Street Fighter is Back!

Author's Rating:

Pros: Classic 2D SF gameplay, 3D graphics, Japanese audio

Cons: English audio, online experience

The Bottom Line: 
An excellent game to have, especially for old-school Street Fighter brawlers!

Author's Review
Street Fighter 4 is one of the most anticipated games for old school Street Fighter brawlers.  I’ve been a fan since the original Street Fighter II arcade game, as most fans are.  There’s been a drought of SF games (including those crossover VS games) for years, and finally a true 4th sequel for the series is out!

Graphics
SF4 is Capcom's first foray into 3D, but they’ve kept their 2D fighter pedigree in check (EX series doesn't count, since it is by another company).  While the backgrounds and characters are in 3D, the game play is on a 2D plane.  Ultra Supers have a lot of flare, zooming into the character, and excellent angles to convey dramatic hits, proving the 3D nature.

The textures have a decidedly water painted look, making the game look unique.  Due to the new style, the characters don’t look sterile like in other 3D fighters.  It's not exactly cartoony in look (although some of the backgrounds can be very coloful, giving it that look), but not exactly ultra realistic, either.  I'd say it suits the Street Fighter franchise just fine going forward.

One of my favorite detail is the facial expressions on all the characters when getting hit, or when anticipating on getting creamed by an Ultra Super!  The popping eyeballs are hillarious!

However, there are a few things that make me go "huh?" - for example, Blanka's hair.  Is that hair or porcupine spikes?  Even when rapidly moving around, his hair doesn't really flop or flow.  It remains ridged, pointy, and hard!  Maybe he's using hair gel - better stuff than Guile uses.

Sound
The music isn’t very classic sounding, or reminiscent to the old, but some of the classic music was remixed in a few menu selection areas.  They do fit the stages and characters, however.  A bit off topic here, but espite the fact that the stages have hints and flavor of belonging to a specific character, when playing a single player game, they are still random!  I don't get that...

The English voice acting and opening music is very jarring, and doesn't give it the traditional Japanese Street Fighter feel.  It made me feel removed from the game.  However, you can switch to the Japanese voice and music, and everything sounds right again.  A few characters still sound a bit off (Blanka for example), but it seems that character voices changes from game to game.  Oh, why can't they make them sound more like the original to pull on your nostalgia strings?

Otherwise, the sound effects are excellent, giving every hit and punch a real meaty sound.

Surround sound isn't used much in this game, since it's mostly on a 2D play field, but they do get used on occasion.  This is true in most menu selection, as some of the instruments in the selection music comes through the rear.  In fact, I keep forgetting I have rear speakers until it comes to selecting my character!

Controls
The PS3 controller pad is nearly perfect for this game.  The discrete d-pad makes it easy for all SF-type moves (charging, fireballs, and uppercuts).  However, I do find it too easy to pull of supers, making some of my super moves a mistake I have to live with.  The D-pad is decent for fireball/uppercut characters, but not exactly perfect.

The analog joystick can also be used, and is pretty effective for characters that use variations of circle moves (such as fireballs and uppercuts).  Howver, charge-move characters such as Blanka and Guile may have a harder time with the analog stick, since back/forward locations on the stick feels ambiguous.  The are of movement on the stick is too large.  This is to be expected, as it's an analog stick that is used for variable motion and inputs.  When used for digital inputs such as a fighting game, it gets a bit floppy.

The trigger buttons are pretty responsive for local games, but it seem to have milliseconds of lag when playing online, even on a good connection.  This proves to be virtually fatal in certain situations.  On games that are lagged, but still smooth, the controls feel like there a third of a second slower.  A good example would be Ryu and Ken's jumping Hurricane Kick.  I sometimes jump forward or backwards and then pull off a Hurricane Kick to further extend my jump distance.  With the lag, the game sometimes won't recognize the move until I nearly or already landed, causing unintended moves or a jump that was unintentionaly short.  Sometimes it doesn't even register the joystick motion and just the button, so I end up doing a very low jump kick.

Characters
I’ve always hated SF3 for getting rid of most of the classic characters.  It just didn’t have the SF feel.  Thankfully, SF4 feels more like a part of the SF series since it focuses more on the classic characters, while new characters are added sparingly as in Super Street Fighter II.

There are many classic characters that still need to be unlocked, while the new characters are already selectable by default.  You unlock characters by beating the game with a specific character, while others (such as Gouken, Akuma, and Seth – the boss) require special conditions.

Here’s SF4’s character roster.

Classic Characters:
Ryu
Ken
Chun-Li
E. Honda
Blanka
Zangief
Guile
Dhalsim
Balrog (M. Bison in Japan)
Vega (Balrog in Japan)
Sagat
M. Bison (Vega in Japan)

New Characters
Abel
Crimson Viper
Rufus

Unlockable Characters
Fei Long (unlocks with Abel)
Sakura (unlocks with Ryu)
Rose (unlocks with Bison)
Dan (Unlocks with Sakura)
Gen (unlocks with Chun Li)
Cammy (Unlocks with C. Viper)
Akuma (Unlock everyone except Gouken, fight him on arcade mode - need 2 perfects, defeat Seth with no continues, then fight Akuma).
Gouken (Unlock everyone, fight him on acrade mode - need 2 perfecs and 3 Ultra finishes).
Seth (Finish game with every character)

Online
When looking for matches yourself (ranked or not), it is difficult to join in!  You’re only matched to one other person. Everyone seem to have no signal bars, and most of the time, I get the message “Unable to Play”.  Despite the nonexistant bars, we were able to join a few hosted games.

When playing in Acrade Mode, you can set the game to put you online.  You play the computer like normal, but you may get challenged with someone wants to fight you.  This gives it a very arcade-like feel.

You can play in Player Match, which is an unranked game for fun.  You can keep playing the same person as long as they also wishes to play.  This makes it easy for rematches.

There is also a Ranked Match, which give points when you win a match.  Consequently, you loose points if you loose a match.  Lastly, you cannot rematch the same person.  Win or loose, you'll have to find another challenger, which is a hard thing to do given the problems of matching and joining.  Also, this mode matches you with someone with similar skills based on the points.

Once in the game, there are 2 types of lag we’ve experienced.  One is where the game may stop every once in a while.  The other is that all inputs are delayed a few milliseconds, making it hard to counter your opponent’s move, despite being a smooth game.  Not all games have super bad lag, though, but there is always some form of lag you'll always feel.

As stated before, even on the best lag-free games, there is always milliseconds of delay on the controls.

Overall, the online experience is a disappointment.

The Upshot
Despite the issues with online gaming, it’s worth getting the game to play your friends in the same room, or even the computer.  The training mode gives you a lot of freedom in settings for you to practice your moves, combos, and how the new game mechanics work.

Plus, what serious SF fan will let this game slide by?