XBLA review: Street Fighter 2: Hyper Fighting (2/10)

Let's say that you're a single guy looking for a date, and one of your female friends offers to set you up. She tells you that she knows two available women. One is smoking hot, intelligent, funny, and great company, but prefers more expensive restaurants. The other is plain-looking and not very bright, has no sense of humor, and isn't much fun to be around, but doesn't mind eating at Arby's. It doesn't matter to her which one you date. (No, really. I know, in real life, this would be a trick question, but pretend she means it.)

Why on earth would you date the second woman?

Yet that's what Microsoft hopes you'll do with Street Fighter 2: Hyper Fighting. No, I'm not using the apostrophe.

If you have any interest in fighting games (I don't have much of one, I prefer a good button-masher like Super Smash Bros. Melee, but enjoyed the original Soul Calibur as well), and you have a 360, you'll have DOA 4, right? So what would make you want to play a game with bad graphics, bad controls (the analog stick isn't an 8-way joystick, folks), few unlockables, and AI like the final boss in DOA 4 during every battle? Nothing at all, right? Oh yeah, it's cheaper, and in this case, you sure get what you pay for.

Yeah, I guess it has online play (it better - 5 of the 12 achievements are for online play), but why in the world would you bother with that when DOA 4 also has online play? Heck, SF 2: HF doesn't even have an arcade-score leaderboard, just the live leaderboards.

If you always wanted to relive the '80s fighting games you played, and you don't have a Genesis on which you could play them, I guess you could buy this, but don't. Let me take the hit for you.

zlionsfan's rating: 2 unblockable AI attacks out of 10.