Review – Super Street Fighter IV

Fighting

Tournament Edition Pro Hi-Def Remix Turbo etc.

Danny

So, another year has rolled around since Street Fighter IV and not only do I feel really old for typing out that sentence but Capcom have released a budget priced ‘Game of the Year’ style re-release in Super Street Fighter IV. If you are of the more of our cynical readership you are probably thinking two things. Firstly, isn’t this just a cheap cash in like back in the good old 16-bit days? Secondly, isn’t picking Danny to review this a bit redundant? I mean he loves fighting games, so he’s going to be pleased no matter what. Well allow me to respond first by saying that’s harsh! Admittedly I do love a fighting game and while it’s true that Super Street Fighter IV is essentially just building on the previous title, Capcom have expanded this game in a way that the fans of the first game all would of wanted, even if there are some slight niggles.

Bruce Lee vs Kylie Minogue. It's a dream come true.

In fact let’s go though some of those niggles and get them out of the way now. First of all –  what the hell Capcom? The special ‘bonus’ for owning Street Fighter IV is lame. Two extra colours for my fighters that make them look like they are ‘inked’ or ‘sketched’ which is all very nice but a bit of a lame bonus and what happened to the Gallery?  Or the Time Attack and Survival modes? I enjoyed those modes and it must of taken you more effort to take them out than to put them in, surely?

Survival and Time Attack I can kind of understand, being that I might be the only guy who enjoys that kind of thing, but taking of the Gallery is a really stupid idea in anyone’s book. Then there are some (and please correct me if I am wrong on this!) unintentional untranslated voiceovers for some of the characters’ ultra moves while they are in English dub mode (Makoto’s first Ultra springs to mind!) which really stand out, only the ‘Shotos’ are allowed to randomly yell stuff in Japanese in the English dub!

Trial mode presents its own problems too but is mainly there to teach players combos by giving them a list of buttons to press. Unfortunately, it does all of this without proper context of when to press them and where on the screen the player needs to be.  Also it doesn’t explain how to perform some of the more complex techniques like charging or attacking while in the middle of an attack for example. So unless you are already a Street Fighter veteran of some kind, you are probably going to have to run to the internet to look up videos on how to beat these, which is unacceptable.

In Soviet Russia game plays you!

Hell, say what you like about the Virtua Fighter and Tekken games but at least their equivalent of the combo practice mode has the option of allowing the game to show you how it’s done. Capcom could have made the game even more accessible to beginners with proper tuition (like with the videos for SSF2T on the Capcom Classics Collection vol. 2) but they chose the lazy route which is a shame since there are achievements and trophies for beating every character’s trials which might annoy some people (hnnnnnghhh! – Ed).

Like I said these are minor niggles (well apart from the Trial mode one, as it seems I have dedicated two entire paragraphs to it!) and, these aside, this is a fantastic game. Capcom made sure to add a lot of fan service to the game but not in the lame ‘well here are some pictures we drew’ kind of way. Capcom decided that the best way to win over the hearts and minds of people who brought the first SFIV would be to add in some old favourites from past Street Fighter games, as well as a few new faces, bringing the new character count up to ten and the total roaster up to thirty five. We have Dudley, Ibuki and Makoto from the Street Fighter 3 series, Guy, Cody and Adon from Street Fighter Alpha series and Dee-Jay and T-Hawk from Super Street Fighter 2. All of which are lovingly rendered and really capture the spirit of their old 2D counterparts.

Capcom have not just been slapping in new  characters though. They have also been making improvements to  the old guard as well. Every character now has a choice of two ‘Ultra’ moves which the player must pick from at the start of a fight. Each of the old characters have also been brushed with a fine tooth comb of gameplay balancing as well. Let’s just say that a certain one-eyed Mauy Thai practitioner has been weakened some what so he’s not so abusable but still remains a strong fighter in the hands of a skilled player. It’s not just the really strong characters either. I noticed many of the characters have had changes made to them like Fei Long no longer has his invincibility frame during his ‘chicken wing’ move, so it can’t be used as a wake up move any more for example.

Some tweaks are for the better and some for the worse, but it brings the crappy fighters and God-like fighters just that bit closer together and every character now has new movies during Arcade mode which are about as bad as they where before but they do continue their various stories on from the events of Street Fighter IV.

By far one of the most important improvements that SSFIV brandishes is that it has a much more robust online suite now. Eight player lobbies are in and so are team battles and the free DLC Tournament mode once Capcom get their arses in gear and make it available on XBL and PSN. The netcode has been streamlined and plays remarkably well even with six other people watching you fight. There is also a fantastic replay mode which allows you to host and view other peoples replays of previous matches. This can be a useful tool to learning a new character as well as entertaining to watch if you the kind of person that watches people play in matches over YouTube.

Grizzly Secondary Review Street Fighter 4 was a bit good. A mix of classic gaming action with some of the best graphics to grace the current consoles and one of the most balanced fighting games to boot. A question that is on a lot of peoples mind is this. Should this have been a standalone release? Why not DLC? In the end I think that Capcom have added enough to warrant a full retail release, affording the game with added visual flair, ten new characters and an overhaul to its online component. Very few beat em ups employ such a large cast of fighters which are balanced as well as fun to learn and the new blood in the form of Juri and Hakan make very welcome additions to the roster, boasting both interesting and accessible vessels to uninitiated players. Super Street Fighter 4 is truly a game for party players and the new lobby system compliments this fact brilliantly, making it easy to get friends together for a tournament in which everyone can watch a game being played, meaning you don’t have to go to rigmarole of explaining an epic match after it happened. All in all Capcom have pulled this out of the bag, sprinkled it with gold and with a dash of raging fan service and have created a fighting experience which just about achieves perfection. Here’s to Super Street Fighter 4 Championship Edition. Secondary Score: 10/10

The presentation in SSFIV is fantastic. Capcom have done a really good job with the new soundtracks (yes there are two in this game!) and arenas which capture exactly what the Street Fighter series is about. On a technical level the game has received some slight polish from what I can tell from the PS3 version as it no longer suffers from what horrible lack of anti-aliasing which the previous game had problems with. The new stages themselves are really colourful, vibrant and full of motion. Seriously I don’t think these backgrounds could have been done in a 2D game without it costing an absolute fortune because there are so many people, animals and objects moving around and interacting with each other, it’s just fantastic (the rhino level is the best I’ve seen in a SF game – Ed).

The animation of the fighters is as smooth as ever and the new characters do not look out of place at all. I think it’s definitely safe to say that Capcom have nailed the whole asthetics thing and the best thing is that the game moves and acts just like a proper 2D fighting game while keeping some of the benefits of a 3D engine like multiple dynamic camera angles during Ultra moves for example.

Super Street Fighter IV is a fantastic game at this budget price even if you already own the previous game. It would have been perfection in my eyes if wasn’t for the aforementioned niggles but I still had (and still having) so much fun while playing Super Street Fighter IV online with friends and offline.  This is probably the best Street Fighter game for anyone who is new to the series to jump into, yet it’s also fantastic for longterm fans of the series as well as being a must-have for all fighting game fans in general.

Rating: 9/10