street fighter 5 Just saw its last major update – it’s been awesome. While SF5 certainly had its ups and downs — especially at launch, and mostly up from there — Capcom is determined to end things on a high note. As the company calls it, this new “final update” appears to be the publisher’s attempt to find the best parts of SF5 over the years and mix them together for maximum effect.
This means that the nerfed combo is back, with a whole new technology, and the game balance in general has been shaken dramatically; the patch notes are 79 pages long. But among the tweaks made in this so-called final patch is a surpris ing addition – an additional graphics mode toggle.
Specifically, two new graphics modes have been added. First, there’s a “pixel filter” that, when applied, can make SF5’s 3D graphics vaguely resemble Street Fighter 2 and 3. It’s a neat little nostalgia hook, and while it’s not pretty, I can see the novelty of using it – especially in arcade mode, where you can play through a remastered arcade rung progression from a 2D-era SF game .
However, the more interesting of the two is a new “cel shading” feature. And…I actually think this looks better than what games usually do? Everything just pops up. At first, with their very close and personal character selection screen, I thought it looked a little rough. But in games, in sports? Wow, it works. Here’s a photo I took while hanging out in training mode:
Now, to be clear, I’m one of those people who has always loved the visual style of Street Fighter 5. Stages are always disappointing, running at lower frame rates and sometimes with significantly worse detail levels, but character models, animations, and attacks are generally great.
It’s also a bit unbalanced. There are some characters in the starting lineup that look significantly lower in rent (shout out to Bananahead Ken), but many of the first few character models are gorgeous, and pretty much every character is added to the DLC — and now the full cast of two-thirds of the game — is spectacular and has a lot of attention.
Many of the cute visuals aren’t even noticed by many, like the end animation after the attack, which only plays when you don’t press another input after the attack animation ends. People who say SF4 looks better than SF5 really baffles me, even though Ultra Street Fighter 4 is definitely a better game than Street Fighter 5 Champion Edition. Now that both games are complete, we can easily declare that to be true – and, SF5 is the better looking of the two.
Regardless, the crisp cel-shading mode really enhances the look of SF5 in instant play, and I definitely think that’s going to be the way I play the game going forward. I’m going to install this update at lunchtime today and flick to cel-shaded on an arcade cabinet running SF5.
The only pity is that for some reason these modes are only available in offline mode. I got this in pixel mode and it obscures the player’s field of view to some extent, but I don’t get the cel-shading for it, it’s functionally the same as regular art with a few minor differences. Like cel shade is a matter of preference – but if you do like it, you can’t use it online.
This didn’t bother me too much. My SF5 online days are over; I’ll be back in the online battlegrounds of SF6. But I’m an outlier; not many people have the same arcade cabinet SF5 in their office Japanese arcade. So maybe Capcom should consider releasing another small patch to enable cel shading offline.
Anyway, here’s what I know: SF5’s final update was a great final decision by Capcom. SF5 is a great game. It took way too long to get there and hit some nasty bumps along the way. But if the attitude the game has shown over the past few years is any indication of what the company will try in Street Fighter 6, I couldn’t be more excited — even if its art would never be suitable for cel-shading.
Perhaps this is the coolest thing – in its final update, SF5 does something the next iteration couldn’t, with its more realistic RE Engine visuals. The SF5 is different, and towards the end, it’s a noteworthy entry in the series. Now, it also looks better than ever. an appropriate ending.
