Tetsuo_Shima
In Cryo Sleep
Ok, so I'm taking this whole 360 thing are far as I can take it, I'm moving on to Arcade game reviews now as well 
But from now on, instead of writing out 'Xbox Live Arcade' in the thread title (just to let you know its for us 360 elites only ) I'll just put 'XBLA' instead. Oh, and I will be reviewing more arcade games over the next few days cos Im getting a taste for it .
Street Fighter 2 Hyper Fighting - 800 Microsoft Points, cough.
Im sure everyones heard of Street Fighter in general, but surely most of us will remember SF2 the best. First debuted back in the early nineties on arcade machines, before moving onto the SNES, some call it the epitany of fighting games. It has it all; brilliant characters, good clean battles, super moves and of course, Ken So how does it fare on 360?
Firstly, SF2: Hyper Fighting was the last incarnation of the SF2 series (or so I'm led to believe) on the SNES. It's basically just SF2 with a bit of the odd tweaking, and it allows you to play as some of the boss characters from the off. The character roster, by the wayside, is: Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li, Dhalism, Zangief, Guile, E-Honda, Blanka, Sagat, Balrog, Vega and M-Bison.The game has only a limited amount of playing modes; Arcade, Versus, 2p battle and training. However, the 360 incarnation has two additional game modes : Quarter Mode, designed to simulate the arcade 'just another quarter' experience, and Xbox Live mode.
The arcade mode consists of a 'World Tour' where you battle each opponent in turn, visiting their home countries and beating them up to advance to the next locale. Each consecutive battle gets harder and harder to beat, so if you think its fairly easy at the start, youll be sweating buckets and hammering your joypad in a frenzy trying to defeat your fifth aggressor. This mode itself is a good bit of fun, it's quite rewarding in terms of enjoyment and gamer score and the computer will give you a decent challenge. Especially since you need to complete it with all characters, and even defeat the mode without losing a round (what!?!? but thats... thats... impossible!) to fully rook it of points.
Quarter mode, I havent tried yet actually (ahem) but to steal an excerpt from GameSpot:
"If the pressure of ranked competition isn't for you, you can always mess around with the unranked online modes. One of this version's only unique features rears its head in this area: Titled the "quarter match," this mode is intended to emulate the pastime of several people hanging around an arcade machine, waiting their turn. Up to four people can get into a quarter match, and as two of them duke it out, the other two spectate. All four can comment, and in a nice diversion from the arcade rules, the winner of a match can choose a different character for the next match."
There is also the standard 2-player fare that you've all grown used to (you have havent you? Oh I forgot, PC gaming community. My bad.) where you play your conveniently located mate or sibling in a deathmatch, and then win by grabbing their controller and sitting on it whilst you mash their character into oblivion.
Anyway, moving swiftly on to xbox live. The Live mode is both good, and dodgy. The good is that the battles are fun and you get (allegedly) evenly matched up. Its a lot more rewarding pummeling another human into the ground than just a computer opponent, so its good getting your game on. IF you can get one, sadly. The quick-match feature seems to be working things out fairly fast, and it always finds an opponent in a matter of .. a second. Unfortunately you have to search about ten times to actually get into a battle because more often than not, the battle will time out before starting A problem gamespot mentioned was the lag during online play, but I failed to notice it really. Maybe I was just that cack-handed, eh?
The graphics are, well, stoneage. But then again, thats exactly what youd expect. The action moves fairly fluidly, and you can get the picture to fit into a widescreen telly nicely (through a neat analog screen-sizer) but a bit more refinement of the sprites would have been nice. In saying that though, looking at those age-old fuzzy characters waltzing round the screen at a hundred mph is in my eyes far more attractive than even Mortal Kombat V. Dont ask why, but the sheer crude-id-it-ity...ity of it just makes it appealing. And the faux-slo mo when you land a dragon punch still shivers your spine especially with the 'SHOR-YUKEN!' shout which has been ported superbly. All the sounds still retain their impact punch, so its a nice retro trip.
Overall, Id give it a good 7.5/10. Mind, several points of that score is because of reminiscent value So, take a dip if you feel like it. Its a nice little addition to the Arcade family but dont expect too much from it.
