Chun Li's Legs Are STILL KICKING HIGH !

Author's Rating:

Pros: Successfuly brings the Street Fighter  into the HD gaming era.

Cons: Feels like more of the same. Missing modes.  Crappy sountracks.

The Bottom Line: 
Though there's been improvement in visual style, the gameplay and controls of StreetFighterIV  still feel the same as they have for years. Fortunately, PS3 and 360 offer robust online play.

Author's Review
Street Fighter is a game franchise  that has missed an entire generation.

The original Street Fighter was released in 1987 in arcades and was later ported to the Turbographyx 16 – as well as a bunch of gaming computers of the times such as the Amiga, Atari ST and Commodore 64. American children, such as myself, who were new to video gaming – owners of the NES – didn’t get the game because NES wasn’t powerful enough to run it while the T16 had the color palette and speed to do so.

I wasn’t introduced to the Street Fighter Series until 1991 when Street Fighter II was released  in arcades.  It was an immensely popular game which forced many a school child to spend many a quarter on fight after fight between the most memorable action characters I had seen up until that time.  Characters like Ryu and Vega and Chun Li were fresh, and vibrantly detailed which completely overshadowed the run of the mill SNK games I’d been used to seeing up until that point. The stereotypical ninjas with katanas that don’t kill right away.

Street Fighter II’s main attraction was its slick (at the time) sprite graphics for the characters and for the backgrounds which presented highly detailed images accompanied by vivid background animations that seemed lively and made every fight more playable.  There were also Japanese anime comics and videos that made the Street Fighter universe appealing to kids and a gateway into Japanese styled animation and storytelling.

But between 1991 and the present, Street Fighter has fallen behind in its appeal.  Part of this is due to numerous other upstart fighting games, namely:  Mortal Kombat (1992), Virtua Fighter (93) and later,  Tekken and Soul Calibur among numerous others.
Mortal Kombat improved upon the graphics presentation of fighting games by using digitzed actors which looked far more realistic – and due to gameplay enhancements such as a Block Button and blood/gore – began to chip away at Street Fighter’s fan base.   In an Arcade, when your game’s popularity is based on how many quarters it pulls in at the end of the day, competition isn’t so welcomed.
Virtua Fighter was one of the first 3D Fighting games – using polygonal characters and environment elements – and upped the anty for graphics in video games to come.

Over many years,  the majority of franchises such as Motal Kombat have advanced with every new port on every new game system from the digitized 2D characters, to fully polygonal characters in 3D environments – and later, 3D destructible environments…

…while Street Fighter has stagnated.

Sequel after Sequel,  the makers of the Street Fighter series have continued to use sprite animation while introducing more and more characters that are so pedantic, you’d have to study for hours to figure out all their attributes.   Sprite detail has improved,  sound effects have improved and the gameplay has been tweaked to be faster in many ports and sequels but the graphics up until now have been more of the same.

STREET FIGHTER 4 is the game meant to revive this franchise.  It is the first Street Fighter game to truly step into the HD era, however, in many ways, it does not feel as sharp or innovative as the competition.

Strangely, Street Fighter IV  takes place before Street Fighter III,  at the end of the events of  Street Fighter II’s expanded universe sequels. Akuma has killed M. Bison,  but a new danger in a weapons company named “S.I.N”    has risen up to take over where M.Bison and his terrorists group, Shadoloo left off.  S.I.N is led by  “Seth”  a huge Silver Surfer looking guy with a Black Hole for a stomach. And what does he do with that Black Hole?  Why he sucks you into it and spits you out at neck breaking speed. 

HUH?

So anyway, the CONTROLS are going to be the part of this game most people are most concerned with.
The controls have basically been kept the exact same as they’ve always been. This means that if your partial to playing with 3rd party joysticks or in aracades, you’ll benefit from going out and buying an arcade stick – which Capcom, Mad Catz and a number of other controller designers  have been sure to release along side this game. 

  The special moves list is extensive but, most likely, if you were a hardcore player up till now, you need only to memorize the new tweaks and timing made to the special move use in order to continue to abuse newcomers and amateur players online.

Many of the new additions to special move execution feel as if they came from  present Mortal Kombat games.

Wherein, the natural instinct is to hold “away” to move away from the opponent  - since “away” also blocks attacks, the new “Parrying” feature allows you to press forward to block an attack and setup your own offense. If you miss the timing to parry, you leave yourself vulnerable to another attack.

Similar to Street Fighter III, SFIV includes energy meters at the bottom of the screen for both characters.  As you execute special moves, the energy meter fills. Once it is filled, you can execute a “super combo” which can do severe damage to the opponent.  When I say “severe” I mean, in excess of 50% damage at a time.   It is an acquired skill to learn to manage this because it can make the difference between winning and losing  - especially if you’re losing.

As your opponent inflicts damage on you, your “revenge gauge” fills.  When it does, you can unleash an “ultra combo” – which does even more damage than the super combo.  If you think this sounds cheap… imagine beating someone to within an inch of their life and then having them whip out a gun and shoot you dead. Its really that cheesy.    It reminds me of “RAGE” from “Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe”  but it feels more artificial and perverted here…just like every Dragonball Z cartoon I’ve ever watched where the half-dead, start kickingass for some reason or another.

