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Street Fighter 4 Review
February 27, 2009 by CJ
[Overall Score: 9.5 - Steal from yo momma to get it]
The long awaited 4th installment in the long running Street Fighter series has finally hit. If this is your first time throwing a fireball or if you’ve been doing it for years you will find something to love here. And we're not just talking about the lustworthy Chun-li art.
Veteran Street Fighter fans may have doubts about the new bulked up look some of the classic characters have (again, not talking about Chun-li, you perv.) but overall Street Fighter 4’s presentation is top notch. Whether you are running it on Playstation 3 or Xbox 360 the game looks and runs great, moves like Crimson Viper’s Burning kick and Ryu’s fireball look especially good. The sound effects are hard hitting and help you get into the game, Ken’s fierce dragon punch rumbles across your speakers as you hear every hit land on your opponent.
The music overall fares pretty well, though nothing that will stick with you except some of the remixes of the classic fighter’s themes and the opening Jpop theme “Indestructible” which plays during the intro and the main menu. Whether you like it or not it will probably get stuck in your head.
This is first time in memory that Capcom has ever bothered to dub the voices for a Street Fighter game, the majority of English voices are decent, though Ken’s voice actor sounds like he’s trying to hard to get you to like him. If you're one of those who hates all forms of dubbing (aka fanboy like me) there is a dual audio like most recent fighting games. Surprisingly once you finish arcade mode for first time the game offers a mixed audio option allowing you to have some characters speak English and others in Japanese, this is a innovative feature that would nice to see in other fighting games.
Street Fighter 4 has all the basic modes you expect from a fighter made in the last 3 years, it has arcade, versus, training mode, gallery for unlockables and Xbox live/ PSN option for online 1 on 1 matches. SF4 consolidates all the single player modes into the challenge mode option; here you will find time trials and survival each with a normal and hard setting. Trial mode is also found in the section, it has an impressive amount of combo instruction first having you perform very basic moves moving you up into larger multi-hit strings, much like the first time you had sex. This will make it easier for new comers to the series to catch up with veterans as in the past you were simply expected to discover these combos on your own.
The online play holds up very well, if you at least have a 3 bar connection with your opponent the match will play out pretty smoothly. For those of you still on dialup, you're hosed. Strangely multiplayer lobbies are limited to 2 players where as it was 6 players in the recently released Street Fighter HD turbo, hopefully this will be fixed in the upcoming free tournament patch.
The gameplay of ST4 sticks closer to its Super Turbo roots than previous releases, it borrows what works from Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike and modifies it to make it more casual friendly. Gone is the parry system from 3rd strike which required pinpoint timing and a good understand of every character to execute. It is replaced with the new focus attack. The focus attack is pulled off simply by holding the medium kick and punch buttons causing your character to reel back into powerful attack that will absorb one attack and force your opponent into a crumple if it lands.
What truly makes the game feel easier for new comers is the revenge meter, which only fills as you take damage. When the revenge meter is at least 60% you can pull off a powerful ultra combo, this mechanic makes sure that you are always a threat no matter how badly are getting beat but you will still have to work for the win.
Both the PS3 and 360 versions look and play about the same though the PS3 versions has a load time of about 22 seconds between matches when played off the disc compared to 6 seconds on the 360. Luckily Capcom was smart to include an optional install for the PS3 version, which will bring the load time to a manageable 8 seconds.
The bottom line is if you were never much a fighting game fan SF4 isn't going to covert you, but if you find yourself likely to open the door to a 2D fighting game evangelist now and again you might find yourself tempted to goto the new Church of Ryu and Ken.
