Street Fighter IV – An Indepth Review

The best fighting game this console generation has arrived

Since there’s not much a campaign/storyline for Street Fighter IV, I’m able to give a review on it after just playing it for about 10 hours or so. I’ve beaten it with half the characters on Arcade mode already, am about halfway through the Time Attack, and a quarter way through the Survival mode. As for the Trial mode? Forget about it. I’ll get back to it eventually. But for now, I’m having too much fun playing it online!

Good
– classic Street Fighter II gameplay that really feels like a sequel
– phenomenal presentation
– serious online support: Battle Point system, custom titles/icons, and matchmaking

Bad
– lack of a single player quest/campaign mode
– lack of a quarter match online mode that allows for 4 players in a room at the same time
– lack of a quick continue in single player or player matches

Intro
Street Fighter and the fighting game landscape in general has felt a decline ever since the peak of Street Fighter II in the arcades. Back then, it was a big deal as arcades were prevalent everywhere and Street Fighter II launched the arcade fighting game frenzy. Since then, Capcom has continued to release dozens of fighting games, from Street Fighter II updates to other fighting games like Darkstalkers, Rival Schools, and JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. The Vs. games were quite popular too, in part due to how well Capcom designed Marvel characters. But as the fighting game industry aged and arcades continued to either be shut down or convert to only having DDR and Time Crisis games, Capcom continued to pump out more hardcore fighting games. Capcom vs. SNK and its sequel, as well as Street Fighter III and its updates were all very hardcore fighting games that drove away the casuals that had fond memories of the original Street Fighter II games or recognized the Marvel characters in the Vs. games.

Thus it’s very easy to understand that Street Fighter IV was almost never made. In the past five years or so, Capcom has had very little success with the casual market, which it needed to break into to make fighting games relevant again. Street Fighter IV was the answer and it was thanks to one man: Yoshinori Ono.

Ono was brought on as a music designer and producer for several of Capcom’s games. A huge Street Fighter fan, Ono discovered how much of a fan following the original Street Fighter II game and it characters had Xbox Live, so he pushed to have Street Fighter IV made. Capcom green-lit the project, and had Ono lead it up as the Executive Producer. Ono’s vision was that Street Fighter IV would take a step back from the highly technical and hardcore gameplay of Street Fighter III, and liken Street Fighter IV to chess: a game that professionals could play and enjoy, but still be accessible and fun for children. His goal was to also bring back fans of the original Street Fighter II game that fell off as the Capcom fighting game landscape grew more and more technical. And he has succeeded. Street Fighter IV is a true return to the grace of Street Fighter II. It remains to be seen how well Street Fighter IV will sell, but if it exceeds expectations, Ono is tapped to head up Street Fighter V, a new Darkstalkers game, and perhaps a new Marvel vs. Capcom game.

Each character has a cartoon intro and ending.

Storyline and Premise
For fighting games, storyline isn’t too big of a deal as most people just care about picking characters that are appealing to them in some way or another. However, the Street Fighter game tradition generally has a bit of background given on each character and a unique ending, as well as specific character rivalries. Street Fighter IV continues this trend, but steps it up a bit by actually giving opening and ending animated movies for each character in the game. They’re not the best quality, but the effort is appreciated since they do give some background on what each character is fighting for.

The premise of the game hasn’t changed from previous iterations of Street Fighter: a best out of three round match where two players choosing two characters and duke it out with combos, special moves, and super bars until one emerges the winner. It just so happens that this time around the game is rendered with 3D graphics in a 2D field through glorious high resolution graphics, making the game look quite breathtaking.

Cammy and Fei-Long, two popular characters from Super Street Fighter II, make their return in Street Fighter IV.