The most important tactic you’ll have to master is the “Focus Attack”.   Focus Attacks allow you to hold down the attack button, draining your energy guage. The longer its held, the more damage is done. At best, it can simply counter one instance of an attack. At worst, it can counter any attack except multi-hit combos.


THE CHARACTER ROSTER  is a retread to Street fighter II, the game most of us are most familiar with.  Every character from SFII is here… and on steroids.  Chun Li’s sexy legs look like plump ball park franks in pantyhose, and Guile looks like Duke Nukem.     There are 4 new characters: Abel, Crimson Viper, el Fuerte and Rufus, and there are  returning bosses such as Akuma and Gouken – as well as the main boss, Seth.    Other playable characters include Dan, Fei-Long, Sakura, cammy, Gen and Rose from previous sequels.

The roster manages to feel more satisfactory than the roster in MK vs. DCU, but the problem here, just as in that game, is “balancing”.  Some of these characters are ridiculously overpowered which means you’d actually have to make use of the special abilities to gain a cheesy win.

For example, most of the characters cannot block if they jump.  Some of them can. But, the bosses have attacks that can hit you in the air – and then keep hitting you in the air. Seth can do serious damage on you in a short amount of time and most of your defenses will continue to fail until you can afford a Ultra Combo or a Focus Attack.
An experienced player can force you into a corner and pummel away at you till the match ends.

Overall, I wasn’t extremely impressed with Street Fighter IV. I’m actually more impressed with Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, which originaly disappointed me in comparison to MK: Armageddon.  Armageddon and MKvs.DC’s environments are part of the combat itself. The Freefall  Kombat for example really looks great and makes fighting more exciting. The characters in the MK games feel better balanced save for some cheap “infinite” attacks that are unstoppable.    In SFIV, a lot of the moves are unstoppable and some of the moves cover the entire width of the screen.   It makes fighting a nightmare against people who have mastered the entire moves list.

The graphics were a disappointment too. They are a huge step up from the 2D sprites, but, the environments are not  traversable 3d  like Mortal Kombat’s…they are fully rendered characters in 3D environments that move only in the 2D plane.   The characters look great – being that they are 3D models with hand drawn looks – using techniques such as calligraphic strokes and ink smudges to resemble true anime art, but, it still feels like more of the same.

Just as MK vs. DCU made use of the next generation consoles abilities to  rotate and zoom the camera in or out to make the fight look more exciting than it actually was, SF4 uses unique camera angles to show off its 3D characters. The models do look better naturally because polygons rendered well don't distort when zoomed like Sprites do.

Sound wasn’t much better. The sound FX are loud and bone cracking, but, SFIV’s soundtrack is ho-hum.    The original SFII’s midi’s are embedded in my brain while SFIV just doesn’t measure up to the intensity of SFII.  The intro movie for example is ridiculously scored by some "Justin Timberlake" sound-a-like. It doesn't place well here. The soundtrack in the levels is mostly J-pop.
The announcers sound like they came from Dance Dance Revolution.

And why does everything feel so heavy?  The characters are HUGE, A.Rod steroid abusers with 30 inch necks as if they are starring in a Gears of War sequel. They move slowly to match their gigantic bodies. Chun Li is supposed to be a  140 pound Chinese girl. Why is her body basically bursting from the seams of her skimpy fighting uniform? She should be in Sir Mix a Lot’s  music video.

I am not amazed by the unnatural juggling combos that Street Fighter moved towards in the “Alpha” sequels while I like the more natural feeling, more realistic  combo juggling in the MK games…especially MK vs. DCU. Perhaps its because I don’t like Anime fighting that much – or perhaps its simply because the balancing in this game is terrible.   The A.I. is so good  using attacks in this game that you most likely won’ t be able to beat it on highest difficulty.  That shouldn’t be.   And don’t get me started on the online play. Basically, if you challenge someone who’s been playing for a long time, you have no hope at all of winning.     


Taking a page from the more recent fighters released, SFIV offers a training mode that allows you to have the CPU attack you with specific combos, just so you can practice evasion techniques for those specific combos. You can also change the CPU's recovery time, stun frequency or hit damage for more practice. 
Naturaly you can practice your own attacks - there is a button indicator to tell you what you are pushing to help you learn special moves. 

Challenege mode features typical submodes such as "time attack" and "survival" where you must fight opponent after opponent until your time or energy run out. 

Online play allows you to fight opponents around the world. As you win, you gain points which help with the matchmaking process - matching the winningest with the winningest...and there is a video capture to HDD so you can record matches and share them with buddies via the messenger system. 

Strangely enough, there is no Tournament Mode  and the "Beat Up the Car Bonus levels are gone.   I was so hoping to trash some Hondas or Toyotas.

 If the balancing were better and so much focus hadn’t been on making it appear that one character is knocking the next into another dimension – with fireballs surrounding their bodies – perhaps this game could have felt better to play. I actually like the original Street fighter II turbo more than this game in terms of gameplay.   I hate anime cartoons and anime games because at a point, the fighting damage gets ridiculous and inane.



There are lots of reviewers giving this game highest ratings and A+'s but I'm not convinced. They are just happy to see Street Fighter  innovated after 18 years of cloning.
While games like Mortal Kombat and Tekken give you a full 3D environment to fight through, Street Fighter 4  still feels as flat as it did 18 years ago.