Street Fighter IV is the first game of the series in nine years, and many welcome its return. There were many Street Fighters released between the third and the fourth, which were most (if not all) available via download on either PSN store or XBL marketplace. Well Street Fighter fans, put your Gis back on, tie that red headband, and get ready for some serious ass kicking!
Let me start off by saying, I am not much of a fan of the fighting genre, probably my least favorite. That said, I am hooked on Street Fighter IV. When I was playing it I was trying to think of how to do this review, since there really is no story mode, it is just fight after fight.
They went with a new art style for Street Fighter IV which involves a mixture of cell shaded and 3D design on the characters. It truly looks awesome, especially when you do a “focus attack”, there is a “paint splatter” effect which I found really cool. That being said about the characters, I wish they would have done some more with the backdrops of where you fight. There’s stuff moving around like animals and what not, but for some reason they don’t seem that great to me. Yes, you don’t look at the backdrop when you’re fighting, but sometimes your eyes do glance to it.
There are twenty-five characters all together, with five of them being new to the Street Fighter franchise. To get them all, you have to beat Arcade Mode with certain characters (example – Ryu unlocks Sakura). Sounds easy, but trust me, you will want to break your controller. Believe it or not, all of my years of gaming, I have never thrown my controller in frustration (especially these days with controllers being $60). Street Fighter IV almost changed that because of the boss “Seth” (aka The Puppet Master). He is by far the hardest boss I have ever fought in a game before, he has every move in the game and he pulls off ridiculous combos that make you go insane.
When I saw there was going to be online play for Street Fighter IV, I was kind of nervous. I thought the servers were going to be aboslute junk and would lag like crazy, boy was I wrong. The online is extremely smooth, the only time I had some lag was last night when playing a friend of mine. It would freeze for a second, then play smooth the rest of the match. However, I am having trouble joining ranked matches for some reason. I’ve tried multiple times to join and it just sets at the screen that says “Sending Data…” then says unable to join. I’m not sure if this is a problem on my end, or Capcom’s but I hope it gets fixed soon.
There are also new “Ultra” moves, in which there is a “revenge” gauge that fills up when you take damage. And you have to do a certain movement with the Joystick/D-Pad and then Triple Punch or Triple Kick. They’re extremely satisfying when you connect with them (a lot of them can be easily dodged) because it has the possibility to turn the fight around. If you have a hard time at the getting the movement down for them, go into training and do the motion over and over. (I was doing it too fast so it was messing the movement up)
This game is very fun, very frustrating at times (fighting Seth), but when you play online and win a match it is very gratifying. There is also a lot more depth than I expected in a fighting game.
All I have to say is, if you like fighting games, then buy this game. You don’t like fighting games? Buy this game. It is amazing how drawn in you get to this game, you really become addicted to it.