Developer - CAPCOM
Publisher - CAPCOM
Available On - XBOX 360, Playstation 3, PC
Reviewed On - XBOX 360 & Playstation 3
Official Site - Street Fighter IV

For ten long years fans have been waiting, through countless spin-offs and alterations on past titles to all sorts of ports and remakes, Street Fighter has had a long history in the arcade and on home consoles. Though the series has seen such a legacy there are some underlying foundations that remain right through to this latest installment, with a vibrant art style and wonderful characters, combos and controls all within a solid technical fighting game that can be learned in a day or mastered in a lifetime.

At its core Street Fighter IV is recognisable and instantly playable by anyone who has handled the earlier games. Two fighters duke it out on a 2D plane with a variety of combos and abilities unique to each character, with most abilities performed just the same as before. The combos can range from the simple to the absurd, and as each is custom tailored to a character a steep learning curve exists for anyone wanting to gain the skill to step into the online arena.

Street Fighter IV will feel familiar, for sure, but anyone expecting to simply carry across past skills without respect for new abilities such as the Focus Attack and Revenge Ultra will definitely end up paying the price. A Focus Attack is performed by pressing both medium punch and kick attacks simultaneously, and if held down long enough, it will quickly stun an enemy. It can also be cancelled and followed up with a carefully timed dash attack allowing all sorts of new and amazing combos that can give an experienced fighter some solid game to work with. It’s a great new attack that lends itself to the flow of a fight brilliantly, allowing all sorts of unexpected combo openings.

If you’ve managed to be on the receiving end of a beating then you’ll find the new Revenge Ultra will come in handy. Unlike the Super Combo meter, that fills up as you dish out attacks, the Revenge Ultra will work the opposite way and fill up as you take damage. After a certain threshold the Ultra Combo will be ready, and is often easily performed similarly to a Super Combo except is often harder to land on an opponent. The more damage you’ve taken the more damage it’ll deal back, so it can create some pretty spectacular comeback moments and always gives a loser a fighting chance.

Even with all these easily performed combos and crazy stunning Focus Attacks, deep down Street Fighter IV is still a technical fighter that relies heavily on mastering a characters movement, speed, and attack patterns. Fortunately there are a few different paths to take to learn these tricks, with arcade, tutorial and online gameplay modes all available to give a variety of arenas. Training mode is useful when you’re looking to perfect some combos, with an AI dummy opponent easily set to a variety of defense or attack stances to be indefinitely wailed on. The challenges also offer a lot of ways to learn with time attack and survival modes, as well as the Trial challenges that present specific combos to pull off for each character.

Arcade is where the old school heart is, and with a variety of difficulties it can be a lot of fun to play through especially with the fight request mode allowing an online player to step in and challenge at any point – just like at the arcade. Like a Shang Tsung of Street Fighter, the final boss Seth has the ability to mimic a few attacks of other characters and ends up being frustratingly difficult to fight in arcade mode. Even on the easiest difficulty, Seth can be an unreasonable challenge with some powerful combos. He’ll also have to be beaten quite a bit to unlock all the characters that are only available once completing arcade with certain other characters.

Street Fighter IV has a bustling online community that can offer all sorts of challenge, and thanks to the recent free DLC of a Championship Mode the progressively ranked tournament system can help a player progress up the ranks to the insane challenges that wait online. Championship Mode, as well as the standard Ranked Match, both have point systems that reward a player as they beat opponents or potentially penalize upon defeat. These BP and GP rewards have no real purpose other than measuring your internet anatomy but in this sort of competitive arena it’s a minimum to what you’d expect for those looking for some serious challenge. The Championship Mode is nice but there still isn’t much to work with for a game that should be so focused on its online competitive community. A method of organizing tournaments with friends or hosting lobbies for more than two people is really needed, as it’s currently hard to enjoy games with more than one friend.

The biggest problem with Street Fighter IV is not in the game, but in the players themselves. Leavers and rage inspired quitters are frequent, the new patch that shows a disconnection rate for each player seems to be helping with things a bit more but the possibility of a player simply disconnecting still exists and probably always will. Latency is rarely an issue especially with a meter displayed for each potential game to join, but when under intermittent connection speeds Street Fighter IV can tend to stutter around like an epileptic at a rave party. A proper arcade stick is highly recommended for decent control over the tricky combos that demand accurate directional commands and timing, as the Dual Shock 3’s D-Pad seems to be the only suitable method for properly fighting on a standard controller.

Arcade sticks can be quite expensive, and are probably for the more dedicated player, but to gain real value from Street Fighter IV this urge to learn combos and master characters is required to really gain value from purchasing the full game. Street Fighter IV is an incredibly polished fighter, with a refined structure that can let a player pick up and play with a few friends, or dedicate a lifetime to perfecting all the possibilities in a fight. There’s a lot to learn and experience in the online community of Street Fighter IV, and if you’re willing to take the time to achieve these skills you’ll find one of the best fighting games available on the home console.

Street Fighter IV

93%

The Good -

• Gorgeous settings with beautiful animations.
• Tight gameplay that relies on skill.
• Competitive online arena.

The Bad –

• Terrible theme song.
• Still no real tournament system in place for friends.
• Frustratingly difficult end boss.