne and behind her, and threw me. These are game breaking experiences that we both never experienced against the CPU, or at least not in such a predominant manner, nor as frequently online (though it’s hard to notice anything when connectivity is pretty rare, and when there is a game, it’s usually lagging too severely to test things out.) For the interest of full disclosure, three separate arcade sticks were used (8 button Hori, 6 button miniature version of the first stick, 6 button Fighting Stick EX2) and each gave the same problematic issues, a third person was having issues with universal overheads, and well over a hundred matches were played, with every character given a good run through. A couple of other minor blemishes pop up here and there, such as Twelve having an unaltered voice when Super Art III is used (X.C.O.P.Y. enables Twelve to transform into his opponent.) Every other version of 3S has Twelve’s voice distorted when changed into another character. It all further infuses the notion that this port is far from arcade perfect.

It’s really a mixed feeling with Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike Online. Most of the game functions to a level where it’s playable and enjoyable (when things are not working against the player), the unlockables and the system in which they are offered can be addicting to some, but there are a few things that really weren’t necessary. The Trials are only beneficial to those that are advance players, as anyone jumping into this experience for the first time will more than likely be turned off by the difficulty provided, and most likely never come back to that portion of the game for a long time. The inaccuracies of commands that require two simultaneous button presses is an oversight that’s just hard to forgive, and the fact that no publications experienced this yet numerous gamers have, is an oddity in of its self (more so the fact that not every player has experienced the same issues – some have these two button issues while others don’t, some have random crashes and others don’t.) The unforgivable botch though, comes from the selling point of this package – the Online in 3rd Strike Online is flawed. Ranked matches are either too lagged or take ages to connect (if at all) and it’s a chore to get into any kind of multiplayer room in which an invite was not passed along to. When the Xbox version of 3rd Strike had a much stronger and reliable infrastructure than what’s supposed to be one of the best online systems out there, then something went seriously wrong.

In a nutshell – the greatest fighting game I’ve ever played has experienced its worst home port ever, and fails almost completely on its selling point: Online. A patch was announced and has been delivered for the online portion, yet the time to reach a Ranked player is still the same, with the same lagging results. If anything changed, there are more “Join Failed” error messages that appear. The devs are working on these issues, however. But for this very moment, the score reflects the current product. There’s no excuse as to why it was released in this state.

In a few months I will revise this review and update it if anything is adjusted for the better. If it remains as sloppily made as it does at this moment, I will note it here.

Rating: 6.0