The version of Street Fighter V that comes out tomorrow isn’t packing a full-fledged story mode. That’s coming later. But the plot-driven vignettes available on launch are still enough to get players to like or loathe some of the game’s cast.
Some people think fighting games don’t need story modes. I’m not one of them. I need to know what’s making a crazy assemblage of brawlers from around the world fight each other. The presentation for the single-player story mode in Street Fighter V is the slightest of things: hand-drawn still images laid over with goofy voice acting. Clearing a story mode happens pretty quickly; I don’t think any of them took more than 10-12 minutes for me to finish.
Despite that, the super-short background chapters did manage to make me particularly fond of new characters Laura and Rashid, the latter of whom is quickly becoming my main for the game. You can see story mode run-throughs for Necalli, Rashid and R.Mika in the videos posted here. We’ll have more on Street Fighter V this week, including a review of the launch version of the game.
Contact the author at evan@kotaku.com.