365//365: Day 056: Street Fighter IV (360) [Quickie]

As many of you may know, I LOVE Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike. No fighting game before it ever matched its fighting engine, and over ten years later, nothing has come close. It was as close to perfect as a fighting game got for me. It took years to go from Street Fighter 2 to Street Fighter 3, but it was well worth the wait. As with the leap from Street Fighter 2 to Street Fighter 3, it took about three decades for the series to move forward to Street Fighter 4. Given the track record of the Street Fighter series, the question wasn’t going to be “is it any good?”, but rather “how good is it?”

Obviously, it’s a visual marvel, with 60 frames per second, 3D character models and highly detailed backdrops. It’s drop dead gorgeous, easily outdoing true 3D fighting game titles such as Tekken 6 and Soul Calibur IV. The detail in each characters facial animations is just absurd. Audio wise, the voices are a mixed bag. If you play with Gouken or Akuma using an English voice over, then you must love to torture yourself. Some characters sound fitting with English voice, such as Balrog and Cammy. However, Ryu, Sagat and Seth just sound more natural with a Japanese voice over. The music is nothing memorable, other than the Indestructible track at the beginning of the game, and the Ryu vs Sagat battle. Otherwise, once again, the music in yet another Capcom fighter comes off and underwhelming and nothing special.

The biggest change in the series comes in the form of parry removals and the premiere of Focus Attacks. Holding down MP and MK will allow you to absorb a hit and enable you to counterattack soon after. Depending how long you held the button down, you can stun your opponent, and unleash whatever combo you can think of. This also drains some of your health, that will slowly regenerate back if you do not take a full hit before then.

Back throw! Ultra!

While focus attacks do open up battles to all new possibilities, it’s not necessarily the best gimmick I’ve seen Capcom unleash on the Street Fighter faithful. It’s a system that has its benefits and its disadvantages, but one that isn’t extremely deep.  With the removal of parrying and the ability to only perform a super move (fill your super meter) the game feels a lot like Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo, which isn’t a knock whatsoever, as SSF2T was an exceptional fighting game. But it does come off feeling like SSF2T with a few things tacked in. You have your focus attacks and and an ultra move (take enough damage/absorb enough hits using focus attacks to fill that meter) along with EX moves carried over from Street Fighter 3. Luckily, it is a ton of fun, with a load of replayability, thanks to unlockable characters, challenge, survival and time attack modes and the robust online mode. There’s more than enough reason to play the game, and enjoy it.

Hello, my name is Ryu. I'll be your overly saturated character choice for this game, with the same "Shoryuken > FADC > Ultra" combo that everyone enjoys abusing!

The biggest credit you can give Street Fighter IV is that it was one of the handful of games within a 4-6 month time span that helped revitalize and resurrect the 2D fighting game genre. While it is an exciting and entertaining fighting game, one with a good amount of replay value, I can’t help but to feel that the depth is lacking, due to the lack of parrying. However, Street Fighter IV is still a well built fighting game, and definitely one that will last for a long time to come, or at least until the sequel machine known as Capcom finally releases Super Street Fighter IV.

Rating: 8.6