Street Fighter IV

Regular readers may have noticed a fairly strong Street Fighter vibe coming from my recent articales on Ready Up. There is a reason for this, I really like Street Fighter, a lot. So there is my declaration of bias at the start of this review, you may consider it to be editorially unsound to have a game reviewed by an obsessive fan and in normal circumstances you would be correct but in this case I bid you to make an exception. Exceptions should be made for exceptional things and Street Fighter IV is an exceptional game.

Even if you’ve never actually played a Street Fighter game you will still be aware of the series. This is the first new Street Fighter release for nearly a decade. There have been a few games to fill in the gap but the wait for a fully fledged Street Fighter is over. About bloody time.

Capcom have produced a solid fighter with a bunch of options, a nice selection of fighters, online play, an extensive training mode and a cool new graphical style. Thee core gameplay has changed very little from the previous games. All the moves are there from the well known fireballs and dragon punches to the basics such as Ryu’s ‘Forward+HP’ double hitting gut punch. Play a little longer and you’ll start to notice the newer mechanics. A full explanation of these would go beyond the scope of this review but you’ll soon pick them up and if you put the time in you’ll soon be Focus Dash Canceling your tits off and unleashing massively over the top Ultras, filling the screen with light and heart with joy. Fei Long’s Ultra used to finish someone off is just about the coolest thing I have ever seen in a fighting game. Whaa Taa!

Street Fighter IV’s roster can be broken down in to three sections. The old; every single fighter you remember from Street Fighter II is here, including the bosses. Next we have the extras, taken from Super Street Fighter II and the Alpha series are the console exclusive fighters. Finally we have the new, four new warriors plus a new boss and a new secret boss. I found the roster to have a really nice spread, they all have something to offer.

You’ll need to unlock nine of the 25 fighters. Each unlockable fighter has a requirement that needs to be filled before they become playable but you can fulfill these under any match setting you like. Choose the easiest mode and set the fights to a single round and you’ll soon have a the full gang open to you. Then you can start with the real unlocking and collecting. As you play you’ll unlock new colours, taunts, medals, artwork and videos as well and icons and titles you identify yourself as while playing online.

It was written long ago in the history of gaming that the D-Pad on the Xbox 360 pad is bollocks, I agree with this but in the case of Street Fighter IV it doesn’t fare too badly. It would seem Capcom have loosened up the timings on the more complicated moves. I didn’t have too many problems pulling dragon punches and the like. One problem was only having four face buttons. There are six buttons you need assigned to the face and trigger buttons for general play but to pull your Ultra moves out you will need to hit all three punches or all three kicks at the same time. By default the unused triggers are assigned to this task but it’s not perfect. Pulling off a double fireball motion with your left thumb then pulling the left trigger is an exercise in high level contortion. There are alternatives and the most obvious one is also the most effective, get an arcade stick. I’ve had a Hori EX2 stick for a while now and it plays like a dream with Street Fighter IV.

Street Fighter IV is not a perfect game. There are a few missed opportunities. In arcade mode each fighter has a rival and when you face them there are some cool banter between them, this is not the case in any other mode, I guess it could be distracting but give us the option. Having played all the game modes there appears to be one missing, an online practice mode. This game needs to be learnt and the best way to do that is to jump into practice mode with a friend and endlessly beat the shit out of each other, taking turns to try out combos and tactics. Allowing gamers to practice like this online would have been a master stroke by Capcom. Well Capcom you can have that idea on me, I’ll expect it in the next patch. However my biggest complaint is yet to come and it was very nearly a deal breaker. It’s the theme song, I guess it’s called ‘Indistructable’ and it sound like it’s come straight from the soundtrack of High School Musical, it also has the unnerving feature of being played nonstop with no obvious break, you could torture people with this shit but you’ll soon work out how to get through the menus quick enough to avoid prolonged exposure.