We were pretty excited about Capcom’s latest iOS offering of their venerable fighting game franchise, Street Fighter IV Volt [$4.99], when we reviewed the title back in June. It offered everything that was great about the original iPhone release plus a few new characters and many new features, most significantly the ability to battle it out with people from all over the world online.
Having online play was fantastic, if not a little rough due to latency issues, but one aspect about it didn’t seem to be very well thought out. When playing online, there was no penalty for quitting out of a match. This seems like a good idea given the mobile nature of the game and the potential for distractions like texts or phone calls interrupting a match. But it also gave way to people quitting when they’re on the wrong side of a beating, and screwing you out of a win while not being subjected to any sort of penalty.
The newest update for Street Fighter IV Volt looks to address this problem. Now, quitting out of an online match for whatever reason counts as a loss, and it will deduct points from your BP which are like the experience points for online play. Also, players found to be habitually quitting early from matches may have their matchmaking experience limited in some form, though there aren’t any details on exactly how you’re limited when this happens.
Not to be forgotten about in this update are the two new characters that we learned last month were being added to the roster, Sakura and Makoto. Both fighters fit nicely into the current selection of characters, though strangely some of Makoto’s animations seem abnormally choppy. I’m not sure if that’s intentional or just a graphical glitch, but it doesn’t seem to affect her performance in the game.
If you’ve been enjoying Street Fighter IV Volt but have been getting fed up with people taking the coward’s way out online, then hopefully this newest update will help smooth out the experience some. Of course, even if you don’t partake in online battles, you’ll want to grab this latest update for the two additional characters, and if you’ve been on the fence about picking up the game it’s not a bad time to consider grabbing it as it’s currently on sale for $4.99.
