Street Fighter X Tekken

the worst thing about this game is Games for Windows live. Otherwise - it's a fun crossover, not particularly interesting for Tekken addicts, such as myself

This is one of those games that probably could have been a classic, but it was mismanaged on so many levels. At the core of things, the game is a lot of fun and it does a good job of combining what's good in the Street Fighter universe with what's good in the Tekken universe. The catch is that Capcom made a series of disastrous decisions that killed this game before it really got going. So much so that the community actually bailed and went back to Street Fighter 4 after less than a year. The first thing they did was implement a system of "gems" that boosted character abilities mid-match. The catch is that some were clearly better than others and they could do insane things, like automatically block or escape grabs. The super strong ones were only available as pre-order bonuses or as paid DLC, too. They essentially worked like a "pay to win" mechanic. Don't want to play with other people using gems? Too bad, you have no choice. (In tournaments, people disable them, FYI) Next, they had FIVE characters that were exclusive to the PlayStation versions of the game. Oddly, they're in the code for the PC and Xbox versions of the game, they're just locked down and inaccessible. Third, they actually included feature-complete versions of the first "DLC" characters in the shipping version of the game. You're essentially just paying to unlock what has been there all along. Fourth, the PC version used Games for Windows Live, an online gaming platform that only marginally worked at launch. It was abandoned by Microsoft after a few years which rendered this game nearly unplayable, even offline. It took them 13 years to finally remove it to make this game functional. Fifth, the pandora mechanic never did work as intended and was poorly thought out. It's actually the least problematic of the issues with the game since it was an optional mechanic that wasn't really even needed. So...with all of those things, this game must be horrible, right? Funny enough, it's actually pretty good under the hood. You just have to jump through a bunch of hoops. Check out the "SF x Tekken Community Mod Patch," which removes GFWL and unlocks the characters that were originally only for the Sony consoles + DLC fighters. Online play is still broken, but it's good for playing face-to-face. Should you buy this game right now? Only if it's deeply, deeply discounted and you want to mostly play offline. Keep that in mind. There's a good game hiding beneath a whole bunch of reasons not to buy it. If you see it for under $10 and you like Street Fighter or Tekken, I'd snag it. Otherwise, steer clear. Hopefully one of these days we'll see a feature-complete version (minus gems) added to one of those Capcom Fighting Collection bundles. The game really does deserve better than what Capcom did with it.

Still great but i dont think the live part is active anymore