Gameplay Mechanics
Characters
One of the most important parts of a fighting game is its roster of characters. Without cool characters or a large enough variety, people probably don’t even want to play it. Fortunately, Street Fighter IV delivers in spades. The entire cast of Street Fighter II returns: Ryu, Ken, Guile, Blanka, Chun-Li, Dhalsim, E.Honda, Zangief, Balrog, Vega, Sagat, and M.Boson. In addition to that, four new characters were created for the game: C.Viper, Abel, El Fuerte, and Rufus. These 16 characters and Akuma comprise the selectable character list for the arcade version of the game, but the console releases received even more characters – voted on by fans of the game. The console versions also receive Fei Long and Cammy from Super Street Fighter II, Rose, Sakura, and Gen from the Street Fighter Alpha games, and the ability to play as the two boss characters of the game, Gouken (the master of Ryu and Ken) and Seth. This is a total of 25 characters in the game, compared to the eight playable characters of the original Street Fighter II.

Special and Ultra Combos zoom in on the action, and if you defeat your opponent with one you get a flashy background too

Street Fighter IV Fight Mechanics
Assuming that gamers around the world understand the simple fight mechanics of Street Fighter II, here’s what’s new to the game for those returning from Street Fighter II.

While the super meter was introduced to Street Fighter in the days of Super Street Fighter II, EX moves weren’t itnroduced to Capcom fighting games until the Darkstalkers games and more recently, into Street Fighter III 2nd Impact. Each character has a bar at the bottom of the screen that has four sections. To fill the bar, the player must attack or perform special moves. Once the bar fills up one of the sections, the player can use an EX version of their special move by hitting two of the same button for a more powerful version. For example, a regular fireball may only hit once, but using up a section of the bar to perform an EX fireball will not only be a two-hit fireball, it will also knock down the opponent. If the player fills up the Super bar completely, the character is able to perform their Super Combo, which will completely drain the bar but do a good amount of damage to the opponent if it connects.

In addition to the Super Meter in the game Street Fighter IV introduces a Revenge meter, which is a very interesting gameplay addition that can keep matches closer. The Revenge meter fills up for a player only if they take damage – the opposite of the Super Meter. If the player takes enough damage, the Revenge meter will fill up enough that the player will be able to perform an Ultra Combo, the most damaging move in the game. This can single-handedly turn a battle around if it connects, so if a player is being completely beaten down upon they have the possibility of catching up.

Finally, Street Fighter IV also introduces something called Focus Attacks, a gameplay addition that the developers believed would allow players to get closer to the opponent on the ground rather than always resorting to air. (Thus, it’s theoretically possible to simply Focus Attack your way in on the ground against a fireball happy player.) The Focus Attack is activated by holding the medium punch and medium kick button. With it held, if the opponent attacks the player, he will counter immediately if the opponent’s attack was a single hit. The player that performed the Focus Attack will absorb the damage, but it will regenerate in his lifebar as long as he doesn’t get hit. Holding the Focus Attack buttons down long enough make the counter even stronger, such that a counter will actually knock the opponent into a Crumpled state, where the player can attack again. Focus Attacks can also be canceled by dashes, so the player is not stuck committing to a Focus Attack.

Seth, the boss of the game, is perhaps one of the least imaginative and most frustrating Street Fighter bosses to date.

Offline Modes
There are a variety of different offline modes for players that aren’t interested in going online. While there isn’t a campaign/quest mode where you can level up and buy accessories for your character like other fighting games, you can spend dozens of offline hours in this game if you are interested in learning every character. The offline modes include Arcade, Versus (offline 2-player), Training, and a number of Challenge modes called Time Attack, Survival, and Trial.

The overall flow of the Arcade mode is just like in the arcade: an 8 fight match where you play against six randomly selected opponents, followed by a rival specific to your character, and then the boss of the game, Seth. A second player can join the match at any time or the two can just play the Versus mode.

Training mode is decent in that it allows you to practice moves against a customized opponent – whether you want him standing, jumping, etc. You can also set the opponent to AI, or even player 2 so you can spar without ever having to worry about ending the round. I’ve sat and just played two players in the Training mode just to fight and practice stuff without worrying about either player losing, and it’s actually pretty fun. Too bad it’s not doable online.

