Mobile Review | Street Fighter Puzzle
In a mobile gaming world full of cookie cutter Bejeweled knock off games, just about every well known company and their mother seam to be slapping on some franchise icons to some sparkly stones and calling it their totally original game. But why do these companies keep remaking these old games over and over again? Because we keep playing them for some odd reason. Is it because they are really easy to just pick up and go? Or maybe because they take no “real” gaming skill to be good at. I’m not to sure what it is, but I can tell you for sure that they are not going anywhere any time soon.
While looking through the App Store I came across some of Capcoms games and saw that they tried their hands at some Street Fighter fun. I thought to myself, “how could you combine the worlds of bad ass street fighters, with the world that has been taken over by crushing candies?” You yourself might also be wondering how the fast paced button bashing game play of one of the most notorious fighting franchises would mesh with a very slow paced color matching puzzle type game. Well I am here to tell you that it actually plays better then you might think.
When starting SF Puzzle you get the pick of one of four icons of the Street Fighter franchise. Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li or Sakura can be your main choice at the start of the game. Many other “Fighters” can be bought through you game play if your will to spend your heard earned and semi hard to come by gems. At this point in time you have 11 others to chose from. Them being Cammy, Guile, Juri, Ibuki, M. Bison, Akuma, C.Viper, Morrigan , Felicia, Poison and the very ominous Hsien-Ko. Each fighter with their own Hp stats, Defense, Attack and special ability. Unlocking them all is either going to take a LOT of playing of of course the ever loved in-game purchases.
The game play is actually interesting. It’s not unique, or original, but the way they use it is very well done. Better then a good amount of other jewel battle games. You have to of course combine at least 2 of the same color gems to attack your enemy. Making a combo does a few things, it attacks your opponent with a small amount of damage depending on the attribute of the gems as well as your opponents attribute. Also slightly increasing the gauge of an attack card you have matching the gems attribute. But finally, in the location of the targeted combo, you drop a multi colored gem. You get the same gem drop from combining red, blue and green gems. Pairing multiple multi color gems next to each other and tapping one of them engages an ultimate combo. You have a short amount of time between taps to find a combo and pop it. Then within that zone of chosen gems, you need to find another combo. Keep doing so until you cant anymore for a massive hit.
This game provides an “Arcade” mode, which mainly acts like a campaign or sorts. As well as arena which works as a very fast paced multiplayer where you need to get combo after combo as fast as you can to K.O. your opponent before they get the drop on you. After playing this game off and on the past week and achieving level 10, it really ins’t a bad game at all. Is it a classic Street Fighter game? No it is not. Is it a good gem breaker game? Sure. It does what it is suppose to do, and it does it well. But for me it did not really change that much from level to match, and was just the same game over and over again. Its a great time killer for small increments of time if you need to kill 3-5 minuets. But please do keep in mind that this game needs constant Wi-Fi or cellular data. So watch those Hadoukens and fight the good street fight.
Written By Mark Chiasson
