InjustIce 2

Soup up your superheroes

There’s a tricky irony with fighting games. On the one hand, they’re made of the smartest, most intricate, and innovative game systems around. On the other, their ’90s arcade origins can lead to some pretty blunt presentation. Like a world-class maths genius with appalling body odour, they have the smarts, but aren’t always too great at making friends.

The problem tends to come in adapting the coin-op experience for the home. a simple fight-ladder up to a boss battle is fine in an arcade, where people will be playing for 20 minutes at a time, and willing multiplayer opponents are all-but-guaranteed. But at home? We play for hours, for months on end, and short of getting really good at kidnapping, there’s no way of guaranteeing buddies will always be around to join in. Fighting games need to evolve their format. Let Street Fighter V’s launch-day content mistakes be the indictment.