Time Attack has dozens of challenges that require your character to take on a number of preselected opponents with different battle conditions all under a set amount of time. The battle conditions could differ from having an Infinite Ultra Bar to not being able to do any Special moves at all. Defeating each opponent yields a time bonus, and defeating all opponents with a certain amount of time remaining determines whether you get a Gold, Silver, or Bronze rating for the mission. The only issue I had with this mode is that some of them are very long (requiring like 15 opponents) and if you lose that one round, it’s Game Over. It doesn’t make sense intuitively that the game would be over if you still have time remaining, since the round you just played where you lost used up time and that should be penalty enough.

Survival mode is similar to Time Trial mode, and pits you up against a preset number of opponents where you are rewarded with some life gained after defeating each opponent. It doesn’t differ much from Time Trial except the focus is on your life bar instead of time.

Finally, the Trial mode offers a variety of specific input challenges for every character in the game. There’s probably about 10 or so Trials for each character, and they increase in difficulty considerably. The first level often just asks the player to perform the character’s unique special moves, but then as the Trial levels go on the player is instructed to pull off combos, linking combos into specials, linking combos into specials into supers, etc. It gets pretty out of control and while it was originally billed as a way to teach players how to use the characters, the game doesn’t offer any advice on the moves, a replay video to show what it should look like, or any assistance at all. It simply tells the player to do something like two low light kicks, a dragon punch, cancel the dragon punch, and then do a super fireball. Great. Definitely not friendly to new players, and it could have been a lot more but what we just have to accept it for what it is.

Online
The online mode to the game is presented with a variety of options: Ranked matches, Player matches, and the ability to automatch for either Ranked or Player matches while you play the Arcade mode of the game. For the quick and dirty, you can choose to host or join a Ranked or Player match room. Rooms are only 1v1, so when you create the room, you have to wait until someone else finds your game and chooses to join. To join a game, you can do searches for games based on best connection, comparable skill level, or to look for opponents with higher skill level (you can also choose these settings as well for automatching). When the search completes, a list of rooms show up that you can potentially join. One issue though is that when that list populates and you try to join a game, often times it will already be full because someone elsed joined it, so you have to keep trying until you can actually get into one.

I wasn’t a fan of hosting or joining games, so I just turn on Ranked automatching when I play the Arcade mode. It’s pretty cool because you’ll just be playing the Arcade mode and then the words will flash across your screen: “A New Challenger Has Entered the Ring!” like someone just entered a quarter into the arcade cabinet to take you on. Automatching is honestly the least frustrating way to play the online, but for those that want to focus solely on playing online ranked, it would be faster to look for games since there’s plenty of them out there all the time.

Street Fighter IV implements a system called Battle Points, which is a ranking score to determine your Street Fighter IV fighting ability. It’s a pretty sound system in that everyone starts at 0, and if you beat someone higher ranked than you, you gain a lot of Battle Points while your opponent loses the same amount of Battle Points you just earned. Beating someone that is ranked lower than you only gives you a fraction of what you would get were you to play someone at the same level or higher, while the opponent would only lose a fraction of what they would lose to an opponent of equal or higher level. In all cases, it is a well designed ranking system because it will place players into the ranking number range they all belong. Win a lot of games against scrubs and you’ll barely go up, but win a lot against better players, and it will move your ranking score up to their level. One thing that I wish was possible was to see the records of opponents and/or their Battle Point score before the match. Right now it’s only possible to see the Battle Point score of your opponent once the match is concluded.

Ranked Matches are only played once between the same opponents with no rematch option. When the match is over, both players are returned to whatever they were doing before the match while Player Matches allow the two players to continue fighting and rematching as long as they desire. Some of us only use one character, so it’s annoying that there’s no quick rematch for Player Matches. In old school fighting games you could just quick continue and go right back to using the same characters on the same stage with no loading, but in this game, both players have to go back to the player lobby, both choose Ready again, both pick characters again, and then pick a stage again. Then it loads again. So yeah, it’s annoying if you’re playing with a friend for an hour and using the same characters because a chunk of that time is just going through the menus and waiting.

