Street Fighter IV Reviewed
No matter which generation of gamers you belong to, Street Fighter should be as familiar to your thumbs as your thumbnail. Street Fighter 2 was, for many years, the de-facto standard to which most games of the fighting genre were held. Since then there have been some disappointing knock-offs (and sequels) that failed to really recapture the arcade experience of the real. Well, the real sequel anyway. Officially the 4th game, Capcom has thrown Street Fighter IV into the ring with a unique artistic style, a few new fighters and a taste of why the original SFII was so popular.
Straight to the point, SFIV is a long awaited and welcome update to a series that has been lacking a good next-gen counterpart. The most obvious improvement is its third dimension. Bulging muscles and over-sized breasts are far more glaring than the old flat animation style. Additionally, the unique artistic style I mentioned before uses broad ink strokes similar to traditional Japanese paintings. The ink splatters take the place of blood and the more flashy type of effects you’d expect to see. It’s almost classic in nature and the intro in particular has a fine-art feel seen in only a handful of other games. Background characters and level design have 3D elements but are in large part the same 2D backgrounds from Street Fighter II. A few of them have breakable elements but don’t offer anything more than a little impact to the move that caused it.
An unexpected surprise were the intro and finale animations, done in more traditional Japanese animated fashion, to help tell each character’s individual story. Any anime fan will appreciate the icing on the game cake.
The sound has been reworked and voices for each fighter have been added in-game, as has a fight commentator that gets just a tad annoying. Check that, he gets really annoying and there isn’t an off button. After 10 fights, you’ll be wishing you had a ball-gag or some kind of hyper-specific ear plugs. Music likewise has been brought up to the current millenia with a pseudo-rock soundtrack that, for the most part, I actually enjoyed.
Finally, gameplay takes the usual forms: an arcade style of fighting through 7 matches to reach your character’s main rival and then to a final boss that represents an amalgam of all the other fighters. A Vs. match type to play a single bout with the CPU or a local human opponent. Network battle is just like it sounds, taking on all comers online. A challenge mode puts players into increasingly difficult scenarios like defeating multiple enemies in a certain time limit or surviving a match with your energy bar crippled. Finally, the Training Mode is for hammering down those particularly difficult special moves or combos against a harmless drone.
A couple of interesting features make the experience a little more like the arcade, I’m just not certain I like it. Fortunately, you can turn THIS feature off, but when choosing Arcade Mode online players can jump in whenever they like to challenge you, stopping your progress if you happen to lose. There are two really jarring downsides though. First, when I say anyone can challenge you, I mean it. During my first few hours, I was matched with either another player with a poor connection (compared to my own) or a player well beyond my play skill. Now sure, the computer hadn’t had the chance yet to make a judge of my skill, since I hadn’t given enough playtime to really judge, but I got my ass handed to me and I’m no slouch with Ryu. So that feature got shut off real quick.
Since I’m on the path of complaint, minor though they may be, I might mention that during any down time while searching for online competitors there is a song that plays. It seems to have precisely 1 stanza of lyrics and a chorus that repeats. Over. And Over. I didn’t mind at first even though it sounds like Timbaland did a collabo featuring New Kids on the Block. Problem is that there’s only 1 song, it lasts about 30 seconds before looping and it can’t be turned off. Oh and try to ignore the awful English lip-sync to in-game audio from the fighters. They all appear to loop a dislocated jaw motion
There’s plenty more to enjoy though. Controls are eons ahead of the Xbox Live version of Street Fighter II. Combos come pretty easily, so button mashers and old pros alike can jump in. So, it’s fun, it’s pretty and for old school gamers, it’s about time for a good, new Street Fighter game.
