X-Men vs. Street Fighter - Arcade

ICONIC APPROACH, MUCH TITLE!

It's the crossover nobody asked for and yet nearly everyone welcomes with its loud, proud, almost flamboyant use of colour, speed and graphic clarity, it's X-Men Vs. Street Fighter. Taking a medley of X-men characters ranging from The Juggernaut (bitch!), Wolverine, Storm, Rogue, Cyclops, Gambit, Sabertooth and more. While also throwing in various Street Fighter characters as Ryu, Ken (Seriously, what self-respecting Street Fighter doesn't have these two... oh wait... THAT one...), Chun-Li, Bison, Charlie, Akuma (secret but easy to find), Dhalsim and more, ranking up a total of 8 from each franchise and pitting 2-on-2 battles using a tag-team system.

Could be a bit of a match up here, in theory entirely unbalanced, as a game, fight time!

Taking the usual battle system found in many other Capcom titles, X-Men Vs. Street Fighter uses the 6-button layout for combat. Meaning it has a set of punches and a set of kicks ranging from weak to medium and strong/fierce giving you 6 buttons for attack. Throw in the joystick for movement and pulling off special moves and you're sitting pretty for some fairly intense action ranging from fireballs to combos, aerial attacks and launchers, high jumps and teleportation with also the option to switch out your player for the other partner by pressing both strong attacks at the same time, letting the partner that's out of the fight regain some health.

And the hits keep piling up!

What's interesting for X-Men Vs. Street Fighter, is that there's hyper moves, the energy for which builds up over time either by being struck or hitting the other player, or pulling off special moves and for each bar that's completed, gives the player the change to use a much more powerful, usually devastating, hyper move that usually involves doing a special move and hitting more than one attack button of the same type i.e. two punch buttons rather than one. Often causing a large steady, multi-hitting beam move, or an uninterruptable combo if the first strike lands. If you can mix-combo these into a standard combo, you're pretty much laughing at your opponent.

Ahhhh.... Viennaaaaa....

Battles in X-Men Vs. Street Fighter, take place along a myriad of locations, ranging from a shopping mall, the back of a blackbird (the plane, not the small creature, though that would be fascinating to see for about 2 seconds), a gas storage plant, a backstreet surrounded by police, a TV show and several others, all which have a lavish level of detail within and often have a few hidden extras in the background, like one level showing Blanka and Beast in the background, while other levels will change based upon either the time taken in the fight or depending upon which round of combat you're in. It adds to a little extra variation we're not normally used to seeing.

Flashy Special Elite Alpha Finish! (Mk 3, upper)

The music in X-Men Vs. Street Fighter, changes depending upon the players being swapped in and out. When a player is defeated, the next player to join the battle usually has their theme tune ringing out from previous games (namely Street Fighter Alphas and X-Men: Children of the Atom) adding to an odd but welcome mix of audio. Every hit, impact and strike sounds like lightning and thunder going off and power moves often sound as powerful as they are destructive to the other players health bars (and your own, often your own). While the graphics are fast, fluid, looking like comics/cartoons in appearance which can be a little jarring to some of the more realistic backgrounds but everything looks how it should and plays steadily.

As if I'd leave out a Raging Demon move...

With a final boss that is worthy of the X-Men franchise (and reused from an earlier game) taking up over a whole screen and with some incredibly cheap moves (it IS the final boss...) there's a lot in this game that will bring fans back for more. Though people that don't appreciate or like this genre of game might want to give it a few cursory goes, but would do better watching the more capable players for what the game is really able to showcase.

Cadillacs and Dinosaurs - Arcade

Not the most exciting start image, I know.

It's not the first amalgamation I'd consider if someone said "Put two things together and make a game with it from an original comic book" and while I might have chosen Dinosaurs, because they're dinosaurs after all, it's unlikely I'd have chosen Cadillacs. Likely I'd have opted for Dragons and Dungeons... no wait...

Odd when the language doesn't match the threat.

Cadillacs and Dinosaurs started originally as a comic book series in the late 80's, set in post-apocalyptic world where pollution and disasters ransacked the planet, people moved underground for centuries and when they came back to the surface, dinosaurs were around again. Our two main protagonists, Jack and Hannah, fix cars and science dinosaurs respectively while trying to survive in a world where driving down to the corner-shop is likely to get your head chomped by something large and scaly. (Not using a mom joke there...)

