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Review: Street Fighter Alpha 3: Double Upper [PSP] |
Of all the consoles I’ve ever owned only the Saturn had a default pad suited to my one-on-one fighting needs. Every other machine needed a replacement to line up the buttons, to add diagonals to the D-pad or to fit my hands. So just how would the PSP, widely noted for its unfriendly digital pad cope when controlling one of Capcom’s superb pieces of fighting art?
Very badly. Incredibly badly. Fucking shit. How many times do you push a diagonal during an average SF match? Count them. You’ll certainly notice when they’re gone. Sensing this, in part through the wholly negative feedback from their earlier PSP Vampire Chronicle, the Japanese SFZ3DU comes with an ‘official Saikyou-Ryuu dojo support pad’ - a circular D-pad overlay providing much-improved tactile response and handy-dandy diagonals.
It’s still not good enough. It’s better, make no mistake, but even simple special moves are a gamble - by my reckoning seven out of every ten attempts are recognised. There are tonnes of preset key combinations allowing every move and action to be mapped to a button, but that’s even more insulting. It doesn’t help matters that the pad fixes to the PSP’s own controller by small sticky pads, pads that lost their adhesiveness after an hours’ play.
In the end I plumped for a 3rd party solution, a selection of replacement analogue nubs in the hope that one of the six would suit my needs. Once again, I found one that worked better than previous but still not good enough, and here we’re stuck. Even allowing for the brief adjustment period - after two weeks of practice I’ve clearly reached my limits, and those limits stop well short of academic things like reliable charge supers, any combos into supers and even high-low blocking. This sort of thing simply CAN NOT happen in SF.
Which is a crying shame because as both conversion and upgrade it is an absolute marvel. It looks incredible - the vibrant colours of the (full size, full animation) sprites, backgrounds with optional widescreen expanded playfield and delightfully OTT presentation are lickably vivid on the machine’s sharp, clear LCD display. The sound is identical to the original, with every voice sample, sound effect and note of music translated exactly - this thing shames every other Z3 home port with consummate ease, even taking load times into account - the 40 second startup is a bit much, but with around six seconds between fights - hidden nicely by the map and VS screens, more than acceptable.
An upgrade to an upgrade, Double Upper takes the previous home versions which themselves added new characters and modes, and tosses even more stuff in. From Capcom vs SNK 2, Eagle, Maki and Yun, who also appeared in the admirable but fatally limited Gameboy Advance version are selectable, and from Capcom Fighting Evolution comes Ingrid - all set nicely to fit in with the game’s loose, flexible engine and multiple ISM system. All of them are a lot of fun to both use and fight against, the much-needed arcade mode tweak enabling all the ‘additional’ characters to show up as opponents, without the need to first select one yourself.
Unfortunately the new characters lack their own stages and theme songs, instead piggybacking similar relevant ones - which is a shame as that would have probably pushed it over the edge of ‘port’ and into the realms of ‘new version’. They do have story mode dialogues, a couple of special intros, and endings varying from totally bland (Maki) to completely ludicrous (Ingrid.)
DU also features a heavily trailed but disappointing tag team mode - featuring half-heartedly implemented 2 vs 1 battles - the single opponent beefed up with standard Dramatic Battle stat/AI boosting. Other additions include a 100-match ‘Kumite’ mode, a single fight mode and the now-traditional World Tour mode. Needless to say, with all the other Z3 home port modes and options as well, there’s an awful lot to do here.
But like so many games these days, Z3DU is very tricky to review. As a game it is beautiful and wonderful but the very handheld that runs it in such pristine quality is also its undoing. While perhaps this is more a criticism of Sony’s PSP than Capcom’s software, the flawed control system is intrusive enough to genuinely harm the game.
It all comes down to a simple question. Can Street Fighter exist without a perfect, natural and reliable control system? Quite frankly, no, it can’t. And this time there’s no replacement controller.
In this instance the deterring score below serves as a furious suggestion that any other version of A3 would be a better choice, load times, hit box changes, animation cuts, sprite size and availability be damned, and a caution to those who’d buy it solely on its pedigree. I love SFA3 almost as much as life itself, but not when it controls like the first Art of Fighting. If you’re not bothered about accuracy and just want to jump about and spaz on some buttons have at it, but any vaguely serious SF fan be warned. You will be frustrated, disappointed and upset, and not neccessarily in that order.
