Capcom Fighting Evolution

Capcom Fighting Evolution takes familiar faces from previous Capcom fighting games and brings them together, creating a tournament where street fighters, dinosaurs, ninjas and vampires duke it out for reasons unknown. Capcom Fighting Evo is by no means a bad game – it just does absolutely nothing new or different for the genre. In some areas it even feels like it took a step back.

Five games pitched in their characters to create Capcom Fighting Evo: Street Fighter 2, Street Fighter 3, Street Fighter Alpha, Darkstalkers, and Red Earth. Four characters from each game were selected for this game, and each character has a different ending drawn out by the talented artists at Udon, the company responsible for the awesome Street Fighter comic. Capcom seemed to pick four different yet defining characters to represent each game, which I think was an excellent idea. This way you get to sample the flavor of each game, rather than have two slots used by Ryu and Ken for each Street Fighter game.

Your options are pretty limited from the beginning. You have the choice of Arcade Mode, Vs. Mode, or Training Mode. Usually this wouldn’t be much of a problem for a fighting game, but Capcom has given us more options in past fighting games. The main menu ends up feeling somewhat bare.

Once you’ve started up a game, you’re allowed to pick two characters from the 21 available. You can mix and match characters from each game if you like, allowing you to create some interesting teams. Capcom Fighting Evo is not a tag game; you instead fight one-on-one, one character at a time. Before each round the player chooses which character participates. By pressing two punches together you can choose your first character, or pressing two kicks for your second character. The character you choose doesn’t flash or anything, so your opponent is oblivious to your chosen character. This way you can force your opponent’s strategy to change by choosing the character he wasn’t expecting.

Besides the blind character switch, Capcom Fighting Evo doesn’t offer anything new to the table. Depending on what game your character came from, his fighting style and special move will be the same as his native game. Street Fighter 3 characters can parry and each character can execute his or her (or its) special move from their respective game.

The graphics aren’t very impressive, unfortunately. The fighters’ sprites are pixelated and the backgrounds are static and overall not very interesting. Certain characters’ animations are better than others, but even the Street Fighter 3 characters look like they took a step down from their original game.

Capcom Fighting Evolution plays a lot like the older Street Fighters, offering basic gameplay and almost no learning curve. There are still things to unlock, but with nothing new to offer it will most likely only appeal to the Street Fighter fans out there.   

Gameplay: 6.0
Capcom Fighting Evo feels far too simple. For fans of the old Street Fighters this is great, but for the rest of us it’s a bit of a let-down. It is still fun as a casual 2D fighter, but you might want to rent it first.

Graphics: 6.5 
The backgrounds are pretty, but not too interesting compared to other Capcom fighters. The character sprites also look very low-res, even when they look good in the game they’re from. The involvement of Street Fighter’s comic book artists is definitely a plus.

Sound: 7.8
The soundtrack is exactly what you can expect in a Street Fighter. Upbeat tunes that fit well with their level of origin serve as an excellent backdrop to the fight. The menu sound effects can get really annoying, though.

Difficulty: Easy to Hard
There’s almost no learning curve to this game. Of course turning the difficulty up will yield tougher battles, so you can either walk through the arcade mode or break a number of controllers battling to the finish.

Concept: 7.5 
The concept wasn’t a terrible idea, though they did a better job with it in previous games (the Capcom vs. SNK series and Street Fighter Anniversary Collection). I think a serious facelift, as well as more features and modes, could really improve this game.

Multiplayer: 6.5
Depending on your opponent, this simple game can become complex. But most of the time you and a friend will grow bored and return to your other fighting games.

Overall: 6.6
It seems that with a few more added features and an aesthetic upgrade this one could have lived up to Capcom’s other 2D titles. Capcom Fighting Evolution is a good fighter for those that really enjoyed the early Street Fighters, but it doesn’t live up to the standards Capcom has set for itself with more recent titles.