*sigh*

Posted by Gary Hodges at 2:12 PM Oct 21, 2008

Capcom released a bunch of new screenshots of Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD today, and though it pains me to say it (I'm a huge SF fan), they're pretty underwhelming.

I'm hoping at some point in the future, someone from Capcom will sit down with me and recount the twists and turns this game's development has taken. While I'm still intrigued and optimistic about the gameplay refinements they're trying to implement, the visuals just strike me as any of a thousand bland Photoshop 101 fanart pieces you'd find in some corner of deviantART. I look at the screen of Dhalsim's elephants (which look like they've been hit with "Blur More" about eighteen times) next to their rote rendition of Cammy and just want to rub my temples.

And what's with the needless changes? Why are Cammy's boots green? Why did they screw around with the air intake under Guile's F-16? Why was Ganesha dropped from Dhalsim's background in favor of a view of the Taj Mahal? (The cynic in me suspects it's because it's much easier to draw over a photograph of the Taj Mahal than freehand a Ganesha.)

I'm beginning to suspect SSF2THD is some sort of extraordinary measure to make the fans who wanted a 2D Street Fighter IV feel better about it being 3D instead. Anyway, click on through to see a few more screens.