Capcom vs. SNK 2 EO - Xbox

The game offers a remarkable assortment of fighters, fighting styles, and variety of play. Forty characters--each with their own special powers, attacks, timing issues, personalities, and sound bites--get magnified three-fold by three separate "-isms" which alter their powers, and three "grooves," which mix them up yet again. There’s a lot to learn and it ensures that playing a foe of equal skill is never dull because you can never be sure what character he’s going to pick and how that character will fight.

The graphics are generally decent, though some of these fighters look like they haven’t been spiffed up for today’s console systems. The older Street Fighter guys look just plain bad next to newly added characters from the SNK stable. But the animation is smooth, the backgrounds have been significantly redone and feature new, often startling animations, and the special effects are just plain awesome. The audio is pretty much the same old themes that Capcom has been using for the better part of a decade now.

All told there’s very little reason for PS2 or GameCube gamers to own this game, other than the SNK characters. The Xbox version is playable over Xbox Live (sold separately), which is a big advantage--everyone knows that these games, born of arcade coin-ops, are meant to be played competitively. The service does nothing to match players of equal skill, but that’s pretty similar to the experience in an arcade. The ability to start up a relatively lag free game at a moment’s notice and trade trash talk with another gamer from around the world is just priceless, and a welcome addition to the series. --Andrew S. Bub

Pros: Forty fighters from two video game stables Xbox Live play is smooth and mostly lag free Cons: Dated graphics Inadequate manual