Street Fighter 4 Review

Street Fighter 4 was unveiled at Capcom's Gamer's Day in London, England on October 18th, 2007. The clip that was shown was an early version of the intro movie that made it into the final game showing cel-shaded 3D models that paid homage back to the hand drawn sprites of old. The game was very well received and the Street Fighter 4 hype wagon began.

US gamers have had to wait almost a year and a half to get their first taste of Street Fighter 4 since the arcade game never made it stateside due to the US's lack of an arcade scene. But finally Street Fighter 4 has made it stateside, but was it worth the wait? The answer is yes, but leaves gamers wondering what could have been.

Street Fighter 4 brings a lot of good things to the table. The fighting system is designed to never make a fight too far out of reach. There are two meters that fill up as you fight your opponent. The first is your standard Special meter, the more special movies and attacks unleash the more it fills up. You can use the meter in two ways, one use two bars to unleash a more powerful special attack. Or wait for a full bar to unleash a devastating combo that will take a good chunk of health way from your opponent. The second meter is called the ultra meter. These meter fills up as you take damage and can only be used to launch a devastating combo on your opponent. The ultra meter means that no matter how bad you are getting beaten you can always try to land an ultra combo to get back into it.

Street Fighter 4 also introduces a story that has not been touched on in previous Street Fighter games. This is told through a short anime style clip that is told at the start of the arcade mode and its conclusion. There of course is also an online mode and a challenge mode to keep you interested for awhile long.

However, Street Fighter 4 is not without its faults, no game is. These faults may not be noticed by all, especially newcomers to the Street Fighter series but they should be noted as they will be noticed by fans of the Street Fighter series and just face it, they are better than the newcomers.

One of the biggest announcements Capcom promised its legion of hardcore 2D fighting fans was that all of the combos that could be done in Street Fighter 2 would translate over to Street Fighter 4 even with the transition to 3D models. They were correct when they said this but what they failed to mention was that a slew of new combos would also be made available. It is much easier this time around to land combos, which makes it feel like Street Fighter 4 has been dumbed down to bring in a larger crowd.

Another gripe traditionalists may have with the game is how a number of moves have changed. Blanka's rolls are now noticeably slower making it easier to counter, Sagat's knee now goes up in an arc before coming back down and there are many more. It would have been nice to see all the moves act like they have in the past, but this at leasts gives traditionalists a chance to learn new mechanics and change things up.

The other problem with Street Fighter 4 is the lack of game modes. Outside of online play there is very little to bring you back to this game. The challenges are nice but get repetitive real quick. Capcom should have looked at Soul Calibur for inspiration in how to make a more effective single player experience on the consoles. Instead it seems they took the arcade game and brought it right to the consoles with online play and unlockable graphics, personal actions and colors that mean next to nothing.

The biggest problem with Street Fighter 4 though is the graphics. Certain characters, Zangief in particular look great in the 3D engine. Zangief has a strong comic feel to him because of his immense size. However, the games cornerstone characters, Ken and Ryu look like shit. The hair, eyebrows and eyes are extremely distracting, especially when in close. When graphics serve as a distraction and take away from the game then the game needs to be docked for it. It also didn't help when concept art was leaked showing Guile as if it were generated by the Unreal 3 engine.

Overall though Street Fighter 4 is an excellent fighting game and has put new life into the Street Fighter franchise. It is not on the same level as Soul Calibur but certainly offers a different type of gameplay that makes it a worthy addition to a fight fans library. If getting the game for the Xbox 360 though it is almost mandatory you buy a controller with a D-Pad that is not complete shit if not a joystick. PS3 owners may be able to skate by with their controllers though.