Capcom has released their new character pack for Street Fighter X Tekken. This new pack contains twelve new fighters, six from Street Fighter franchises and six from Tekken, that are ready to fight for Pandora’s Box. This pack, for me, has some of the best fighters in the game, unfortunately, some of these fighters break the balance that Capcom has finally achieved in Street Fighter X Tekken. However, before we get into the review, we need to address the 900 lb. E. Honda in the room, the controversy surrounding this pack.
For those of you that don’t know, this content was actually on disk at launch back in March. All twelve fighters were discovered to be on the disk by some proactive hackers out there, and this caused a huge uproar from the fan community. Games today already cost upwards of $60 for a new release, to discover that a company is going to hit us up for more money for things that are already on the disk is insulting at best. Officially, Capcom stated that this was to save hard drive space and to allow players to play with one another, regardless of who had the pack or not. Understandably, this did not appease anyone who had bought the game, who still feel that this pack is nothing more then a money grab for something that should already be on the disk. This whole dlc pack could have been handled better by Capcom. Ok, with that out of the way, let’s actually see if this pack is worth the extra money or not.
Characters:
You get twelve characters with this new download, and that is a lot of extra people to play with. This brings the total now up to fifty fighters to select from, with the Playstation 3 hitting 54 fighters. That is a huge amount of variety and selection for a fighting game. Keeping the sides even, this pack brings us six Street Fighter characters and six Tekken fighters. Representing the Street Fighter side we get Dudley, Elena, Sakura, Blanka, Cody and Guy. The Tekken side gets Jack-X, Bryan Fury, Lei Wulong, Christie Montiero, Lars Alexandersson, and Alisa Bosconovitch.
Now, I have always been more partial to the Street Fighter franchise then the Tekken one, so forgive me for being a little more biased here then usual. I love the Street Fighter side here and feel that this is an excellent selection of characters to add. Blanka has always been and will always be my number one fighter to choose from, and I am absolutely glad that he is here and ready to go. The game just did not feel complete without my Blanka. The tag combinations are straight forward for the most part, Sakura joins up with Blanka to find Dan, Cody and Guy continue their partnership, and Elena and Dudley join forces to hunt for Pandora’s Box. Only the last combination made me scratch my head, and I was delighted to find that Lei and Christie thought so too, during their story missions in arcade mode.
Since I know less about Tekken, I was a little less thrilled to see this list of characters. I do love to play as Christie and Lei and was happy to get my hands back on those two, and was happy to see Jack-X make an appearance, but since I never really delved deeply into Tekken 5 or 6, the addition of the others wasn’t as fantastic to me. The Tekken combinations are interesting to see as well, with Lei and Christie teaming up, Jack-X joining forces with Bryan Fury, and Lars Alexandersson working with Alisa Bosconovitch.
Gameplay:
This new pack is being released to go with the new 1.06, which focused on balancing some of the more powerful fighters, such as Ken, Ryu and Akuma. The Street Fighter group from this pack seems to be very balanced and fits in perfectly with 1.06 so as to not upset the game. However, to me, the Tekken fighters feel out of balance in comparison. Christie is a combination nightmare with just a single touch of the button, with Lei and Bryan being massive powerhouses. It will be interesting to see how this effects the online and tournament community in the future in regards to character selections.
Besides adding the new characters to the roster, this dlc pack doesn’t add anything else to the game play of Street Fighter X Tekken. Each character has their own moves list, just like the original roster, and each has their own play style. I liked Lei’s multiple fighting stance techniques, but they seemed awkward to pull off during combat, while Blanka’s new dodges seemed to really blend in well with his play style, though his rolling ball attack does seem very slow to me.
Final Thoughts:
Putting the controversy aside for a second and looking at this pack as it is, I like this addition to Street Fighter X Tekken. I feel that this pack brings new life to the game at this point with the addition of some great fighters, one just happening to be my all time favorite. I also feel that this adds some interesting combinations of tag teams that people can try out. I did love playing as Elena and Christie, both who use the Capoeira fighting style just as a fun team up. There will be some balancing issues here again, which is too bad since patch 1.06 just fixed the issues that came with the release.
The real question will come down to whether or not you want to pony up $20 for something that was on disk at release and cost you originally $60. I can tell you that I feel that this pack is worth the price tag and is full of fighters that are fun to play. For me, this would be a must have pack for a great game such as Street Fighter X Tekken. The pack is available now.
