Honestly, doesn’t it make you sick? If I were less honest, I could have given this Head2Head the final result that I wanted it to have, but noooo, muggins here had to try to be objective, to weigh each game on its respective merits according to the previously established criteria, and come up with an honest answer.

So... Gears of War versus Street Fighter II.

  • Originality- Heavily armoured meatheads with guns, or single screen 2D fighters? At first glance, neither game can claim much originality. Yes, Gears of War has made third person cover shooters the trend of the moment, but it wasn’t the first implementation of a set of ideas that seemed likely to blossom regardless. Meanwhile, the combination of evocative sounds, the tidy implementation of a rock-paper-scissors system of special moves and the strangely unfolding back story were among the many genre-defining conventions formalised by SF II. Winner: Street Fighter II
  • Longevity - Gears of War is fun. Huge, drooling dumb fun, it’s the gaming equivalent of a horny Labrador. And like a horny Labrador, it’s eventually going to become tiresome and a little disturbing, and you’ll want to have it put down. Street Fighter, on the other hand, has survived a near endless series of ports and emulations, and while its latest iteration, SFIV, is the first to truly feel as at home on a console as it does in an arcade, that hasn’t stopped the polished versions of SFII from being an ever present gaming option. Winner: Street Fighter II
  • Graphics- It’s actually quite nice to see Street Fighter’s modern incarnations resolutely resisting a move into 3D in order to stick with the formula that was a quintessential part of SFII. The fact remains, however, that SF II’s selection of lightly animated backgrounds and blurring limbs can’t hope to compete with the benchmark setting detail and depth of Gears of War. Winner: Gears of War
  • Sound FX - The grunting meatheads with their chainsaws and whistling bullets are perfectly realised, but the ‘Shoryuken’, ‘Hadouken’ and ‘Sonic Boom’ of Street Fighter have been sampled in pop songs, imitated by other games, and have become a recognisable touchstone amongst Generation Y. Winner: Street Fighter II
  • Replayability: The short, snappy nature of a Street Fighter bout lends itself perfectly to the one-more-go mindset, and can easily eat up entire evenings even before you’ve passed a spare controller to a mate. Gears, on the other hand, has a brilliantly implemented online multiplayer and co-op that encourages you to chug your way through the story with your friends like a pair of angry bipedal tanks. They have two different but equally powerful types of pull. Draw


I weighed each criteria in turn, honestly expecting Gears to finish in possession of the field, but it soon became clear that while its certainly one of the games of the moment, the long term appeal of Street Fighter II has been proven beyond doubt, and it wins this one with surprising ease.

See also:

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