Reviews// Street Fighter Alpha 3 Max (PSP)

Yes, Street Fighter Alpha 3 Max doesn’t go gentle on you. Even on the lowest difficulty setting (for investigative purposes only, we swear) the game can and will give you a right beating if you’re too slow, too stupid or just don’t make effective use of your combination moves. And in classic Street Fighter style, your moves and combos aren’t simply given to you. You have to work for it, learn the character and discover their strong points. And even beyond the character roster, there’s a huge scope for gameplay experimentation.

Once you select your fighter you can choose a fighting mode, between ‘Normal’, ‘Mazi’, ‘Saikyo’ or ‘Classic’. This will give you certain playing conditions to give you more of a challenge, like a one-round win for your opponent, a smaller guard bar or even no power-up combo meters to aid you. In addition to this, there are three types of combo styles, called ‘ism’s. Depending on which one you choose, the execution, damage and style of your combos will be slightly different. If you fancy having varying levels of super attack moves, choose A-ism, or pick V-ism if you want to charge up and do double damage whenever you please in a match. It’s using your skills, analysing what your opponent is equipped with and acting accordingly will you succeed. Jumping around like a jackrabbit doing drop kicks won’t save you. This is not Tekken.

It’s usually the bane of every arcade game, let alone every arcade fighting game, to increase the number of gameplay modes to satisfy home players. When you first turn on Street Fighter Alpha 3 Max, try not to fall on your ass, as you’re overwhelmed with 13 different game modes including the Arcade story. There’s a World Tour option, which allows you to level up any playable character and play against fighters around the world. It’s a great side-addition to the Arcade and it’s ultimately rewarding.

For quick bouts there is a survival mode with about eight different options, a tag-team mode, 2-v-1 battles and even a 100-man Kumite round that challenges you to take on as many opponents as possible with one life. And that’s not even forgetting the network mode, as a friend with a PSP can also battle with you for righteous power, and stuff. It’s a huge effort to include as many options as this, and ultimately boosts the longevity of the game by powers of ten, let alone two-fold.

The army of characters you can play as well will give you a different experience of accomplishing each mode too, so you can really get lost in a game like this if fighting games are your thing. For those not too interested in fighters, they will likely attempt the Arcade mode and a few extra features without delving into learning character moves or levelling up through World Tour, but the game is so rock hard anyway it will take you a while just to complete all 37 stories.

As great as Street Fighter Alpha 3 Max is though, we can’t get over the fact that this is, again, a port of a great, yet ancient console game. The PSP’s gaming library is starting to look slightly stale with endless ports of PS2 games and compilation titles, and for those wanting a fresh experience this game does nothing to dispel fears and reasoning behind this behaviour. But, if you just want to get some classic brawling on your Sony handheld, then this is about the best example of the genre you’re going to get.

SPOnG Score: A “Hardcore fighting at its portable finest”

[i]Street Fighter Alpha 3 Max is a nearly perfect fighting game, with almost unlimited options to test your skill and challenge your abilities further. It’s a game that is ideal for the PSP as you get a quick battle in on the train, and it has a charm that will give you that ‘one more round’ feeling. Make no mistake though, this is a game purely bred for fighting fanatics, and the difficulty level and sometimes-awkward controls can put many gamers off. This is hardcore fighting at its portable finest. Get.


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