Street Fighter IV: If it’s going to be good at any game, it better be this one; the stick has the Street Fighter IV logo right on it. I used a variety of characters to get a good cross-section of joystick inputs: Ryu for conventional motions, Cammy and Fei-Long for unusual semi-circle motions, Zangief for 360/720 motion command throws (Piledriver, etc.), and E. Honda for charge motions. E.Honda was also used to test ’mash button’ attacks like his Hundred Hand Slap, which came out consistently, as did three punches/three kicks moves like Zangief’s lariats.
Universal engine features like Focus Attack Dash Cancels and EX special moves worked quite well for everyone on this stick; I was able to do them easily and consistently. Likewise, doing moves in general worked fine; basic combos like Ryu’s jumping roundhouse, crouching forward, cancel into Hadouken came out pretty easily. All the moves you might need a good stick for were also easy to do, including Fei-Long’s and Cammy’s semi-circle motions ending in up-forward (specifically Fei-Long’s jumping multi-kick special move and Cammy’s Hooligan Throw), Zangief was doing standing 360s and quickly buffered 720s (off a dash, a quick normal attack, etc.) just fine, etc. Everything I wanted to do was easily possible on this stick.
I admit building long or extremely precise combos isn’t my specialty, but ones I do know were able to come out fairly well. Ryu’s Shoryuken into EX Focus Attack (immediately dash cancelled) into Ultra combo was quite possible on this stick, as were various super cancels such as Balrog (Boxer) doing a jab dash punch into the super version of it; I know it’s not exactly the smartest combo, but the fact the stick can do those motions is encouraging.
Verdict: Excellent! This stick is very well suited to playing Street Fighter IV and I had no complaints.
Why this matters: Two reasons, the first of which is that the SFIV logo is all over this product so it better work well with that game, and thankfully it does. Second, Street Fighter IV is a good ’control group’ for comparison, since its characters use a variety of motions but the game nonetheless mostly plays like a classic 2D fighter. A stick that does well with Street Fighter IV can reasonably be expected to work well in similar games like King of Fighters and Garou.
BlazBlue: I need to admit one thing up front before I discuss my results with this game; I am not all that good at BlazBlue. I only know one character with any real degree of competence, specifically Tager. I apologize in advance, since this means my testing offers a very limited view of the stick’s performance in BlazBlue; Tager only needs to be able to consistently back-dash, standing 360 throw, buffer into 720 throw, do quarter-circle motions, and have decent button response for his very easy combos.
That said, I did need to test universal engine features... well, universal aside from Tager, so I picked Noel for that part. Dashing, double jumps, air dashes (including air dashing and doing her Revolver Blast out of that, which probably isn’t a smart move but does require good hand speed and is thus a good test for the stick), barriers, normal throws, bursts, and rapid cancels all worked great.
From there, I switched back to Tager and found some opponents to play against. A discouraging number of them were the typical ’spam ice car’ Jin players, but that’s okay; it gave me a great chance to test out Tager’s 360s out of block stun, resulting in a lot of easy command throws in my favor. Against everybody else I had to actually play, and found the stick kept up fine with basic ’blocking strings’ of attacks (A few basic attacks leading into his standing Drive then a Sledgehammer for example), along with most of Tager’s buffering tricks into his 720 throw. Various combos off his spark bolt worked too, as did his back-dash into 360 (one of his primary defensive options, in my experience). This stick was everything I could hope for when it came to playing Tager, and while I didn’t win every match, none of my losses were the tournament edition Fightstick’s fault; those losses were all me or the result of a lousy match-up.
Verdict: Seems fine to me! I admit I’m not a BlazBlue expert however, so my testing was somewhat limited.
Why this matters: BlazBlue requires very high hand speed to play most characters, as you’ll be moving at fast speeds and building very long combos. If it can keep up with the movements you need in BlazBlue, it will probably also work in similar games like Marvel vs. Capcom 2.
Next: HD Remix, various SNK fighting games, and conclusion.
