Earlier, I raved about the coming of StreetFighter IV, and promised a review by a true aficionado. Please enjoy this review by the guy that was my fighting game buddy and taught me all I know about games. Hit him up on XBL: Vanishing Son and enjoy this article!
It’s a weird thing to think of my life in terms of Street Fighter. I’ve been a fan of the series since the original Street Fighter II came out on the SNES and have played heavily almost every Capcom installment of this 2D fighter with the exception of the “versus†games. Hanging up my Street Fighter III hat in 2005, I figured Capcom was done, so I sold my Hori sticks and put away every PS1, PS2, and XBOX game which had “Street Fighter†on the case. Three years later I heard the news that Capcom was back in the mix with SFIV. I could hear Capcom whispering that being in my 30’s didn’t matter at all and that COD4 would soon take the backburner.
One fateful day last year, a friend sent me a text message saying that Super Arcade down here in Southern California just received a couple SFIV cabinets. I told Onetenallstar (my SF3 nemesis) the news and we drove as fast as we could after work to make a fifteen minute drive about six minutes. The internets had very little information about the new engine, its characters, the moves, and differences between every other Street Fighter game that came before. With initial crowds of at least twenty people every night, we learned about the game between matches in three token increments.
SFIV is a sweet mix of old and new. It has the original cast: Ryu, E. Honda, Blanka, Zangief, Ken, Chun-Li, Guile, and Dhalism, the Street Fighter 2 CE/HF bosses: Balrog, Sagat, Vega, and Bison, characters from Super Street Fighter 2: Cammy, Fei Long, and Akuma, characters from the Alpha series: Sakura, Rose, Dan, and Gen, and new characters: Gouken, C. Viper, Abel, Rufus, and El Fuerte.
The special moves for the returning characters haven’t changed, and many of the special moves for the new characters entail quarter circle or half circle inputs plus a punch or kick button. Each character has an EX stock of four bars which can be filled for the super. The EX attacks (a special move plus two punch or two kick buttons) use one bar, and the super combo takes up all four bars. There is also the new revenge meter. After a character has taken enough damage, the green meter turns red, and the amount of damage inflicted by a successfully connecting ultra is dependent on how full the revenge meter is. For someone losing a match, the ultra provides the player the possibility of coming back and making the fight even.
Old school players getting back into the mix can get by with the use of supers, ultras, and tactics used back in the day. What’s new is the focus attack (MP+MK). Capcom makes gameplay very technical, interesting, and fun with this new attack. There are three levels of the attack based on how long the buttons are pressed. If it connects, the strongest focus attack is unblockable and leaves the opponent open to combos and ultras. The focus attack also serves as a focus parry. For certain regular and special moves, the focus parry will absorb one hit and allow the player to dash forward or back or attack. Unlike SF III, the character isn’t invincible when performing this parry. The health gauge decreases by the amount of damage inflicted by the attack but replenishes itself in time if no additional damage is taken. Some combos in this game can only be performed with a focus cancel which takes up two bars of the EX stock. After certain regular or special moves are performed, immediately pressing MP+MK cancels the animation allowing the player to do more. For example, if Ryu’s dragon punch lands, a focus cancel stops his animation and keeps him from rising. He stays on the ground and can dash forward to perform the ultra. The focus cancel can also be used on blocked moves allowing the player to dash away or dash forward to keep the opponent guessing.
Even though nothing can beat playing locally when it comes to a versus match, XBL and PSN each have their strengths for the online aspect of play. The strength of the connection is color-coded: red (one to two bars), orange (three bars), yellow (four bars), and green (five bars). The best connection I’ve seen for both systems is yellow which is almost close to playing in person with little lag. Having tested both consoles since the release, I’d rather play ranked matches or online tournaments with XBL. Ranked matchmaking works best on XBL. I set my search criteria to 5 rounds and “more skilled†for tournament style play and competition. A search on XBL consistently yields a screen full of potential opponents with at least four or five players with yellow connections and the rest in orange; the same search on PSN usually yields three players total with maybe one of the opponents having a yellow connection and the other two with red. Having both systems hard-wired, I’ve also experienced only a few disconnected matches which is awesome for both systems. What works for me for playing on PSN is either playing my friends who have the PS3 or sending friend requests to players I meet who have a good connection. Even though this may sound like common sense, if anyone in your network is going to stream Netflix or download crap, don’t bother playing. I tried, ended up getting zero to two bars for connection strength, and just asked myself what the hell I was thinking.
Thanks to the timer included on the player date page I can see that I’ve logged in 80+ hours of play on the PS3 mostly with a lot of local play with friends and 65+ hours of play on the XBOX using that more for online play. That’s over three weeks of my life spent since release. Add two or so hours to writing this up for Lizmoney. With the multitude of praise, 9’s, and 90%’s that SFIV has garnished from various publications, it’s possible that this 2D fighter with its 15+ year roots can claim Game of The Year. Will it? I hope so. There’s nothing like hearing, “I’m gonna dragon punch your ass, bitch.†from old friends who haven’t played this game since the night of prom. If you’ve never played this series at all, it’s a perfect time to start; if you played back in the day, it’s time to get back in the mix like 1996. Play on.
Mad Props and HaDuKen to my friend and writer, Jharvis for guest blogging!
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Ok, we all know that I’m the biggest cheerleader for Google’s Android and I’m always in wait for news and updates about it. Well, the world’s cutest OS update build, Cupcake is almost done.
 The official Skype app will be in the Apple App Store Tomorrow, March 31st, and Blackberry users can expect to see one around May of this year. 
