Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Super SF4's Tournament Mode Hands-On



Surprisingly last night, Capcom decided to roll out the Tournament Mode update for Super Street Fighter IV. This is free and and a patch for the game which has the mode as well as minor gameplay tweaks (very small that only serious players would know about). Unfortunately, I didn't stream myself playing and probably a good thing because I was having an off night to the point I was salty after losing some close matches I should have won. As for tournament mode, it is pretty self-explanatory if you have been competing in actual tournaments. The max players in an online one is eight and you are set in a bracket randomly. If a uneven amount of players are in one, some players will get byes to the next round, but there were instances when I was spectating matches where the match got restarted to the character select screen. Maybe it is the lag or something else, so I'm not sure how that happened. Anyway, you're also a spectator of the matches you're not playing, so it is nice to see how other players do their thing as you can conduct some sense of a gameplan if you move on (maybe counterpicking). Then again, if you lose your match and you're out of the tournament, you still have to sit through the rest of the matches if you want to stay in the lobby. Otherwise, you could just quit out and find another tournament to play in. Online tournament mode in Super SF4 is a good feature being what it is, but obviously these tournaments are not the real deal when you step into an actual tournament with other players getting hype and staring down your opponent as if you give him no mercy especially when Evo next month. I don't expect myself playing this mode as much, but its a good reason to get back on the grind.

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