Sadly, there is also no “quarter match” mode where more than two players can be in a room at one time. Other games, such as Dead or Alive 4, Super Puzzle Fighter, and the Street Fighter II HD Remix support up to four players per room where all four players can chat and watch two players fighting while they alternate who fights. It mimics the idea of four guys gathered around an arcade cabinet watching and declaring who has next. Sadly, it’s a missed opportunity by Capcom but they may have been worried that this mode would have created significant lag.

Street Fighter IV uses a “bleeding ink” finish, resulting in a 3D rendered game with a 2D feel for the best of both worlds.

Achievement System
Street Fighter IV has an excellently designed Achievement system – probably one of the better thought out ones for a fighting game. The Achievements focus almost entirely on the single player, with a select few on the multiplayer. There’s only one difficult one, requiring you to win 10 ranked matches online, but given time you will probably be able to accomplish it. It’s an achievement, after all. In any case, all of the offline Achievements pretty much gear towards mastering the characters through single-player, whether that’s completing each characters move challenge list (not a walk in the park by any means, as they are from high levels of play), various time trials and survival modes, and even beating the game on the hardest difficulty without continuing and qualifying to fight the secret boss (Gouken). The online Achievements relate to just playing online, either through ranked or unranked games.

In addition to the Achievement system, Street Fighter IV also allows you to customize your tag and icon during online play. There are hundreds of tags and icons to unlock in the game, and all of them can be unlocked through various single player challenges and multiplayer challenges. It’s almost like a super long Achievement list within the game itself, and it works wonderfully. As you play, you may get the message that a new title or icon has been unlocked, and you can gleefully go check it out to see if it’s one you want to start using.

The extra costumes for every character are already on the disc – you just have to pay Capcom to be able to use them.

Final Thoughts
I think Street Fighter IV is perhaps the best fighting game I’ve played on the 360 to date. At first I wasn’t too crazy about playing it online, as I’ve never really enjoyed playing online with other 360 fighting games due to how uncomfortable I was with my skill and dealing with the uncomfortableness of fighting an opponent one on one (a little too secluded, in my opinion). But Street Fighter IV has changed all of that. The game is appealing enough to have me engaged and the gameplay is classic enough that I can use my experience with older Street Fighter games to understand this one. On top of that, Capcom adds in an addicting Battle Point ranking system that is not very different from Blizzard’s battle.net ranking system for Starcraft and Warcraft III. Combine that with matchmaking through the Arcade mode, and I can just play the computer while waiting for human challengers. I’ve spent whole evenings and weekend afternoons just playing player after player online and it’s been a remarkable online fighting experience.

While Virtua Fighter 5 had the best single player campaign for a fighting game on the 360, Street Fighter IV has the best overall package for a fighting game. I give it an A-. It was nearly perfect but things like the lack of a quarter match mode that allows you to join a room with 4 players at once, the lack of a quick continue in both single player and online player matches, and Capcom charging for alternate costumes that are already on the disc hurt the game’s score for me. Plus, you still have to be a fighting game fan to get into this game as it’s certainly not for everyone. While it’s a little more accessible than Street Fighter III was, you still have to be good if you want to win online. Just being able to throw fireballs or dragon punches won’t get you very far. To compete, you still have to worry about spacing, frame counts, block strings, etc. – all sorts of terms that you’ll have to look up. At a competitive level, it’s still very hardcore.

If you’re even remotely interested in the fighting game genre or Street Fighter, Street Fighter IV should definitely be on your list of games to get, especially if you want to compete online. The matchmaking has a setting that allows you to look for games based on the best possible connection, and with that I rarely, if ever, play in an online match that lagged. Also, it comes down to the player, but you may need to invest in an arcade stick if you want to play the game more seriously. The spring in the 360 triggers as well as the uncomfortable d-pad may make things more difficult than on a stick.