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Review: SNK vs Capcom: CHAOS |
Shortly after the resurrection of SNK, now known as SNK Playmore, the internet was shattered with the annoucement that SNKP would be doing a SNK vs Capcom crossover of their own.
Forums everywhere exploded with rumors and conversation, SNKP themselves remained quiet, and gay ensued. Eventually, E3 rolled around, and SNKP displayed the world’s first glimpse of SvC Chaos, with an intro movie and a very stark glimpse of it’s gameplay. Shortly thereafter, one of the best pre-release marketing campaigns for a fighting game ever started, when SNKP opened the SvC website. Each week, small pictures of two characters that would be in the game went up. Discussions on the net raged on each week as new character info slowly trickled out. Would character X be in? How many characters would there be total? Who the fuck is Shiki (Rowr!)? What’s the game going to be like? What hardware will it be on? Will it take CvS2’s crown as the ultimate CvS crossover in arcades? When the dust had finally settled, information about the game system was released, and the beta tests started, gamers finally got a good look at SNKP’s long awaiting crossover. Was it everything they had been waiting for?
Apparently not. The players complained that the graphics were rehashed, the characters were unbalanced (albeit, mainly the boss characters only playable through codes… but whatever), and the game’s systems were broken. The ROM got released and everyone got to play it for themselves. Was it as bad as they’d heard? No, not really. Some of the bosses did have infinities, some characters did seem slightly watered down, the graphics weren’t the best they could have been, but the game was still a landmark effort by a company who hadn’t impressed it’s fans yet. Now, within a few short months of it’s arcade release, it was quietly released on the PS2 in Japan. So how did the port go? Read on.
As far as the gameplay goes, it went quite well. For one, the famous Geese and Zero infinities have been removed, the characters have been balanced just a little bit, and otherwise the game engine is almost arcade-perfect. I’ve only found one real thing that nags on me. At first, it seemed like the game was running a little too fast. That is, like it is almost on a Turbo setting or something like that. Then as I played more, I realized the game wasn’t running any faster. It just wasn’t slowing down. Any and all circumstances that would cause slowdown in the arcade run smooth as silk now. No big deal, but this also includes the slowdown that was SUPPOSED to be there. Some moves and supers (Like Gouki’s Dragon Punch, or Terry’s Triple Geyser) had deliberate slowdown to emphasize their power in the arcade. Now the just run through quickly. Not a big change by any means, but a noticable and slightly odd one.
Visually however the port is ASTOUNDING. I’ve simply never seen anything like this done to a home port (With the exception of Soul Calibur for DC). Virtually all the graphics in the game have gone from the pixelly Neo Geo trademark to remarkably smooth. It first smacked me in the face with the intro movie. Whereas there were many jaggies and a generally cheap appearance to the intro in the arcade, the PS2 version is noticably hi-res. All the sprites, backgrounds and artwork have similarly been smoothed over so they look exceptionally better than they did on the arcade. In addition all hit sparks, flames, fireballs, super chargeups, etc. are now translucent. Not your daddy’s Sega Saturn flicker translucency either. Honest to goodness, you can see through it, better than you face translucency. This effect alone makes the game look much better, and combined with the smoothed appearance, I’d say this is a remarkable step forward in my opinion of SNKP’s porting abilities. Especially after the rather standard ports of KOF2k and 2k1 that were released recently. While the backgrounds themselves are smoothed out, some of them still look rather shabby, as no new animations were added. Some of the characters still look rather out of place, but at least they aren’t jaggy anymore.
The sound is still pretty standard fare. No remixed AST or improvement on the arcades sound. That’s not a complaint really, as I found no real fault with the sound in the arcade, but it certainly up to the dizzying heights of some of the earlier KOF or later Street Fighter games.
Notably, there is no loading at all to speak of. You may as well be playing on a cart based system as far as loading is concerned. Game modes are your standard fare; Arcade, Versus, Survival, Practice, Option, and a Gallery in which character portraits are unlocked in Survival Mode. All the mid-bosses as well as Shin Gouki and Shin Mr. Karate are available from the start. Athena and Red Arremer are unlockable as well. All the options from the AES release are included as well as a few more. The smoothed, higher res format is optional and can be turned off for that truly arcade feel. There is also a couple different ways to display the screen and your standard config screen with option to switch between normal and arcade timing. Unfortunately, there is no language option, so get used to reading Japanese in win quotes and dialogue.
On that note, the controls are the best seen in a SNK port. Everything comes out very easily, better than all the past SNK PS1 and PS2 ports. No more struggling to get fireball motion out like in KOF99 Evo. I daresay the controls are even smoother than CvS2’s on the PS2. There is of course a downside. The L buttons are pre-mapped, and while the buttons themselves can be switched around, the functions can’t. You get Taunt, WP+WK, SP+SK, and WK+SP and that’s all. That was a thoughtless blunder but one of the few.
Overall, I’d definitely have to recommend this to any serious importer or SNK fan. The team at SNKP really took the ball and ran with it, and changed most of the disappointments with this game to make it a better purchase. Visually it’s much better, the gameplay has been balanced slightly and overall it’s a much more polished game. I sincerely hope we see this kind of care with the ports of SNK’s games in the future, especially with KOF2k2 and 2k3 coming up. Keep up the hard work, SNK Playmore.
