GGPO!

Surely this will be the best version of SFIII - and a certain Ken breeding ground!

Bring on the Kens...they will all be getting off'd!

Man...I think I had like over 12000 matches on Anniversary Collection...God Damn! I'm hoping my experience in the game will give me a proper unfair advantage against the Super SFIV scrubs for a long, long, long time.

Running to Ken, Chun and Yun won't work too well for them to get instant results, those characters while they are top do need a good degree of practice and knowledge of match ups to succeed. Until they've faced a good Hugo, Alex, Twelve, Urien or Oro...bare times, there shit will be wrecked good and proper. Add in knowledge of parries, time to hurt! lol

DAY ONE!

I had a dabble with SuperTHD this weekend to see how GGPO fares from where I am and it's a fucking train wreck, it's like trying to play the old Amiga version. I hope lots of local people try out and stick with 3S.

Super Turbo HD Remix? That's not GGPO enabled, Capcom's first dabble with that was Final Fight Double Impact.

Ah ok, I was always under the impression it was GGPO for some reason.

The man behind it did speak of HDR's online which was just PR to get some hype going and to establish a working relationship with Capcom, I assume.

Anway, now you can get EXCITED about 3S and GGPO, again! Singho! Fistbumps!

Vulgar display of power!

I swear, playing vs. a good Q is more annoying than fighting both Ono and Urien rolled into one.

I'm not really looking forward to this game because I just have memories of getting blown up by absolutely everyone. Perhaps I need to switch from Remy and Yang, I'm almost certainly going to be spending more time with Dudley.

Dudley was an absolute Beast in 3rd Strike.

I think once you spend time in this again you'll get back into it. The parry mechanic offers so much freedom compared to the regimented options of SF4.

360 Impressions:

Having been blessed with this game early and putting some time into it (considerably more if the Mrs hadn't a say in these matters) I thought I'd ramble on about what I've experienced so far.

Arcade Mode

A pretty obvious start but I thought just dive straight in, but not before setting my buttons which took less than 3 seconds, oh yeah.
As you know front end presentation has been spruced using hi-res scanned original character art for the level select screen and stage select screens. It looks super purdy on my LCD but I haven't checked to see if I can change it back to pixel glory.
CPU seems to be the same retarded, input reading spoon it always has been, couldn't see any startling difference about how they went about their business and Gill is Gill.
I did notice a SFX flourish where once there as none. Oro's EX SA1 (launches character off screen and comes flying back down with the character burning with atmosphere re-entry) they've added a little touch as he goes up similar to the 'whoosh' you'd get as he came down. Didn't notice any others.
When you complete Arcade mode you get a breakdown and progress to the challenges you see popping up in the side screen. You can view all these in the Challenges option, be they completed, part completed and not started etc, all are there to see.
Handily there's one which says 'Completed Arcade mode with *insert character here* and then 100% when you do finish, so for those worrying about how you're going to track your Arcade completion with all characters for the Gill unlock, be still your beating hearts.
Random Select is just 'Start' at the character select screen.

Online - Player Match

I've only managed to play Nate so far, but quick match has proved obviously barren.
We got in over a dozen games and all where saved for my viewing pleasure later but there was no YT upload option available in the options yet. There was the ability to rename the title of the match from say 'Sean vs Ken' to something more descriptive like TheShend(SE) vs Nate(KE) etc.
Game was super slick, I ate everything I mistimed myself and parried everything I didn't mistime, honestly felt like a local versus and I didn't experience any of the gremlins regular ggpo provides such as frame skipping, teleporting characters as the game catches up with the lag, juddering, lag spikes, pauses etc. just solid versus play. Hopefully it should continue to hold up once the floodgates open.
You're given a couple of options at the win/loss screen: Re-match, Change Character or Exit (to lobby). Re-match means you go straight back in with the same characters and Super Arts, it's very quick.
I started by creating a game with a private slot (1 to 8.) and sending an the invite by pressing x on the empty slot to bring the Friends List up.
There's also three empty boxes which each let you select a character for soft ban in your lobby, tournament etc.
There's also an option in the main Game Settings for 'GGPO' which defaults at 2, I assume this is the same figure you could slide in ggpo between input delay and smoothness?

