Street Fighter: 3rd Strike

When I was a kid I lived on a hill in Lincoln Heights, Los Angeles. Aside from a few homeless crackheads that sat around at the base of the hill, about a quarter mile down the road, there was pretty much no one to hang out with when I wasn't in school. I resorted to console gaming to keep myself busy. I loved it. Dozens of solid hours playing Final Fantasy or Dragon Warrior with my trusty dictionary by my side, to help with the vocabulary my elementary school brain had not yet come across. I was pretty much satisfied with what I considered a very eventful life at home, and in those days, I wasn't really crazy about going anywhere-- except one place. That's right, the arcade, baby. I wasn't picky. Most of the time the "arcade" meant the asian family-owned VHS rental store about ten minutes from my house or the coin-op laundromat. Anywhere I could go with the latest fighting game arcade machine and handful of opponents coming in and out.

Since those days my interest in fighting games has severely dwindled. A year or two ago I was probably as reluctant to play a fighting game as I was a football game. Guilty Gear managed to interest me for a few days with its art style and interesting cast of characters (Thanks, Faust) and I believe I played Soul Calibur for a few minutes before realizing how generic it was, but for all intents and purposes I had pretty much given up on the genre. And then it happened. Capcom shouted "Let there be 3rd Strike," and 3rd Strike was born. Capcom looked, and saw that it was good.

Even when I was heavily into fighting games, I don't ever remember being completely crazy about Street Fighter. The only thing I can remember loving from the series when I was younger was the animated film. I was always more of a Mortal Kombat and Killer Instinct kind of guy. For whatever reason, Capcom has managed to refine pretty much everything I remember about Street Fighter, or fighting games in general for that matter, and make basically every aspect of them great. 3rd Strike is a monument in genre refining. I am reminded of what Resident Evil 4 did to the survival horror genre.

Maybe it's the graphics? It could be. 3rd Strike is a beautiful game. The characters and environments are incredibly detailed, and look great in motion. I am impressed every time I see Elena's stationary animation loop, or Makoto's insanely exaggerated animation after she performs her Seichuusen Godanzuki super art. I have a special place in my heart for games that have withstood the times and stayed 2D after all these years, and it's a goddamn good-looking 2D game.

Could it be the sound? Yeah, man. The 3rd strike soundtrack is catchy and unique. The stage tracks always seem perfect for the environs, and the hip-hop flavor is always welcome. I like being rapped to about character selection when I'm choosing my character.

I could go on and on about the details that make 3rd Strike such a charming installment to the Street Fighter series and the fighting game genre, but at the end of the day it just boils down to one thing: 3rd Strike is fun to play. It's really fun to play. So fun that I spent nearly two full days with a friend last week playing through the single player mode with the entire cast in order to unlock Gill as a playable character. So fun that it's drawn me in enough in the past few months to actually shape me into a worthwhile opponent on an arcade machine again. Now that feels good.

I just recently went and bought the Street Fighter Anniversary Collection for Playstation 2, which is essentially the first fighting game I've picked up since Mortal Kombat 3 on the Super Nintendo. I'm a bit short on cash right now, but I couldn't resist any longer. 3rd Strike is a game that deserves to be purchased and played, and I'm not going to miss out.

Messatu Gou Rasen!

Rations for thought

Metal Gear Solid is, all inclusively, one of the greatest video game series ever developed. There, I said it.

As much as it kills me to say so, I am pretty much a newcomer to the series, I played through the installments in a strange, backwards order, and on top of that, I have yet to experience the original. Still, the latter two installments which I have played through in recent times have pretty much left me feeling both stunned and dumb for not having played them earlier.

I started with Snake Eater, the third game in the Metal Gear Solid series (if you don't count expanded editions). I picked up the game because it had a pretty big hype, the consensus seemed to be that it was the gem of the series. Also, I found it for $19.99 brand new not terribly long after its release.

I loaded the game up that night, watched the introduction, got mildly excited, and then got beat up and eaten by an alligator. I avoided the alligators the second time around, and not having any familiarity with the games I continued to get caught by the first or second guard you encounter. Frustrated, I turned off the game and it collected dust on my shelf for eight to ten months.

As I often do, I had a sudden urge one day to give Snake Eater another shot, I promised myself that this time I would be more patient with it. Strangely, I didn't really have any problems this time around. Most likely because I discovered how to use the close quarters combat system right off the bat. Not more than two days later I was watching the ending with a dumb look on my face. I remember thinking a few dozen times during the course of the game things like "Man, you're a real idiot for not having played this earlier," "Am I dreaming this up?" and "I want to make passionate love with Hideo Kojima." From the second or third big cutscene in the game I knew that my immediate future would be filled with much more Metal Gear. I was sold. As far as I was concerned, I could watch the Metal Gear cast get tortured, groped, and deceived for every minute from that point forward and die a pretty happy guy.

What made Snake Eater so good? That's a good question. There are so many right answers to that question I could go on all day. Hideo Kojima is a multi-talented genius and artist. Not only does he understand what makes a great, fun, and challenging game experience, but he is as well versed and gifted as any great film director when it comes to revealing the story to the player. He created a game that isn't scared to go through crazy and off the wall in order to have some fun. Yeah, it takes place during a real-world militaristic conflict, and yeah, there is an enemy who can control and fly around with a swarm of bees. Kojima is showing the world how to make a mature game that is honest-to-God mature, and he is goddamn good at it.

I found Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty not long ago tucked away in mint condition on the used games wall at Gamestop for four dollars. Quite possibly the best four dollars I have ever spent in my life.

I busted it open and played through in one twelve-hour sitting, with a short sleeping break. I found the game to be a bit more difficult than Snake Eater, mainly because of the combat additions I was used to that hadn't been put in the series yet, but once I got the hang of it I found myself thinking the same things all over again.

"God bless you, Kojima."

The Metal Gear Solid games are the kind of games that make me call my friends after I beat them to tell them how good they are, regardless of the fact that they could care less about some random video game I happen to be playing. They are the kind of games I recommend to friends who don't even play video games very much, if at all. They are among a small, rare list of games that I consider to almost transcend video games altogether. Everyone who has any kind of affinity for well-developed media should experience this series. That's pretty much all I have to say about that.