Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD - Xbox Live Arcade review

Aug 29, 2007

Not only is the title to this classic puzzler a mouthful, it’s also not entirely true. First off, there's no true hand-to-hand fighting - it's all done with puzzle blocks. Secondly, whilemuch of this old Capcom quarter-muncher has been reworked to look nice and pretty on your expensive high-def television (backgrounds, bricks),for some reason the developers decided not to touch the actual character sprites that visually play out the results of each puzzle battle. They look like the same old,jaggy-edged sprites with Vaseline smeared over them,smoothing the edges- and while that can be quite an exciting idea when it comes to babealicious characters like Morrigan or Chun-Li, it looks totally out of place in this otherwise very sharp, pretty game.

But that’s a small annoyance in an otherwise awesome puzzle game. With four different play modes to tackle (X’, X, Y and Z) plus online multiplayer modes and basically arcade-perfect control and balance, you’ll find yourself smashing gems for a long time to come.