Street Fighter IV

[Mr. Analog]

Well, I picked it up yesterday. I'm a Street Fighter a-holic, but my skills have withered and atrophied over time... but either way I'll check it out today and post a review later!

HADOKEN!

[Mr. Analog]

Review Time!

Game:

Head to head arcade gaming has been around since 1972, but we've come such a long way since then. An understanding of the game, learning it's tactics and perfecting those skills is the meta-game which makes any head to head gaming fun. SFIV continues the fine tradition of Street Fighter games by making something accessible enough to everyone but tough enough to endure the refined tastes of fighting game pros.

SFIV is somewhat of a reboot, where a lot of the (IMHO prohibitive) finesse that was required to be a capable World Warrior in SFIII has been boiled down to the essentials. Crap like super arts and parrying are gone for the most part, replaced with the much simpler Focus Attack system and Super Combo & Revenge Gauge.

A Focus Attack is capable of absorbing a hit and then either delivering a knock down return blow or "cancel" into another move (usually a combo or a super move). It's a new dynamic that was intended to break Street Fighter players' reliance on combos and shift gameplay back to a more give & take style of play.

Super Combos and Ultra Combos work much the same as they did in older SF games, you build up your "super" bar by making attacks and you build up your "revenge" gauge by having damage done to you. If your "super" bar is full you can perform a Super Combo which is a souped up version of your moves or if your revenge gauge is full you can perform an Ultra Combo which is a cinematic special move that is usually quite powerful but very flashy (taking advantage of the 3D elements of the game).

Characters:

Many characters return in the quest for title of World Warrior. Because the game is 3D all the characters got a subtle redesign and in general the translation is pretty well done. The only disappointment is in the new batch of fighters, out of the four new entrants only two are interesting and they are all fairly weak compared to the others (some very weak), I can't help but think that these new characters would be more enduring if they weren't so lacking in finesse and power. The added characters for the home version are actually quite a mixed bag, some fan favourites (Cammy, Dan) aren't quite as powerful as they once were while other characters (Rose, Gen) have been given a bit of a power boost. My gripe here is that the added characters for the home version are all unlockables which means slogging through arcade mode over and over.

The final boss, Seth, wasn't quit the fight I thought he would be. The CPU is just cheap playing as him, annoyingly cheap. I can motor through regular and even difficult Arcade mode and have fun until I get to Seth then it's just ridiculousness over and over the AI will pull off impossible moves and resort to priority throwing that will make you want to push your controller through your screen. It literally took me hours to beat Seth with Chun Li after having gone through the normal difficulty arcade mode with relative ease.

Graphics:

The translation from the rich animated world of 2D to 3D is usually always a shaky one but the people at Capcom have really pulled off a miracle here. They've managed to translate the 2D world of Street Fighter to 3D with a great deal of accuracy. This accuracy has some trade offs of course, Zangief is absolutely hulking and poor Chun Li will never be able to buy pants off the rack again.

The animation and attention to detail in the background is stunning and doesn't chop. Granted I have a standard resolution television and I can only imagine the crispness a high def signal might yield. That comes to a bit of a gripe, the menus have microscopic text which is quite fuzzy at standard definition, the menus aren't even all that complex or large and I can only attribute this as an aesthetic choice by Capcom.

Sound:

The American version voice actors aren't bad, but there are some mismatches that don't quite sound right. The game gives you the option to switch to the Japanese version though if you are so inclined. Each character you fight brings with them their own music, which is nice enough but usually there is too much going on for you to hear it. There is also the inclusion of the Standard Annoying Announcer Guy (or SAAG as I will call it). The SAAG is (thankfully) only present between matches but un-thankfully his sayings are limited to only a few phrases making it real old, real fast.

It may just be the way I have the sound set up as well, but SFIV sounds a lot louder than the average XBox game and I have to turn the volume down when I'm playing. But it could just be me too :-/

Bonuses:

I bought the standard version of the game and so it just came with the game and no extras. There are fully animated anime character intros and endings (which is nice) and a large gallery of character images and background art you can earn. The game also has hundreds of titles, badges, medals and icons to earn, however these "earnings" do not translate directly into Gamer Points or Achievements (rather they must be earned in bulk, for example 50 tags earns you 30 gamer points and an Achievement, etc).

The "special" edition of the game came with a Crimson Viper figure, a music CD and a DVD with the 65min animated film "Street Fighter IV: The Ties That Bind". The movie itself isn't bad, but it's not as good as the original animated film.

There is downloadable content available for the game which so far has translated into new character costumes, I'm not sure what the cost is but unless you must have a certain outfit for your character it's probably not worth it

I bought the Prima guide book when I picked up my copy of the game. It's actually pretty useful in learning some tricks but mostly it's a paper version of any play guide you can find online.

Overall:

As a long time SF player that completely missed the 9 years of SFIII I'm quite happy with this game, to me it feels like a return to Super SF II or SF Turbo, there is a lot of fun to be had and the online play makes things much more interesting than fighting the CPU all the time. There are plenty of unlockables but the game is fun right away and ready to be played.

I give it a thumbs up!