SNK vs. Capcom: SVC Chaos (2003)

SVC: Chaos does some very cool things for a fighting game. For one there’s a secret boss at the end in the form of Athena (Red Arremer is in there somewhere, too, but I haven’t found him yet), although this also works to the game’s detriment because: it’s very hard to reach Athena (you can’t use any continues), you only get one try at her and she’s as OP as the rest of the game’s boss cast, whether you’re in Heaven or Hell you fight Athena no matter what, the only way to actually unlock a character’s ending is by beating her, and to my knowledge she’s extremely difficult to unlock. Another neat thing is the characters and the way the character select screen is set up: there are so many portraits, but by clicking a shoulder button on most portraits, you get a second character, it’s a very cool set-up in my opinion and SVC truly added some unusual characters to the mix such as: Dmitri (Darkstalkers), the Mars People (from Metal Slug), Zero (Megaman X—this was his first appearance in a fighting game), Violent Ken (Ken possessed by Psycho power), and Tessa (Red Earth). There is also an addition of Samurai Showdown and Art of Fighting characters which I don’t believe have appeared in any crossover games until this one. The problem with the diverse amount of characters is that it feels like the developers simply were not careful with power level here. Some of the characters are absolute power houses like Dan, Hugo, Leopold, and the boss characters where as it feels like others have simply fallen by the wayside with Zero, Mars People, and Tessa. It’s also frustrating trying to best the CPU at points because perfect doesn’t even begin to cover it, at times I felt like the CPU was reading the buttons I pressed and simply countering them, there’ll be times where you won’t even get a hit in edgewise until you’re about dead with some of the bosses, and no I don’t want an easy game, but I want a fair game and at many points this one does not feel it. The controls are mostly good, but they’re nowhere near as tight as other fighting games such as Capcom vs SNK 2 or Marvel vs Capcom 2; at times in SVC: Chaos your characters will just feel slippery or the buttons just won’t respond the way they should. At times it’s taken me ten minutes to pull of some super specials because the button responses in the game simply won’t cooperate which can really pull some characters off of the roster quick. In the end, I think this is a really cool game and one of my favorites simply for all of the neat things they did in this game, even with the drawbacks I’d still give this a 4 and recommend it. At least give it a try if you can find it for $20 or below—there’s some cool things here you don’t want to miss.