Genre: Fighting
Publisher: SNK
Developer: Playmore
Release Date: October 7, 2004
Buy 'SVC CHAOS: SNK vs. Capcom': Xbox
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I was raised by video games. I was taught most of what I know today by a couple of crazy plumbers and a handful of other ragtag pixelated sprites. I still remember my first experience with Street Fighter II: I was about 10 years old, I had no idea what I was doing, and a majority of the people I played against were much older than me. I was THAT kid, you know the annoying one who was constantly asking questions, “How does that work? How did you do that? Wow, why can't I stop that?” I was terrible at the game, but I kept playing every chance I could get, attempting to pummel my way to victory. Since those early days of fighting game indoctrination, many fighters have come and gone, and when someone talks about the oldest and most popular 2D fighting games, they are most definitely talking about either SNK or Capcom titles. Well, let's fast forward a decade to the newest crossover game.
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SNK vs. Capcom: Chaos is the newest offering from SNK, and it pits the best of the best in the sprite-based world against one another. You get to face off your favorite SNK characters against your favorite Capcom characters and see who wins. This is a straightforward, classic man-on-man fight. I would love to explain the story to you and give you a good idea of what is going on here … but I am not even sure of that myself. There is little to no explanation as to why an alien would be fighting with a vampire; they just are. Thankfully, no explanation is attempted, as no justification would have been credible, except for some sort of inter-dimensional fiasco.
All of the development for SVC: Chaos was handled by SNK, so it makes sense that this game is closer to King of Fighters or Samurai Shodown than Street Fighter. It only makes use of four attack buttons: light punch, strong punch, light kick and strong kick. The rest of the fighting system is also fairly basic, utilizing a composition of features from both developers' fighting games. You have your super attacks, which are generally enhanced versions of pre-existing attacks. There is the guard cancel, which is performed by double tapping forward while guarding, providing you with the ability to counterattack while the opponent is still in mid-swing. These and some other unique maneuvers feed off of your groove meter, which is essentially a special skills indicator. The groove meter also increases when certain actions are performed, like attacking or defending. Another special feature worth mentioning is the exceed attack, essentially a flurry of blows that does more damage than any other attack in your arsenal, but it can only be used once per opponent. You can only use an exceed attack when your health is below 50%, the general idea being that you use it as a last-ditch effort to turn the tide of battle.
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The system feels more old school than anything, and it feels like a return to the fighting games of yore, which were easier, more basic, and did without a lot of the "flash" around which more recent games seem to be built. However, the addition of the guard canceling does enhance the gameplay and can make for some very exciting exchanges. The characters should be fairly familiar to anyone who has played more than one sprite-based fighting game in the past, and this also means that you do not have to learn much in the way of new characters or gameplay. They even threw in a couple of off-the-wall characters that were not previously present, which helped to add something fresh and new for the veterans.
The game incorporates the standard fighting game modes. You have story mode, where you follow each character's unique and generally bizarre story, and practice mode so you can work on your combos and move execution. Let's not forget the ever-popular two-player mode, where you can go head-to-head with a friend, and survival mode lets you test your mettle by pitting you in fight after fight with minimal health recovery. The most important mode to me was the Xbox Live mode, as it provided the option to participate in old school fighting across the country. There is one really noteworthy feature included in XBL (outside of the standard modes of Quickmatch, Optimatch, etc.): the ability to save a match for replay. It is so useful for analyzing why you won or lost any given fight, and I wish other games incorporated things like this.
I know I mentioned it before in reference to the gameplay, but that was nothing compared to the old-school graphics. I felt like the images were ripped right from the fighting games of yesteryear, as the animations often seemed choppy, and I believe the frame rate was likely quite a bit slower than that of most modern fighters. The characters looked like they did in my youth, although they were possibly slightly redrawn on the Capcom side to fit a bit better with SNK's style. I even dusted off my old SNES and popped in Street Fighter II so I could compare it with SVC: Chaos. SVC did look marginally better, and I guess despite the fact that I constantly tout that gameplay is more important than graphics, I am still a little shallow. I would have liked to see the game be a touch better graphically, as it honestly made it difficult to enjoy. The backgrounds were also unimpressive and looked very similar to things one may have seen in games like Street Fighter Alpha or some of the mid-range SNK games.
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The music seemed uninspired, and short of starting up the game again, I could not recall what it sounded like. The sound effects also seem as if they were ripped from much earlier games, so if the intent was to make the game sound like it might have a decade ago, then this goal was met with flying colors.
Being a huge fan of fighting games and having grown up on the old school games upon which this one seems to be modeled, I was really expecting to enjoy this title. I enjoyed the game a lot at first, but I feel that the developers could have offered a bit more. Even some of the older games, like Samurai Shodown 3, had more going on with the same quality of graphics and sound. SVC on XBL is most likely the best feature, but it takes more than that to live up to the history of fighting games. The gameplay is solid, if not simple, and there is fun to be had so if you were raised by SNK or Capcom, you will appreciate this title for the historical context, if nothing else. Retro is in.
Score: 6.8/10
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