Capcom: Early preview of Street Fighter X Tekken at E3

Street Fighter X Tekken, Capcom's latest entry in its crossover series, combines the fluidity and speed of Street Fighter with the close hand-to-hand combat of Tekken.

The game play mimics the Street Fighter series. It uses a 2-D view, and special moves are activated with the classic Street Fighter maneuvers, like half-forward circle on the D-Pad and an attack button. Players can also swap out fighters by pressing the middle two buttons on the fight stick.

Each set of characters has its own strengths and weaknesses. The Street Fighter gang can fight with projectiles, which normally would seem unfair for the wrestling-based Tekken players. To compensate for this, Capcom gave the Tekken fighters more agility and precision with their strikes than their counterparts.

There is no word yet on how many characters will be available, but I got to see a bunch of playable characters, including Ryu, Ken, Guile, Able and Chun-Li from Street Fighter as well as Kazuya, Nina, King, Marduk and Bob from Tekken.

Look for Street Fighter X Tekken to hit shelves sometime in early 2012.