Trials

First three trial options are Beginner Parry, Expert Parry, Handicap and then onto the individual characters. You get 5 increasingly difficult trials to work through, there's a hint at the start which'll say whether it's a corner combo etc.
I can't remember exactly what each where but I'm sure Dave and Nate will fill in before I get back to check:

Beginner Parry [Done]
Trail 1: Fireball
Trail 2: Super Fireball
Trail 3: ??
Trail 4: Ken's Fierce Uppercut
Trail 5: Hugo vs Ken's EX Uppercut

Expert Parry [Done]
Trail 1: Red Parry an EX Fireball [several attempts]
Trail 2: Block 1st hit of Q's SA1, red parry 2nd and parry rest. [several attempts]
Trail 3: Dudley's Rocket Uppercut (Super Art 1) [dozen attempts]
Trail 4: Oro's EX Super Art 2 [1st time]
Trail 5: EVO Moment #37 [~40 attempts]

Handicap - You (1P) with a health handicap versus an 8* CPU for 1 round. The character and opponent are set. [Done]
Trail 1: Ryu (75%) vs Ken - [1st time]
Trail 2: Ibuki (50%) vs Chun Li - [~40 attempts] - 2nd worst stamina after Gouki
Trail 3: Makoto (25%) vs Q - [80 attempts] - Should have spammed Karakusa earlier.
Trail 4: Yun (12.5%) vs Alex - [200+ attempts] - Very difficult.
Trail 5: Gouki (1%) vs Ryu - [~40 attempts] - One blocked special you're dead.

I found the Handicap Trials pretty hard as there's no mind game, just abusing patterns you need to force them into before you get hit and hope they stay there. Dat Trial 4

Character Trials are fun but get very hard, I've managed to 100% the following characters: Alex, Ryu, Q, Oro, Urien and Gouki plus a few left for Sean and Twelve, again there are 5 per character. You can be asked to do some simple and good BnB's up till about trial 3 and then it gets hard. A couple of :blink: examples:

Gouki: Jump In Fierce > cr.MK > LK Tatsu > LP reset > D, D, D+PPP
Gouki: Far Roundhouse into Demon
Oro: Full chicken dance into EX Tengu and finisher.
Ryu: Jump In Roundhouse > cr.MK > EX Tatsu > Super Art 1 > EX Lunge Kick > Fierce SRK
Urien: Charge buffering will be involved but not too perversly!

Personally a lot of these are going to frustrate and some are for show-boating for when you're guaranteed a win (match, not round) as the meter cost isn't worth it e.g. Ryu's Trial 5 and Gouki's full stock killer: D, D, D +PPP. However when you do land it, you feel pretty BAD-ASS.

I'd be nice if Capcom would introduce more fleshed out Training Trials for new comers to 3S as it's a steep learning curve otherwise. Maybe we'll get it in DLC?

VP Points, Challenges &Achievements

So these little pop ups which earn you VP points to spend, Challenges, well they're tiered and reaching certain tiers in some of them gets you an Achievement.

Some example(:

'Throw a Fireball'
Tier 1: Throw 50
Tier 2: Throw 200
Tier 3: Throw 500
....and so on

'Wax on, Wax Off' (Parry)
Tier 1: 50 Parries
Tier 2: 200 parries
Tier 3: 1000 parries *Achievement get*

Red Baron (Red Parry)
Tier 1: 3 Red Parry
Tier 2: etc.

Some of the numbers may not be accurate as they're from memory sat here at work, but reaching Tier 3 in a few gets you an achievement 'Wax on, Wax off' for instance. You're earning points for all of this too.
Other Challenge examples include: Perfects, completing Arcade without losing a round, Super Finishes, Air Parry, Throws, Teching Throws, mash out of stun, Smashing the SUV up etc, etc.

There's an achievement for getting Q to appear in Arcade too

I've yet to spend any vault points, I haven't even looked in Vault yet but I've racked up almost 3000 of them across completing trials, a few attempts at arcade mode and online. Easy.

All in all I'm made up, lots of content to plough through, trials are addictive, online is sublime, presentation spot on, the package is superb. I've yet to touch training yet, but the only taint is the lack of a gentler learning curve for the character trials, it's a very small glimpse of a character with only 5 trials and I'm hopeful some DLC fleshing these out will be along shortly.

In summary: 5 Shends out of 5.

Gentlemen!

I'll be purchasing on day 1, but I won't be playing right away. I'm making huge, rapid advancements with Dudley on AE and I don't want to break that rhythm with hours spent on SF3 challenges instead.

Nice write-up Shend, thanks for that.

The Shend!

Great writeup, I'm really looking forward to getting back into 3rd Strike.

(PS your Youtube channel is still da bomb!)

OK, I've tried repeated attempts at having games online and I'm beginning to get seriously pissed off now.

I go to a ranked match and have to wait for as long as 5 minutes for it to find a match for me... After I finally have someone (from ANYWHERE in the world) I have to hope the connection is good or else they do one. Having a 598372618326% disconnect rate displayed probably doesn't enthuse people to stick around either.

Why the hell didn't they allow me to pick which region I wanted games from? Or at least let me pick the ones with the best connection from a list??? ARGHHH!! Pish.

There's only one Shend. I also concur on his YouTube channel being "da bomb"

This is currently being worked on.

It's a case of one of those things which worked perfectly "in the lab", but falls apart in the real world. Give it a while, they'll get it right soon.