I get to punch out T-Rex looking things, awesome.

From this, in steps Capcom to publish Cadillacs and Dinosaurs as a brawl-em-up. Take your two main chars, add in a few extra minor chars, give them some pointless stats details and have them punch, kick and fight their way through multiple enemies, levels, bosses of both human and dinosaur in nature, and some enemies that are a little of both. The special skills are laughable at best, "Good Skill", "Items", "A move everyone else already has" and "Useless" are pretty much the spectrum on that one.

I don't get the appeal of driving a Caddy, but I do get the appeal of running mooks down.

In so far as a plot is concerned, our intrepid heroes embark on a journey to stop poachers from killing dinosaurs and selling the skins, get ambushed on the way home and find out it was a ploy by some nutcase in a lab coat who wishes to fuse humans and dinosaurs together through 'Science' and become the perfect being. Sadly this was doomed from the start as he never wished to become me, oh how fickle life is. Cue this as a reason to fight your way through multiple levels featuring bosses, returning bosses, dual bosses, transformation bosses, bosses that become standard enemies and effectively hitting all the usual feature one might find in the arcade gaming tropes section. Even the obligatory sewer level and elevator level turn up.

No, no mix tapes were dropped here, someone started this fire.

You're not alone in Cadillacs and Dinosaurs (Of which the Caddy rarely turns up but thankfully the dinosaurs do) you've a wealth of weapons to help you ranging from pistols to shotguns, clubs, rifles, rocket launchers, grenades, dynamite and knives with the usual smattering of arcade brawling food items and points items to help push you up onto the bonus lives limits. Depending upon the machine you're playing on, you can have 2-3 players on screen at once trying to work out which dinosaurs are nice/nasty and which enemy is about to hit you before your mates screw it up and take you down by accident.

"Parts to include in beat-em-ups, #12 A boss rush of previous bosses: Check"

I can't say that I know of the source comics or the cartoon series (which may or may not have come out after the game anyway) but as a game, Cadillacs and Dinosaurs shows that the motion and controls are fluid and quite responsive. Running is done easily with a double tap in a direction, jumping and fighting is pulled off easily while the use of weapons and items comes fairly intuitively. There's little difference between the main characters in choice of skills and abilities, they all have combos, they call can run and jump and attack, they all have the "2 button" desperation attack that floors everything around themselves and costs a small amount of health in the process.

"Parts to include in beat-em-ups, #8 Elevator/Lift/Funicular sections: Check"

Graphically everything looks ok, though there's a little chuckle to oneself when you see the Twin Towers stood next to some new-age Mesopotamian Pyramid, maybe they rebuilt it. The levels don't seem to have the same attention to detail one might expect from Capcom and the detail on the standard enemies is somewhat lacking for quite a few of them, however the focus on the dinosaurs and dino-related creatures is sublime and there's a guilty pleasure in punching out a T-Rex type dinosaur while body slamming a boss into several standard enemies.

Thankfully, that IS his final form.

Cadillacs and Dinosaurs also delivers on the sounds, solid and loud explosions, synthed voices punctuating screams and shouts of triumph and jubilation as well as a rather overly enthusiastic "GO" sign that pops up when you need to progress to the right for more fighting. The music however doesn't seem to have been considered suitably for the project in that you can go from 20 seconds of intense rooftop fighting, to a jazzy number in a chaotic hallway before going back outside to a epic, adrenaline inducing rush of music before the boss turns up and it becomes a lower key tune that doesn't have the same rush. It gives the impression that whoever assigned the music didn't have the same ideas as the person that composed it.

STFU! I've got more credits!

Sadly for an arcade game, Cadillacs and Dinosaurs doesn't have much of a replay factor. Once you've beaten it you might give it another go and use another character but there's little deviation from the standard play here. Even before you've beaten it, chances are you've seen everything already and there's little reason to come back and go through it again. Which is a shame as it's quite the fun game to play.

Armored Warriors - Arcade

4 way mecha melee chaos coming up.