But from now on, instead of writing out 'Xbox Live Arcade' in the thread title (just to let you know its for us 360 elites only ) I'll just put 'XBLA' instead. Oh, and I will be reviewing more arcade games over the next few days cos Im getting a taste for it .Street Fighter 2 Hyper Fighting - 800 Microsoft Points, cough.
Im sure everyones heard of Street Fighter in general, but surely most of us will remember SF2 the best. First debuted back in the early nineties on arcade machines, before moving onto the SNES, some call it the epitany of fighting games. It has it all; brilliant characters, good clean battles, super moves and of course, Ken
So how does it fare on 360?Firstly, SF2: Hyper Fighting was the last incarnation of the SF2 series (or so I'm led to believe) on the SNES. It's basically just SF2 with a bit of the odd tweaking, and it allows you to play as some of the boss characters from the off. The character roster, by the wayside, is: Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li, Dhalism, Zangief, Guile, E-Honda, Blanka, Sagat, Balrog, Vega and M-Bison.The game has only a limited amount of playing modes; Arcade, Versus, 2p battle and training. However, the 360 incarnation has two additional game modes : Quarter Mode, designed to simulate the arcade 'just another quarter' experience, and Xbox Live mode.
The arcade mode consists of a 'World Tour' where you battle each opponent in turn, visiting their home countries and beating them up to advance to the next locale. Each consecutive battle gets harder and harder to beat, so if you think its fairly easy at the start, youll be sweating buckets and hammering your joypad in a frenzy trying to defeat your fifth aggressor. This mode itself is a good bit of fun, it's quite rewarding in terms of enjoyment and gamer score and the computer will give you a decent challenge. Especially since you need to complete it with all characters, and even defeat the mode without losing a round (what!?!? but thats... thats... impossible!) to fully rook it of points.
Quarter mode, I havent tried yet actually (ahem) but to steal an excerpt from GameSpot:
"If the pressure of ranked competition isn't for you, you can always mess around with the unranked online modes. One of this version's only unique features rears its head in this area: Titled the "quarter match," this mode is intended to emulate the pastime of several people hanging around an arcade machine, waiting their turn. Up to four people can get into a quarter match, and as two of them duke it out, the other two spectate. All four can comment, and in a nice diversion from the arcade rules, the winner of a match can choose a different character for the next match."
There is also the standard 2-player fare that you've all grown used to (you have havent you? Oh I forgot, PC gaming community. My bad.) where you play your conveniently located mate or sibling in a deathmatch, and then win by grabbing their controller and sitting on it whilst you mash their character into oblivion.
Anyway, moving swiftly on to xbox live. The Live mode is both good, and dodgy. The good is that the battles are fun and you get (allegedly) evenly matched up. Its a lot more rewarding pummeling another human into the ground than just a computer opponent, so its good getting your game on. IF you can get one, sadly. The quick-match feature seems to be working things out fairly fast, and it always finds an opponent in a matter of .. a second. Unfortunately you have to search about ten times to actually get into a battle because more often than not, the battle will time out before starting
A problem gamespot mentioned was the lag during online play, but I failed to notice it really. Maybe I was just that cack-handed, eh?The graphics are, well, stoneage. But then again, thats exactly what youd expect. The action moves fairly fluidly, and you can get the picture to fit into a widescreen telly nicely (through a neat analog screen-sizer) but a bit more refinement of the sprites would have been nice. In saying that though, looking at those age-old fuzzy characters waltzing round the screen at a hundred mph is in my eyes far more attractive than even Mortal Kombat V. Dont ask why, but the sheer crude-id-it-ity...ity of it just makes it appealing. And the faux-slo mo when you land a dragon punch still shivers your spine especially with the 'SHOR-YUKEN!' shout which has been ported superbly. All the sounds still retain their impact punch, so its a nice retro trip.
Overall, Id give it a good 7.5/10. Mind, several points of that score is because of reminiscent value
So, take a dip if you feel like it. Its a nice little addition to the Arcade family but dont expect too much from it.