Review: Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike Online Edition (PS3/360)

While there are many, many different games in the legendary Street Fighter series, in my humble opinion Street Fighter III was the best of them. If you haven't played SF3, but are a fan of the series, I highly suggest picking up this game. Even if you aren't a fan of Street Fighter, this game is so much fun that you will enjoy it as much as any fan would.

Street Fighter 3 revolutionized the 2D fighting game world when it was originally released. With its insanely awesome game mechanics, namely the parry moves system and the EX moves mechanic, it had a higher level of finesse and polish than all the other fighting games of its time. You were able to parry a move and negate all damage to your character with the right timing, and you could power up your character's moves by sacrificing a portion of your special meter, both things which had never really been seen before.

This version of the game is essentially a remastered and remixed version of the beloved arcade classic. It has everything the arcade version had and more. You have the ability to fight against opponents online by either matching them to your rank in the game, or just by quick join, which matches you based only on the requirement that your opponent is a warm body. Quick join basically puts you up against any opponent regardless of rank, so you may find yourself fighting a clone of Daigo Umehara. You may google him, if you haven't seen him play yet and you need the fear of God put into you. The game is also produced by GGOP, which is a company that is known for its lag-less online play. In addition to lag-less, totally awesome online play, you also have the ability to record your matches and upload them to YouTube, or watch other players' recorded matches, including your PSN or Xbox Live buddies' fights.

For those of you who might be a little too attached to the original version of SF3, fear not; you can change the game's look into the classic arcade style, or you can keep the new, HD, smoother looking graphics, whichever floats your boat. This version is also loaded with trophies/achievements, so you will definitely find yourself playing this game for a long time if you are one of those OCD 'need every trophy ever' people. Even if you aren't, it's still a fair bet that you will sink a lot of time into SF3 Online with the addition of trials and parry training. You have tons of little mini-trials, which by conquering level up your rank in the game, allowing you to unlock pictures, music, and movies from the game's crypt. These are awesome, but perhaps the coolest thing about them is that one of the trials is actually EVO moment #37 (EVO being a huge annual fighting game tournament). Yes.. Good luck trying to get that achievement. Parry training allows you to practice your parries against any character, which is incredibly helpful. You can even record a dummy character's moves and have it attack you, so you know exactly when the hits are coming, in order to really perfect your parry timing. In any case, the trials and parry training will allow you to master the game on an entirely new level, and perhaps you might even get to the level where someday you will go down in EVO history.

Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike, in my opinion, has only gotten better with age. It is a game that was considered nearly perfect at the peak of its relevancy and has greatly amazed me even now, 12 years later. If you played this back in the day, or, horrors, you never had the chance to play it, you owe it to yourself to download it from Xbox Live or the PlayStation Network today.


Submitted By: Armando Ibarra (Employee)