Capcom has shown time and time again that they're more than capable of creating some very influential games, particularly in the brawler genre of gaming. Regarding Armored Warriors, it seems Capcom may and may not have topped their own lofty achievements of Final Fight.

From the off, it's chaotic and action-packed with an overblown scale

Armored Warriors takes the giant mech approach to brawling. You're a captain/pilot of a giant mech of your choosing from one of four setups. Each setup has its own advantages and disadvantages including different combat and weaponry while focusing on melee combat, strength, speed and stamina, (all of this will make sense shortly) and all have the standard, Attack, Jump and Support Weapon functions to be used within game. Like a lot of other brawlers you can also run, run and attack, switch attack by pressing forwards THEN attack quickly for an alternative attack, leaping running attacks and so on and so forth which is something Capcom seemed to bring to the table during the mid 90s with a lot of its games.

The obligatory bonus levels

However, the novelty of the approach of this game is that certain enemies are equipped differently than your mech is, which means you can break them apart and steal their components. Aside from the core body part, you can replace your legs, your weapon and your support weapon from any dropped component, resulting in a veritably high combination of results and customisation for your mechs. Multiple different arms carry weapons including fists, drills, laser swords, claws, lightning rods and so on. Tracks and treads for the mechs range from standard legs to tank treads, hover boosters, spider legs while support weapons are the largest in variation including machinegun types, bombs, rockets, missiles, flame throwers and more. There's something for everyone but if you die, you drop the lot and have to reacquire it. Annoying but that's the price of upgrading to awesome.

And of course, the bosses are even bigger.

Despite the concept and the possibilities, there's still the core of the game of Armored Warriors in that it's a brawler game, where you and several friends (possibly, if you have those) can march through nine missions of mech-blowing-up-ness (it's a word now) which range from walk right and blow up stuff, run right and blow up stuff, blow up stuff quickly before you die and blow up stuff THEN move right and blow up more stuff.

Some times MUCH bigger

Armored Warriors does have some context to the situation and certainly a lot more than Final Fight did with its constant walking and fighting. In this game however, there's regular points where plot is revealed, discussions are made between key characters regarding the wars between two worlds and progression is shown on a map of both planets as to which side is conquering the other fastest. While it can add to the sense of the game and enhance it as an experience, it'll like be ignored in favour of players wanting to get back to the action of blowing up mechs.

Customisation and powerups a plenty here

That said, the game is nothing short of bright and colourful and by comparison to the appalling idea of today's games decisions to brown-out almost everything to be gritty and realistic, this comes across as a light hearted comic book when put next to games of this day. Some may dislike that but I say it adds to the appeal and atmosphere of the game, it's not overly serious and doesn't take itself to be that when 50ft tall mechs are slamming each other around and firing more rockets than could possibly fit on screen rather than in the mech itself. It's bright and bold and it shouldn't be any other way for this game. The mechs themselves are well designed and follow on from the anime-esque style they take the origins from, bosses and bigger constructs look stunning and it's evident there's a lot of focus and attention on everything from the smallest mechs up to the final boss.

And of course, the compulsory, repeating boss fight

The audio, there isn't much there that sings out within the music as anything particularly memorable but there is an attempt to do synthesised voices and have a sort of commentary running with every item you pick up to replace parts on your mech, while also the characters shout, scream and yell when doing special moves or getting killed. But all of this is overshadowed by the explosions and metallic clangs and clashes of skyscraper sized robots duking it out, it adds to the feel of the game and is highly entertaining but it does mask the other sounds that one might want to hear, leaving them a little redundant in that regard.

WRYYYYYYYYYYYYY

As a game, Armored Warriors does have a lot of replay factor. There's different ways occasionally to beat specific levels, there's the huge combinations of weapons and items to pick up and use and you can almost guarantee that it'll take a few play-throughs before you start to get repeated sets of weaponry. But then there's also the option to try something different and see whether it's more or less effective than the previous setup for the upcoming boss you know you'll have to fight. Trial and improvement it may be but learning and using all of the attacks and power moves accompanying those items will leave you always questioning if the next upgrade is better.

It's a good game, but gets a little overcrowded at times and for those that explore the mechanics behind the engine of the game, a deep brawling system with lots of potential.