Previews

Hands on with Capcom's iOS crossover beat-'em up Street Fighter X Tekken Mobile

Double up for a fight

Hands on with Capcom's iOS crossover beat-'em up Street Fighter X Tekken Mobile

It's never a positive situation when you play a demo that has a splash screen reading "E3 demo - the final version will be greatly different".

But that was the situation with the version of Street Fighter X Tekken mobile that was playable on both iPad and iPod touch at Capcom's E3 stand.

We're assuming this caveat was due to the very limited mode that was available, as well as the paucity of characters - you had to play with Ryu and Kazuya against the AI-controlled Nina and Chun Li.

Limited role

In both cases, the Street Fighter characters were your primary fighters with the Tekken characters acting in the sub-fighter role.

This buddy system is key to success, however, with you switching between your main and sub characters to enable the main character to recharge their health, as well as performing Cross Rush tag-chained attacks if you've charged up your Cross Gauge.

In addition, you can sacrifice your sub character when their Action Gauge is zero - the Pandora feature - which powers up your main character with additional strength and an infinite Cross Gauge. But in this state, you have to win the bout before the Pandora mode is over.

Work in progress

As for the controls, obviously the four action touch buttons (special/EX, switch, kick, punch) and 8-way D-pad are more easily displayed on the iPad.

On the iPod (and iPhone), they interfere somewhat with the action, but that's to be expected in terms of the smaller screen.

Gameplay was crispy and pretty responsive in most cases, but Capcom still has some work to do in terms of optimising the framework for a solid 60 frames per second, as well as more cosmetic issues such as cinematic animations.

So, it seems that the game is heading in the right direction, but we'll have to see more and play more before getting a better impression of the quality of the final version.

It's due to hit the App Store at some point during the summer.

yt
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Jon Jordan
Jon Jordan
A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon can turn his hand to anything except hand turning. He is editor-at-large at PG.biz which means he can arrive anywhere in the world, acting like a slightly confused uncle looking for the way out. He likes letters, cameras, imaginary numbers and legumes.