Street Fighter 5, we said in our review, does what it does very well. The problem is that it doesn’t do enough. There’s not even an Arcade Mode, which means there’s no way to take on the AI in the best-of-three punch-ups that have traditionally been a cornerstone of nearly every fighting game ever made. As omissions go, it’s glaring, but Capcom recently told Forbes that it’s giving thought to adding one.
“The team is looking into adding an Arcade Mode and we’ll have more information to share soon,” the rep said. Capcom is also apparently planning to add difficulty sliders to the current “character prologues,” which as we explained in the review are simply “single-round fights… against AI that just sits there and gets hit.”
That, unfortunately, is the extent of Capcom’s commitment, which strikes me as a bit odd given the near-universality of complaints about the incomplete state of the game. Online play is lovely (and yes, vital for maintaining long-term interest), but offering newcomers nothing but repeated ass-kickings at the hands of callous-thumbed Street Fighter veterans is no way to build a community.
