Like leg warmers, Devo and the Breakfast Club, quite a few things from the 80's century just weren’t meant to cross over to this century. (The 00's? Eh.) That being said, Capcom has yet to get word of this; its recent release, Capcom: Fighting Evolution (CFE), takes much from its previous games and the age of the source material shows. The game is definitely geared towards the hardcore; to the average gamer, CFE doesn’t offer much else.

Gameplay

CFE is, more or less, standard fighting game fare, with each player taking a character from the batch of two dozen from the Street Fighter II, Street Fighter III, Street Fighter Alpha, Darkstalkers and Red Earth series to beat the snot out of each other (though only five to six are taken from each; consequently, most of your favorites will probably be missing.).

Gameplay still is as sharp as ever though; Capcom knows how to assemble the backbone to a decent fighting game. Each of the characters fighting systems are based on their respective games, adding a bit of depth to CFE. For example, characters from Street Fighter III have counter and parry techniques much more dominantly represented and the Red Earth fighting system is much more defense orientated, while the Alpha system is much more speed based.

On the box, CFE touts a two character fighting system but it’s a fair stretch of the truth; rather than implementing a tag team style system like in Capcom’s Versus’s series, the system is used to just rotate between the fighters. While it can be used to play off the strengths of two well chosen characters, the system could have been used for much more.

Graphics

Graphically, CFE shows its biggest faults; sticking to 2-D can work when done right (Metal Slug for example), but CFE under delivers in almost all possible aspects. Character models are direct ports from their 90’s counterparts, which leads to quite a few issues. For many of the older characters, animations are stiff, models are blurry with jaggies and for the most part, they’re just plain ugly. Environments are static and bland, reminiscent of SNES fighting games with the bare background, save for the few characters with the repeating animation. Sound is in the same situation as graphics; being ripped from their original games, they offer nothing new to the game, save for adding to its extremely dated feel. One of the few redeeming aspects graphically however, is the addition of new artwork drawn by comic book company Udon.

Features.. Or lack thereof.

For forty bucks, CFE is extremely lacking; it offers the bare essentials, with the standard arcade, training and versus modes. The arcade mode is painfully short, spanning a mere six matches. CFE does offer Xbox Live support, but again with the bare essentials, allowing you to tweak some minor settings and look for available matches; with many other, much better online fighting games out right now, rest assured that this won’t be taking residence in anyone's drive anytime soon.

Overview

If you’ve played any Capcom fighting game in the past half decade, there’s really not much to see here. Granted, the core gameplay elements of the game are acceptable, with a robust fighting system and overall, it still is a fairly competant game, but in an age of Guilty Gear and Soul Calibur, a game needs more to distinguish itself from the ever crowded fighting game gallery. CFE definitely had the potential to expand on its predecessors, but by sticking to genre conventions, it was wasted.